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    The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
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    The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
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    The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
    Ebook422 pages7 hours

    The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability

    By Lierre Keith

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Part memoir, nutritional primer, and political manifesto, this controversial examination exposes the destructive history of agriculture—causing the devastation ofprairies and forests, driving countless species extinct, altering the climate, and destroying the topsoil—and asserts that, in order to save the planet, food must come from within living communities. In order for this to happen, the argument champions eating locally and sustainably and encourages those with the resources to grow their own food. Further examining the question of what to eat from the perspective of both human and environmental health, the account goes beyond health choices and discusses potential moral issues from eating—or not eating—animals. Through the deeply personal narrative of someone who practiced veganism for 20 years, this unique exploration also discusses alternatives to industrial farming, reveals the risks of a vegan diet, and explains why animals belong on ecologically sound farms.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPM Press
    Release dateMay 1, 2009
    ISBN9781604861822
    Author

    Lierre Keith

    Lierre Keith is a writer, small farmer, and radical feminist activist. She is the author of six books including, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, which has been called “the most important ecological book of this generation.” She is also coauthor, with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. She’s been arrested six times for acts of political resistance. She lives in northern California where she shares 20 acres with giant trees and giant dogs. (www.lierrekeith.com)

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    Reviews for The Vegetarian Myth

    3.5/5

    31 ratings7 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Just sad drivel. Not worth a plug nickel or one thin dime.
    • 4/5
      This was one of the more controversial books we carried this year. A quick look at the online reviews will tell you the same thing - people are worked up about this thing. Lierre Keith is a brave, brave woman. I wouldn't want to pick a fight with every vegan in the world at the same time.

      What I think has been lost in the furor is that her point - the heart of her point, at any rate - is very simple, and very hard to argue with. We take turns eating and being eaten - we consume today, but will be consumed in our turn. If you stop to think about this simple fact, and how it weaves all of us on earth together into an unending cycle of renewal and need, it can give you shivers. It's holy. And it's an idea that encourages us to be more reverent towards all of our food - not just the food with faces, but all of it, the seeds and fruit and leaves, and even the soil itself, richly and deeply alive.

      To be reverent and respectful is to think about where your food comes from. It's not enough to give up animal products and think you're doing the world any favors. Monocrops and industrial agriculture, reliant as they are on huge amounts of water, fossil fuel, and chemicals, are not sustainable. And they're slaughtering animal and insect life all around them, so that even your vegetarian meal carries a heavy toll. And who is growing and processing your food, and how? How much fossil fuel is used to get it to your plate? It's at the very least a gross mistake for vegans to feel that their dietary choices have exempted them from considering these things. At worst it's a self-serving lie.

      Honestly, I don't care if people are vegan or not. I have known healthy vegans and seriously emaciated unhealthy vegans, who really just needed to eat a steak or something. Keith's nutritional arguments in favor of meat eating are well constructed and meticulously footnoted, but I think it's a little beside the point. Which is hard to argue with: we are not, as a people, healthy, and we are quickly fucking up the earth.

      There are some flaws in the book. People have taken issue with her flowery, personally revealing narrative, but I thought it was lovely and compassionate. She could have drawn from a wider range of books for her research, but that's a minor quibble. A larger point of issue is her attack on agriculture. It seems clear that the advent of large scale single crop agriculture brought with it a decline in ecological and human health. But the hunter gathering model, which she favors, isn't an entirely unagricultural enterprise. Many such societies managed certain resources - plants, berries, shellfish - for maximum yields, or controlled the environment in other ways, like by burning. If this is the model to strive for - semi-wild, with a diversity of plant and animal life mixed in (including meat and dairy animals) - then what we're looking at is starting to sound a lot like permaculture. Right? Maybe I'm just being too picky about terminology.

      Anyway, there is a great deal to chew on in this book. I can see it stimulating some great discussions, and helping spur people to action. It's unfortunate that the online discussions I've seen have sort of devolved into mudslinging, though given the deep philosophical feelings of the vegan community, it's not surprising.



      3 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Was recommended this book by a collegue who swears by LCHF.

      I'm a meateater so it didn't really change anything for me, and the book might have some points, but my problem was that most if not all the facts presented were anecdotal or had no source.
      Tho that might be a problem with expectation I had of it being a factual book and not more like a biography.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I really did want to like this book and it seemed to start off on the right foot. However, the more I read the more I realized that the "evidence" (frequently anecdotes) presented was often flimsy at best. Worse, there are many instances where items stated as fact (i.e. humans have no bacteria in the stomach) are patently false.While I do certainly believe that a paleo-style diet is a good choice for humans, other authors like Mark Sisson and Gary Taubes do a much better job of analyzing primary literature and leading the reader through scientific studies. My final impression of this book is that Keith has simply traded one extremist view for another.
    • 5/5
      I have my issues with The Vegetarian Myth, one of the first being the title, which I find more polemic than the text itself. But on the whole she provides a great deal of solid information showing how vegetarian and particularly vegan diets are both ecologically destructive and personally unhealthy, how addiction to grains has influenced much of our human history, how eating meat and animal products can be a moral and responsible choice, and why we need to focus our fight against factory farms and large agribusinesses instead. She backs her points up with scientific citations as well as her own powerful experiences.
    • 5/5
      Feed your mind... Get background on American [your] food issues...This book is only at "Mother Earth News" as far as I can determine...This "LibraryThing" program couldn't find it anywhere...
    • 4/5
      I don't know whether or not a diet high in animal fat is bad for you or good for you at this point. I do, however know that carbs make me feel aweful. Even the whole grain ones. The book is well written and researched. I worry a bit about the facts being a bit skewed, but I also worry about the vegetarian side doing the same. Also, her solution to save the Earth and ourselves is to end agriculture which is never going to happen. Unrealistic solutions really are not solutions at all.