Customer Reviews

Living Among Meat Eaters: The Vegetarian's Survival Handbook

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Life as a vegetarian or vegan is not always simple or easy, especially when we have to deal with meat eaters in a primarily meat eating world. Millions of North Americans have turned to vegetarianism and embraced this healthy, compassionate diet, and our numbers are increasing. Unfortunately, we are still a minority, and problems or inconveniences with meat eating family members, relatives, friends, co-workers and others are commonplace. Our ethical diet draws a variety of responses, everything from kidding to anger. Using her own experiences and more than 200 surveys from vegetarians who live with meat eaters, Adams provides good advice on how to deal with the meat eaters in your life. Adams suggests that we consider meat eaters as "blocked vegetarians." In the chapter "Love at Work III: Living with Meat Eaters - Partners and Children" Adams discusses such topics as living with meat eating partners, raising children when only one parent is a vegetarian, raising vegetarian children and cooking with children. To complement the practical advice given to vegetarians, Adams has included more than 70 pages of vegetarian recipes. A section on "About Ingredients and Products" is also very informative describing items of interest to vegetarians and where and how they can be used. The appendices are also very useful and enhance an already insightful book. Appendix A, "Living Among Meat Eaters: Rules of Thumb," provides reminders of important points pertaining to living with meat eaters. Appendix B, "Letter to Parents of Vegetarians," contains wise advice for parents whose children have chosen vegetarianism. Appendix C is "The Vegetarian Patrons of Restaurants Card." The reader is encouraged to make copies of the card provided which can be filled in and left at restaurants so that the needs of vegetarians visiting the restaurant in the future can be better met. Appendix D is an "International Vegetarian Card" which says, "I am vegetarian. What do you recommend?" in 21 languages. Living Among Meat Eaters provides valuable information about how vegetarians can not only exist with meat eaters but thrive in their company to everyone's benefit! -Reviewed by N. Glenn Perrett

I picked this book up after hearing praises about it on a vegetarian website. I have been vegan for just over a year and before that was an ovo-lacto vegetarian for almost five years. In that time I had only a few bad experiences with meat-eaters finding out I was a vegetarian/vegan, but these experiences did stand out in my mind and made me rather fearful of confrontations. This book gave me quite a few tools for coping with any bad reactions that I may come across. While I still don't look forward to my aunt finding out that I'm vegan now, I feel better equipped to deal with her reaction this time.

I especially liked the author's point that meat eaters see the vegetarian diet as a diet of scarcity and that showing meat eaters just how delicious and abundant a vegetarian diet is can be one of the best ways of dealing with them.

As an added bonus, there are about 50 recipes included. So far I've tried three (Roasted vegetables with fennel seeds, mushroom cobbler, and tasty tofu) and found them all to be outstanding. I can't wait to try more.

I highly recommend this book and will be giving copies to many of my vegetarian friends.

Written for people everywhere who have adopted a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, Living Among Meat Eaters: The Vegetarian's Survival Handbook by dedicated vegetarian Carol J. Adams is a very practical guide filled from cover to cover with thematically appropriate discussions of common issues facing vegetarians living in a meat-eating world. Ranging from fitting in during summer barbecues or Thanksgiving dinner; to living with non-vegetarian roommates, family, or significant others; to fifty delicious vegetarian recipes that broaden the vegetarian's palate selection, Living Among Meat Eaters is a superbly presented, down-to-earth, "user friendly", and thoroughly enjoyable compendium of tips, techniques and social advice for the committed vegetarian.

I truly needed to read this book. I have recently made the decision to convert to vegetarianism and the hardest thing was not the adjustment to my new lifestyle, but the belligerent and ignorant meat eaters who are in my life. People are very unaccepting of my change and it has been difficult to deal with their hostility and their jokes that they inflict upon me.
Well, this book has helped me to cope with these situations. Adams goes in-depth with this book. It has been extremely helpful. Her methods of dealing with meat-eaters is effective.
There is one other advantage to this book; it provides several good recipes.
One thing I must note: this book is not for new veggies who are looking for information on a vegetarian / vegan diet. It does provide nutritional facts, etc.

