Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness and the Future of Life on Earth
By John Robbins
An ethical America, imagine that! Author John Robbins published his revolutionary work Diet for a New America in 1989. It quickly became a kind of unofficial Bible for vegetarians and animal rights activists around the world and saw its author nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction. Robbins became a radical homespun hero in the American tradition of Thoreau for advocating the nutty idea of making ethical dietary choices. The book meticulously documented the abominable conditions on most factory farms (shocking many Americans); the links between meat eating and diseases like heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis; and finally, the incredible toll North American diets take upon the natural world. Robbins became almost as famous for revealing that the world’s population could easily be fed by the grain and water usually provided to livestock as he was for abdicating his inheritance of the huge Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream empire because an ice-cream business didn’t square with his vegan convictions. The strength of Robbins’ arguments lay in his sources. It’s hard to argue health with a vegetarian who backs up his lifestyle with examples culled from major medical journals. Robbins predicted a sea change in attitudes towards eating meat, dairy products and eggs.
He thought that one day all three would be proscribed in the same way smoking is now. And though it hasn’t happened yet, there is no question we are moving in that direction.
