Diet for a New America
April 1st, 2008 Posted in Paperback
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0915811812
Manufacturer: HJ Kramer
Average Customer Review: 
(From 142 total reviews)
List Price: $14.95
Amazon Price: $8.88 (39 new 51 used available)
You save: $6.07 (40.6%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours (Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping)
Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon web site at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.
Accessories
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
American diet “borders on the criminal” by Wesley L. Janssen
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 20,00 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, which 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, even as they perish from it. 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.
Highly Recommended! by J. Stalley
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.
meet your meat by C. Feilen
i’ve already known most of what i read in this book, but it’s still a good read. hopefully convert you to being veggie. if not- maybe you’ll eat less meat anyways
This Is A Life Changing Book by DJY51
John Robbins was the scion of one of the founders of Baskin Robbins. He gave up his right to his inheritance because of the relationships between our food choices, our health, the environment and our treatment of animals. Rather than giving up his inheritance, I wish he had taken his share of profits, and converted thousands of Baskin Robbins stores into a chain of stores selling organic, locally produced foods.
His book is written in a loving manner, not meant to attack those who have different beliefs than his, but rather to educate.
Whether or not your change your eating habits because of this book, you will never be able to look at food the same way.
My only criticism of the book is that Robbins writes too much about his father. That should be worked out with a therapist, not in his book.
I bought several cases of this book and gave copies to anyone I met who promised to read it from cover to cover.
Similar Products
Tags: america, awareness, diet, earthsave, ecology, food, health, health and fitness, heart disease, heath, high blood pressure, john robbins, longevity, vegan, vegetarian