The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World

Twenty chapters, with over nine-hundred footnotes, track the studies and statements of top researchers from around the world as they respond to the public relation claims of the meat and dairy industry. When we see the industry claims refuted, time and again by the best minds in the diet and environmental community, we start to see why there is a revolution going on.

I cannot count the number of times I have been asked to provide the study that supports the facts I use. The Food Revolution provides a convenient method of proving issues that the majority of Americans have never realized to be true. It is not what we know that is the problem; it is what we know that isn't so, that is the problem.

The Food Revolution will shine light on those "facts" that industry hopes you won't believe. Interesting facts such as: half of all the fish caught in the world are fed to livestock or that 2.5 acres of crop land can produce enough vegetables for twenty people, enough grain for fifteen people, enough chicken for two people or enough beef for one. These revelations really make you stop and think about how we are using our resources.

Dr. Patricia Griffin, a government official, from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention states, "It is reasonable that if a consumer undercooks a hamburger that their three-year-old dies?"

Placing the total responsibility on the shoulders of the consumers for food safety explains why USDA would accept test results indicating that 89% of hamburger tested containing E.coli 0157:H7 to be accepted as normal. This bacterium is known to kill young children.

If your main interest is the environment, The Food Revolution has something for you. For instance cattlemen claim that global warming evidence is inconclusive while at the same time forty -nine Nobel Prize winners, in a letter to the President, stated that it is the most serious environmental threat of the 21st century. We must educate ourselves and as the Prizewinners state, " Only by taking action now can we insure that future generations will not be put at risk."

John's first book, Diet for A New America, changed the way many folks were eating. The Food Revolution will give those who are still eating the standard American diet documented facts about their junk food addiction while there is time for a change.

John Robbins has written a book that can save more people from an early death than were saved by the use of penicillin. Do yourself a favor and read, The Food Revolution and pass it on to someone you love before it's too late.


Disturbing, provocative, and well worth your time!   July 8, 2001
15 out of 17 found this review helpful

I picked this book by chance browsing through several "healthy food titles". I got it and read it all within 3 days -- not something I usually do considering my outrageous schedule. But I could not stop reading it. It was at times difficult to read -- almost too incredible to be true, and being the researcher I am I even logged into several sites and cross-checked the facts in the book. I guess I could not possibly believe what information "an informed consumer" (or so I thought) like myself did not know.

At times I grabbed the nearest family member or co-worker to become victims of my reading aloud passages of the book -- "can you believe they did that or can you believe they don't tell us that?" always followed my little narrations.

This book has had an impact on my choices without a doubt and I truly hope that for my sake and everyone else's that it impacts many of our choices. Changes are necessary. Life isn't fair, but I would at least like to have the real facts as a consumer an fellow inhabitant of this planet.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to be or considers themselves "an informed consumer". Our choices are our only power -- they speak volumes about us individually and as a society.


A fascinating, immensely readable book   July 5, 2001
10 out of 12 found this review helpful

Within a week of its arrival, my copy of "The Food Revolution" was dogeared and coffee-stained. Such is the fate of a book kept at hand and read and re-read. I pick it up often, opening it to random pages, and find myself instantly absorbed in the powerful telling of how we can save ourselves and our planet by making saner choices at the supermarket.

As in his earlier bestseller, "Diet For a New America," the facts are meticulously researched and the conclusions are undeniable - the way we eat can either save or destroy our own lives and the world we live in.

But "The Food Revolution" is no dry, scolding compendium of facts. It's an immensely readable book that leaves the reader both sobered and inspired. Robbins empowers us to take control of our lives and our health and our environment. Heady stuff, indeed.


The best book I've ever read in my life (and I've read alot)   July 2, 2001
Martin Reed (Seattle, WA)
67 out of 70 found this review helpful

I read Robbins' Diet For A New America some years ago. Over the years since then, I've wondered what he would have to say about current issues such as genetic engineering, mad cow disease, and the many dietary approaches that have become popular in recent years (Sears, Atkins, D'Adamo, etc.). Well, The Food Revolution certainly answers such questions, and much much more. It really put a lot of things together for me, and without being for a second preachy or fanatical, both informed and inspired me. In my opinion, this is a truly life-giving book. I felt so whole in my heart and soul after I finished it. I believe that this book will be immensely helpful to anyone wanting to live a healthier life. There are a lot of things that make this book special. I can't get over how beautifully Robbins writes, and what a fine human being he is. There is so much human depth and understanding, as well as important information, on every page. His many stories about his life and learnings are marvelous. Reading The Food Revolution is a way of being in the presence of a wonderfully compassionate and loving person. Some people who know a lot transmit their knowledge, and somehow I feel burdened or cluttered by it. Robbins has a way of putting things in context so that he imparts important information in a way that makes you feel uplifted and strengthened. To say The Food Revolution is motivating would be a total understatement. It is incredibly compelling. Once I started reading it, I was completely enthralled. I've read many many books over the years (I'm in my sixties, and I read a lot), and I have enjoyed and benefitted from many of them. But I am delighted to say that The Food Revolution is the best book I've ever read in my entire life. I wish I could tell you how much value I have gotten from the experience that I had reading this book. I wish I had words to express it. Robbins is a national treasure, with extraordinary integrity, who walked away from the Baskin Robbins fortune. With The Food Revolution, he has given us a truly fabulous gift. If you want to do something good for your body, heart and soul, read The Food Revolution. And then share it with as many people as you can.


Important, timely, credible -- and fun to read too   June 30, 2001
Rich Ellis (Cary, NC USA)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful

A little too much love in the writing, which I wish wasn't so, because I think it'll lose Joe and Jane Sixpack (i.e. most of my friends) -- but LOTS of facts, an insane amount of research, and excellent writing to tie it all together.

A die-hard carnivore would need more than this book to be convinced that vegetarianism is a wise decision. One of John McDougall's or Dean Ornish's books perhaps. But it's still persuasive. The Food Revolution puts the argument for environmentally-motivated vegetarianism into scientific and common-sense contexts, something that sorely needs doing. The animal rights context just doesn't do much to persuade people who already know their hamburger comes from a cow, and still want to eat it. After this book they might better understand the implications of that decision.

As for biotechnology and genetically engineered agriculture, there's some scary stuff in here. This book will cast a permanent shadow of doubt over the mind of even the most dedicated biotech fan. You can't be hit with arguments as good as this without doing a double-take. I'm a computer guy so technology (admittedly a very different branch) is my bread and butter, but I know the first thing we techie types should be aware of is our own limitations, and I know how often we aren't. If you think Europeans are overreacting to genetic engineering, you need to read this book.