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| View Larger Image | Diet for a New America
by John Robbins
| | List Price: | $15.95 | | Price: | $10.85 | | You Save: | $5.10 (32%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 21273 | | Studio: | HJ Kramer | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 448 | | Publication Date: | April 14, 1998 | | Publisher: | HJ Kramer |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Book Description
From John Robbins, a new edition of the classic that awakened the conscience of a nation. Since the 1987 publication of Diet for a New America, beef consumption in the United States has fallen a remarkable 19%. While many forces are contributing to this dramatic shift in our habits, Diet for a New America is considered to be one of the most important. Diet for a New America is a startling examination of the food we currently buy and eat in the United States, and the astounding moral, economic, and emotional price we pay for it. In Section I, John Robbins takes an extraordinary look at our dependence on animals for food and the inhumane conditions under which these animals are raised. It becomes clear that the price we pay for our eating habits is measured in the suffering of animals, a suffering so extreme and needless that it disrupts our very place in the web of life. Section II challenges the belief that consuming meat is a requirement for health by pointing our the vastly increased rate of disease caused by pesticides, hormones, additives, and other chemicals now a routine part of our food production. The author shows us that the high health risk is unnecessary, and that the production, preparation, and consumption of food can once again be a healthy process. In Section III, Robbins looks at the global implications of a meat-based diet and concludes that the consumption of the resources necessary to produce meat is a major factor in our ecological crisis. Diet for a New America is the single most eloquent argument for a vegetarian lifestyle ever published. Eloquently, evocatively, and entertainingly written, it is a cant put down book guaranteed to amaze, infuriate, but ultimately educate and empower the reader. A pivotal book nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in 1987.: |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 144 reviews)
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Best. Book. Ever. 
I read this book 20 years ago. Since then I've read several hundred books, but none more powerful than this. After reading this book, I turned vegetarian for three years. It took three years for the haunting images to dissipate enough for me to start eating meat. But I will never forget what I read. I recently started a blog concerning factory farms among other corporate badness: [...].
May 16, 2008 | |
Just what American Needs 
Just what kind of a diet does a new America need? According to John Robbins author of Diet for a New America, it is a vegetarian diet. In his book, which is slightly outdated having been published in 1987, he explains the lives of animals in factory farms, and as they spend their last moments moving down through the production line. The book is divided into three sections, which allows for an easy to read flow. In addition the book is complete with information regarding animal husbandry in today's society, how to maintain a healthy vegetarian diet, and the future of the environment. All of these come together to make a wonderful book, which you want to keep reading.
The only downfall to the book is the amount of time that has passed since it was originally published. An updated version would be wonderful and great to look back to see if anything has really changed since Robbins first wrote Diet for a New America. Yet, with Robbins clear passion for the subject he is educating and the way that he writes really makes the book is worth reading. The book is really an eye opener for those that don't know much about the treatment of animals and should be read by every meat eater in America.
May 09, 2008 | |
Diet for a New America changed my life
This is probably the most important book I have ever read. The day I finished reading this book, I vowed never to eat animal products again. That was 16 years ago. I have been a vegan ever since. The reasons for becoming a vegan that are outlined in this book have only become more compelling in the intervening years. Though some of the statistics and research may now be a bit dated, for the most part, the newest research continues to support the basic premise of this book. When you choose a more compassionate diet, you improve your health, the health of the planet, and the condition of animals.
May 08, 2008 | |
American diet "borders on the criminal"
If I could somehow require the hundreds of millions of meat-mongering peoples of the economic `first world' to familiarize themselves with but three current author/advocates, two of them would be John Robbins and Howard F. Lyman (I not sure who the third would be). These are admirable people, more capable than most of stepping back and discerning a society of deluded and naked emperors. Robbins' book is twenty years old now, and still ignored by the burgeoning culture of naked emperors, which includes, perhaps, you?
Bologna, any way you slice it:
"There are powerful interests today who are . . . particularly interested in `protecting' young children from the truth. Children aren't as quick to rationalize and numb themselves as adults are. . . The National Livestock and Meat Board makes it a point to `reach the children of the land at an early age,' and `prepare them for a lifetime of meat-eating.' As they put it in their 1974-1975 Report: `The 37 million elementary and 15 million high school students in the United States constitute a special Meat Board audience.'" pgs 125, 126
"Many of us believe our social status depends on the quality of our meat and the frequency with which we eat it . . . Our cultural conditioning tells us we must eat meat, and at the same time systematically overlooks the basic realities of meat production. We've been indoctrinated so thoroughly that it has become the ocean in which we swim. Our language is so disempowered by euphemisms and clichés, our shared experience so weakened by repression, our common sense so distorted by ignorance, that we can easily be held prisoner by a point of view beneath the threshold of our awareness." pg135
All things connected:
"The world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people--nearly double the entire human population of the planet." These statistics are more than twenty years old, of course, but the level of waste has greatly grown. "According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattle feed, can produce 165 pounds of beef." pg 353
Robbins seems a bit reckless with his statistical references, and this is the book's greatest weakness. Even so, in principle the picture he paints is generally true and real. The animal-based diet is an ecological train-wreck; it's an economic crime; it's killing people and it's raping the biosphere. Meat is a lie that too many people love being told. Read this book and Howard Lyman's. Lyman's `Mad Cowboy' is more powerfully argued, and a better book in my humble opinion; but John Robbins' book is quite good too--although dated now.
March 07, 2008 | |
Highly Recommended!
This book changed my life! This is one of the most important books you'll ever read. I'm buying several copies and giving them to my family and friends.
February 16, 2008 | |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
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