The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World Paperback – July 11, 2001

I guess I didn't read between the lines in the title. I got as far as ' save your life' . I am already vegan. I love animals. I also don't want dietary linked disease to ruin my golden years. I don't want to take pills for things I can help by changing my lifestyle. Which I did. But I love to learn! So I read as much as I can. I honestly thought this would be more along the lines of The China Study or books like that. Nope. It's like reading a PETA commercial. I know about Inhumane food industry practices. And unhealthy food industry practices. That's part of the reason I don't partake. So, even though this book is breaking my heart so far, I am going to finish it. But just beware there is some pretty gruesome stuff in it. If you want a recipe book, look elsewhere. This is more like a social ills documentary book.

Wow! This book has had such an impact on me. For years I struggled with knowing that a vegetarian diet was more in line with my feelings about the humane treatment of animals but not liking beans and some other vegetables that I felt prohibited me from making the change over. But in reading about how much suffering is inflicted on animals at the Factory Farms, not just at the time of slaughter but throughout their entire lives !! Oh my ! I just said to myself, "It's time my conscience and my actions come into balance." I am now Vegan because I cannot support an industry that is so callous toward animals. I don't expect that everyone reading this book will necessarily make that choice. But you need to know the reality of what is going on to make any decision. Ignoring the reality doesn't change the fact that it exists. It, for me, was and is a moral decision, not a health one, although it certainly will affect my health in a positive way. I was very moved by this book and do recommend it to anyone who is willing to take their heads out of the sand and face the reality about what we are putting in our bodies and what suffering animals went through for that food to be available to us.

We should all be mad. We’ve been lied to for the sake of corporate profits. They don’t want us to realize that there is one thing we can do that will give us a better quality of life. John Robbin’s (of Baskin & Robbins) book is very well researched. How does your diet affect your health and the planet? What’s the truth about factory farms and GMO foods? Do you recycle? Do you love animals? You can help the planet, animals and yourself at the same time. We can choose not to support the industries that pretend to have our best interests at heart and make billions off us. We can choose organic vegan foods. Yes, it may be more expensive in the short run, but organic foods are usually more nutrient dense. And in the long run, we will have a better quality of life, save $ in medical bills, and be living by our conscience. We won’t be ingesting chemicals and hormones and who knows what in genetically modified foods. They fought labeling and won because they don’t want us to know what’s in our food, and they don’t know the long term effects. We will be doing the one thing that impacts our health, our fellow animals, and our environment more than any other single thing we can do. We will not support cutting down rain forests or the horrendous treatment of animals on factory farms or the destruction of our own health and the environment. I never thought I could go vegan. But I did over 20 years ago, and it’s the best decision I ever made. I love to eat and now I do so with a clear conscience. I evolved my diet slowly, and I feel better and get sick less often. You can cut down on animal foods, and if you do eat them, eat organic meat and dairy. Care about what you put in your body and how animals are treated. There are so many wonderful meat alternatives and nut cheeses. Try them. Change your life. You’ll feel so much better!

The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World by John Robbins

While it was not the only influence, it is accurate to say that I became a vegan over two decades ago after reading John Robbins' Diet for a New America in 1988. I have pointed to him and the book ever since as shining examples of organic, whole foods with the absence of animal or dairy products.

As most everybody knows, Mr. Robbins was the heir of the Baskin-Robins chain, set up for life at the top, where he was to become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. The only problem was that Mr. Robbins looked into how the dairy and meat products in modern times are produced. He started researching studies, comparing scientific reality with the marketing malarkey of the meat and dairy industry. He next walked away from the family business, became a vegan, stepped down from taking over before the financial empire before the day even arrived.

There are not many people in this or any lifetime who give up fortune to pursue a life of enlightenment instead. In Diet for a New America, Mr. Robbins did not draw attention to what he gave up or the hardships that he and his wife encountered as a result. He merely pointed out how cruel and inhumane modern farming and livestock is, pointed out the fabrications of the meat and dairy industry, advocating a plant-based diet as an alternative. It was powerful, factual and moving. In response to Diet for a New America, thousands of us in the United States and around the world became vegans, many of us remaining so the decades since.

Mr. Robbins released Diet for a New America in 1987. He has continued to research, write and provide a voice for reason and humanity in our eating habits.

In The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Save Your life and Our World, Mr. Robbins continues to make a strong and convincing argument for a plant-based diet. He points out the mistruths and outright lies of the meat and dairy industry. He offers study after study demonstrating that modern factory farming is polluting the water and the air, and is the leading cause of methane.

He argues, again convincingly, that the best and quickest way to combat Climatic Change would be for everybody to become a vegan. He points out the harm done humans and the eco system as a result of animals kept in inhumane & disease inviting factory environments, fed a diet not fit for an animal and given mega antibiotics to keep them alive for the final slaughter. He points out the filthy conditions of the slaughter houses and the various foodborne deceases that invade our food system on a daily basis, some taking up to seven weeks after eaten for sever health issues to become noticeable, making it virtually impossible to track the source.

Mr. Robbins makes point after point about what is wrong with factory farming, using the medical profession and scientists to make his case, leaning on study after study that proves his various hypothesizes concerning the cruelty of livestock, the health hazards it produces, the inevitable health risks to eating the unhealthy meat and dairy, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension and a host of heart related diseases, including cardiac arrest and death.

The book offers strong evidence that the meat, dairy, white flour, corn syrup and processed sugar habits of modern humans is the root of many of the worst modern health problems.
Mr. Robbins also takes on the modern farming practices of vegetables, especially pointing out the dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Who should read this book? Every human being in the world who can read, and anybody who cannot read should have somebody read it to them who can read.

If you want to eat healthier, understand the dangers of our food system and do something about Climatic Change, read this book. It should be on the immediate reading list of anybody who has not already read it.

John Robbins is one of the heroes of today's world. He will never call himself that, and seems too humble a person to ever view himself in that light, but it truly is people such as him who are making the world better, not the athletes, entertainers and celebrities that are generally viewed as the heroes of our society. He is likely the closest we have in our generation to a Buddha, somebody on the verge of becoming king, to walk away from it, to go into the woods, to think, to think some more, to accept the world around him in the most pure and natural form possible.

This is a great book that every vegan, progressive, environmentalist, humanist, animal rights activist, health advocate, intelligent, decent, informed and positive person can learn something and embrace. Thank you, John Robbins, for helping so many of us to see the light, or to see it better.
MADAM PRESIDENT (American Myth Series)