The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World by John Robbins Published by Conari Press on July 11, 2001
Genres/Lists: Food, Non-Fiction
Pages: 449
Read synopsis on Goodreads
Buy the book: Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links)
Last week I talked about my new identity as a vegetarian. It started out as a month-long challenge but after reading THIS book, I’ve decided to do it for life. The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World, which was written by the heir to the Baskin Robbins throne who threw it all away for a healthier life, covers a lot of topics: food, health, animal welfare, world hunger, GMO’s, and water being amongst them. Given the wide breadth of topics, it’s a testament to the conciseness of author John Robbins to pack in so much information. Each chapter gives facts and figures, as well as quotes, about the impact of meat and the meat industry.
Because there’s so much information in this gem of a book that will change your life, I’m going to give you a few of my favorite facts. I left out the animal welfare stuff on purpose because it’s all over the Internet and I’m not here to convert you. I am, however, here to help educate you about some of the impacts that the meat industry has other than the atrocities committed against animals in order for us to eat it. We all know that pigs are sentient and that factory farms are terrible, so here I’ll focus on health and environment. (Even that much about animals was more than I had intended to write but it still bears mentioning).
Health
- We spend as much on healthcare every ten days as we did in 1950, even adjusted for inflation.
- More than 50% of healthcare costs are on preventable conditions.
- Elderly people who consume a lot of dairy are twice as likely to fracture their hips.
- Most “stomach flus” are actually food poisoning.
- Most beef and chicken is contaminated, even when considered “safe”.
Food
- Chicken is implicated in urinary tract infections.
- A lot of beef comes from the rainforest. Each fast-food hamburger destroys 55 square feet.
- Monsanto is worse than I thought, and that’s saying something.
- There has actually been human DNA put into pigs…. and it’s made it’s way into the food supply.
- You can buy your own healthy foods here!
Animals
- Animals don’t have to be dead to be slaughtered. There’s no law mandating it and they oftentimes are not.
- Factory farms are terrible and pretty much all of our meat comes from them. Organic and free-range mean nothing.
Environment
- Meat production is the second or third largest contributor to environmental problems, locally and globally.
- If you gave up one chicken meal a week, it would be the same as taking a half million cars off the road.
- One pound of beef takes the same amount of water to produce as six months of showers.
Money
- The European Union spends $150 million a year to not import our crappy food.
- Breast Cancer Awareness Month is funded by the pharmaceutical company that provides breast cancer drugs. Their slogan, Detection is the best prevention, is ironic, because to detect means that you failed to prevent.
