from nature. Diet for a New America is a statement of our interexistence with all forms of life and provides a means to experience the profound healing powers of our interconnectedness. You’ll learn how to care for your health and to improve the quality of your life. You’ll see that the very eating habits that can do so much to give you strength and health are exactly the same ones that can significantly reduce the needless suffering in the world and do much to preserve our ecosystem. And you’ll discover the profound liberation that comes from bringing your eating habits into harmony with life’s deepest ecological basis. You will become increasingly sensitive and increasingly able to live and act as an agent of world spiritual awakening.
Few of us are aware that the act of eating can be a powerful statement of commitment to our own well-being and at the very same time to the creation of a healthier habitat. In Diet for a New America you will learn how your spoon and fork can be tools with which to enjoy life to the fullest, while making it possible that life itself might continue. In fact, you will discover that your health, your happiness, and the future of life on earth are rarely so much in your own hands as when you sit down to eat.
When I declined to be a top cog in the Great American Food Machine and turned down the opportunity to live the American Dream, it was because I knew there was a deeper dream. I did it because I knew that with all the reasons that each of us has to despair and become cynical, there still beats in our common heart our deepest prayer for a better life and a more loving world. The book you hold in your hands is a key that will enable you to be an instrument of this prayer.
—John Robbins
Summer 1987
The lives of the animals raised for food in the United States today stand in glaring contradiction to our hopes for a better way of life. In order to understand the full significance of what is being done to these animals, it will be helpful to understand what kind of creatures animals really are. This, then, is where our story begins—with a look at the nature of the creatures we call animals, and at our attitudes toward them. The astounding truth may surprise you as much as it has surprised me…
1. ALL GOD’S CRITTERS HAVE A PLACE IN THE CHOIR
I care not much for a man’s religionwhose dog or cat are not the better for it.
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
You will not find very many monuments to dogs in this world. But in Edinburgh, Scotland, in a public area known as Greyfriar Square, there stands a statue, erected by the local citizens, in honor of a little terrier named Bobby.
Why did the townspeople erect this statue? Because this little dog taught them a lesson in the years he lived with them—a most important lesson. Bobby the Scottish terrier had no owner. And as often happens to small-town dogs with no master, he was kicked around by just about everybody and had to scrounge through garbage to get anything to eat. Not what you would call an ideal life, even for a dog.
But it happened that there was in the village a dying old man named Jock. In his last days, the old man noticed the plight of the sorry little dog. There wasn’t much he could do, but he did buy the little fellow a meal one evening at the local restaurant. Nothing fancy, just some scraps. But it would be hard for anyone to overestimate the extent of little Bobby’s gratitude.
Shortly thereafter, Jock died. When the mourners carried his body to the grave, the terrier followed them. The gravediggers ordered him away, and when he refused to leave they kicked him and threw rocks at him. But still the dog stood his ground and would not leave, no matter what they did. From then on, for no less than 14 years, little Bobby honored the memory of the man who had been kind to him. Day and night, through harsh winter storms and hot summer days, he stood by the grave. The only time he ever left the gravesite was for a brief trip each afternoon back to the restaurant in which he had met Jock, in hopes of scavenging something to eat. Whatever he got he would solemnly carry back to the grave and eat there. The first winter Bobby had almost no shelter, huddling underneath tombstones when the snow was deep. By the next winter, the townspeople were so touched by his brave and lonely vigil that they erected a small shelter for him. And 14 years later, when little Bobby died, they buried him where he lay—alongside the man whose last gesture of kindness he had honored with such devotion.1
The Most Selfless Animal in the World
If the little Scottish terrier whose monument still stands in Edinburgh is not the most selfless animal who ever lived, a dolphin named Pelorus Jack might well be. For many years, this dolphin guided ships through French Pass, a channel through the D’Urville Islands off New Zealand. This dangerous channel is so full of rocks, and has such extremely strong currents, that it has been the site of literally hundreds of shipwrecks. But none occurred when Pelorus Jack was at work. There is no telling how many lives he saved.
He was first seen by human beings when he appeared in front of a schooner from Boston named Brindle, just as the ship was approaching French Pass. When the members of the crew saw the dolphin bobbing up and down in front of the ship, they wanted to kill him—but, fortunately, the captain’s wife was able to talk them out of it. To their amazement, the dolphin then proceeded to guide the ship through the narrow channel. And for years thereafter, he safely guided almost every ship that came by. So regular and reliable was the dolphin that when ships reached the entrance to French Pass they would look for him, and if he was not visible, they would wait for him to appear to guide them safely through the treacherous rocks and currents.
On one sad occasion, a drunken passenger aboard a ship named the Penguin took out a gun and shot at Pelorus Jack. The crew was furious, and when they saw Jack swim away with blood pouring from his body they came very close to lynching the passenger. The Penguin had to negotiate the channel without Pelorus Jack’s help, as did the other ships that came through in the next few weeks. But one day the dolphin reappeared, apparently recovered from his wound. He had evidently forgiven the human species, because he once again proceeded to guide ship after ship through the channel. When the Penguin showed up again, however, the dolphin immediately disappeared.
For a number of years thereafter, Pelorus Jack continued to escort ships through French Pass—but never the Penguin, and the crew of that ship never saw the dolphin again. Ironically, the Penguin was later wrecked, and a large number of passengers and crew were drowned, as it sailed—unguided—through French Pass.2
Who Is the Animal?
A San Francisco science fair recently awarded a prize to a junior high school student whose science project consisted of cutting the head off a live frog with a pair of scissors, to find out whether frogs swim better with or without their brains.
Of course, this is not the only case of frogs being treated cruelly in our schools. They are often dissected by children ostensibly learning “how life works.” But what did this youngster learn through his experiment? I think he learned that it is all right to treat other living things as if they have no feelings, as if they are nothing but machines. I think he learned disrespect for life. And I wouldn’t call that a good thing.
The science fair judges, however, obviously disagree with me, for they commended the boy on his contributions to the forward march of science, predicted great things for his future, and rewarded him for scientifically proving that: “Frogs will not swim with brain missing unless harassed. A frog swims better with head on.”3
The attitude we develop toward animals when we are children tends to stay with us through the rest of our lives. And it continues to