Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness, and the Future of Life on Earth by John B. Robbins, Joanna Macy (Foreword by), John Robbins (Introduction)

From the Publisher

Since the publication in 1987 of Diet for a New America, beef consumption in the United States has fallen a remarkable 19 kpercent. Diet for a New America is considered by many to be one of the most important contributors to this dramatic shift in eating habits.

In the first section, John Robbins takes an extraordinary look at America's dependence on animals for food and the often inhumane conditions under which these animals are raised. It becomes clear that the price paid for such eating habits can be measured in the suffering of animals.

The second section challenges the belief that consuming meat is necessary for optimum health by pointing out the vastly increased rate of disease caused by pesticides, hormones, additives, and other chemicals that are now a routine part of food production. The author shows how the production, preparation, and consumption of food can once again be a healthy process by omitting meat entirely from the food chain.

In the third section, Robbins looks at the global implications of a meat-based diet and concludes that the enormous amount of resources consumed in the production of meat is a major factor in ecological crises.

Publishers Weekly

This well-documented expose of America's ``factory farms'' should prompt even die-hard meat-and-potatoes lovers to reevaluate their diets. Asserting that ``we are ingesting nightmares for breakfast, lunch and dinner,'' Robbins, who is medical director of the California Institute for Health and Healing, details how livestock is raised under increasingly industrialized conditions by ``agribusiness oligopolies.'' Grazing and foraging have given way to debeaking, tail-docking, dehorning and castration, and treatment with pesticides, hormones, growth and appetite stimulants, tranquilizers and antibioticswhich, in turn, are assimilated by humans. The author correlates our ``protein obsessed'' society with a higher incidence of arteriosclerosis, osteoporosis, cancer and other degenerative diseases, as well as freakish occurrences like premature puberty from estrogen contamination. As Robbins debunks nutritional myths perpetuated by the powerful meat and dairy industries (indicting as well his family's Baskin-Robbins ice-cream empire), this is sure to prove controversial. Photos not seen by PW. (September 10)

What People Are Saying

Andrew Weil
Diet for a New America is a powerful indictment of our dietary practices that should be read by everyone interested in healthy living. It is well-researched, well-documented, and eye-opening. I recommend this book to patients, friends, and relatives.

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