Need Motivation to Eat Less Meat and More Plants? Part 1 of 12

I’m going to bombard you with a bunch of statistics and expert quotes about a plant-based diet versus an animal-protein diet, for 12 days. These gems are gleaned from one of my favorite sources, John Robbins’ The Food Revolution. He quotes 60+ sources in every chapter. Where Campbell’s The China Study is the “grand prix” of nutrition and epidemiology, Robbins is the “slam dunk” aggregation of all the studies showing a plant-based diet to be superior. I’m not going to kill space listing all the sources in this blog series, but you can find them in Robbins’ book, which is a deeply compassionate “voice” for both people and animals.

I’m not going to comment after each series of statistics, because they speak for themselves best. I believe you will, however, find the data astonishing in aggregate. I will ask a provocative question at the end of some of the blogs. I hope you comment on them.

First, I think it’s fun to mention that John Robbins is the only male heir to the co-founder of Baskin Robbins. He grew up with an ice cream cone-shaped swimming pool, cats named after the 31 flavors, and often ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. He said no thanks to that legacy when he became convinced that his future career would be to line his own pockets making people sick. For many years, he and his wife lived on less than $1,000/year, very happily, in a cabin in the woods. I think John Robbins is a great American hero, and his outstanding books Diet for A New America, and The Food Revolution are worth owning and reading.

If you’re looking for motivation to give up dairy and meat–maybe even completely–reading this blog every day for the next 12 days should be an eye opener, if not a mind blower, towards that end!

Tomorrow, we start with stats about whether dairy products contribute to your health. The series will continue with important data about how meat eating affects health, how much protein we really need, where the main sources of foodborne illness come from, how animals raised for food are treated in America, and how vegetarians’ health compares to meat eaters’. We’ll also cover info about how much education Americans understand about nutrition, how eating high on the food chain affects world hunger, and how eating high on the food chain affects the environment.

Posted in: 12 Steps To Whole Food, Lifestyle, Tools & Products, Whole Food