This is an excellent book for anyone who is or knows a vegetarian. It is clearly written and gives specific and practical advice, accompanied by empathic anecdotes, and explorations of many vegetarian philosophies. The authoress has educated herself well on the perspectives of vegans, vegatarians, and meat eaters, and suggests that non-meateaters think of others as blocked vegetarians (people who know that a vegetable-based diet is healthier for their bodies) but treat people as potential vegetarians (with respect, no preaching, and a simply 'live as an example' approach). She tells us to remind meateaters that apologize for their diet that we are not their alter-egos, and if they feel guilt over their choices, they need to examine their own beliefs, and not project their conflicts onto us. She tells us how to "be prepared," not only to supply our own food at events or outings, but how to be mentally and philosophically prepared for attacks, by meateaters who find our diet threatening (as an attack AGAINST their own beliefs, rather than a statement FOR ours). She has suggestions for what to say, in response to some of the most common attacks, and explains how both vegetarians and meateaters see their diet as a statement FOR life (vegetarians don't eat meat because to them, meat is death, and meateaters eat meat because to them, it is life-giving). Essentially, she gives a balanced perspective, insight into the minds of all Westerners. The problems with this book: (1)the responses she provides for us sometimes have a stilted language style that could easily sound unnatural and therefore confusing, to those that know us well (2) the authoress is a vegan, and her frequent statements about the vegan diet (though true) may make vegetarians who eat dairy feel guilty and less socially responsible than their vegan counterparts.

I have not yet finished reading this book but so far I have enjoyed it greatly. As a vegetarian for fifteen years I found many cookbooks and and other instructional aids to becoming a vegetarian but this is the first book I have found that deals more with the social aspect of vegetarianism. I adopted a vegetarian diet for many reasons and one of them is to promote peace for all creatures, humans included. This book helps show how to deal with those with different viewpoints without feeling angry or exhausted. I recommend this book especially for the vetran vegetarian.

Carol J. Adams is one of the strongest intellectual voices in the area of animal rights, women's rights and vegetarianism. Her books belong on the shelf of any vegetarian with an inquiring mind.

Living Among Meat Eaters is a book I very much needed. Recently I was trounced out of an on-line natural living group because while initially tolerant of different views, gradually came under sway of a rampant anti-vegetarian philosophy. This book helped me through some painful and difficult times.

Its ironic that vegetarianism is a peaceful, nonviolent, nutritionally sound and noble philosophy, yet it attracts many hostile critics. Like other progressive movements, feminism, civil rights, labor movements etc., many seem threatened by its peaceful message and feel they must retaliate with anger and scorn, such as that by "a reader from Princeton, NJ." Because the world is full of people insecure about their own knowledge, who feel compelled to attack people who try to live by peaceful and just principles, we *need* a book such as Living Among Meat Eaters.

Thanks Carol J. Adams for addressing an important aspect of the vegetarian life style.

This book was a very happy surprise. When I bought this title, I was pleasantly lulled into thinking it would be exactly what the book goes on to say is not needed, which is another set of clever answers to meat eater questions. I was and am profoundly pleased and surprised to find this book to be a work of philosophy, deep insight, wonderful humor and a good read. A major premise, that meat eaters are all "blocked vegetarians" can be taken out of the absolutely literal context some people favor. It's an idea that is well-explored and examined in this work and the reader is invited to see if it holds up. This book does not demand you agree with it, it invites you to think differently about things possibly taken for granted or that have remained unexamined. In other words, a kind invitation to explore a very fundamental part of life: what you eat, who you eat with and what everyone's assumptions about it all are.

This is a book we vegetarians, especially
vegans, have needed for a long time! It helped
me enormously in talking with friends and
family around the dinner table (when all the
questions come up from non vegetarians).

If you're tired of getting into arguments with
other people at the table, you've got to read
this book! I loved it!

I didn't read this book until six months after I chose to live a veg lifestyle. I wish I could have read it the first day, it might have prepared me for the barage of negativity I got. You don't have to subscribe to all of her opinions, but the advice in how to appropriately deal with other people is invaluable. I have personally encountered many of the "types" of people she describes and how they choose to attack you. This book reminds you to always be respectful of others chosen lifestyles and gives you good advice on how to stand your grand while doing so.