According to the conventional wisdom, factors like taste, dietary beliefs and cultural traditions drive our decisions to buy animal foods. But the reality is that price plays a huge role in our eating choices as well. The alarming result of consumers watching their purse strings so carefully is that meat producers, who work hard to keep prices artificially low, are heavily responsible for driving demand. MEATONOMICS is the first book to fully explore the murky economics underlying animal food production and its revelations are shocking. Like Freakonomics, it demonstrates how seemingly bizarre economic forces impact our everyday lives - how we're all subject to incentives no matter how counter-intuitive they may appear. A persuasive manifesto, MEATONOMICS proposes concrete changes in social and tax policy that will help consumers save money, lose weight, improve health and protect animals and the planet from abuse.