Book is tainted with neo-feminist Marxist dribble with a lot of environmental hand wringing thrown in for good measure. At least Keith recognizes that vegetarianism isn't going to save the world but what she doesn't recognize is that the world doesn't need saved. Only someone who has arrogated their ego to the Savior Complex would believe that. Also, ever notice how people with dogmatic opinions about how food should be produced live in big cities and know little about agronomy? Keith is no exception. ( )

The author outlines the ridiculousness of the Vegan and Vegetarian mythos and digs into political, social, moral, nutritional, and most importantly, the sustainable aspects of eating... and ultimately our footprint, as a species, on planet Earth.

For this reader there was no huge revelations, since I'm well versed in the realities of agriculture and food at this point, and spend a great deal of time immersed in the natural and agricultural world, but the author nicely packages a fairly comprehensive discussion of the topic into this volume. There is a disturbing element to having all this laid out in one volume though: As you read it, it really underscores the pervasiveness of a community of folks that live their lives entirely divorced from the realities of the natural world and the cycles of life, death, and rebirth. I don't want to sound overly harsh, but it is a bit unavoidable. These are folks that look at nature from inside a bubble... through a pane of glass. Never really understanding it. Some is their fault, but it is a societal disorder, long in coming considering urbanization and how housebound most people in the 1st world are today.

The other disturbing element to the story as outlined by the author, is that though we know what we need to do to address the deeper ecological realities of massive over-population on this planet I personally am not confident that we'll take the necessary steps, and I don't think the author is either.

And that is where the biggest surprise of the book was found. The author was not afraid to summarize the corrective course of action that we would have to take as humans to make things better. Finally someone is bold enough, in a relatively mainstream book, to state that in order to ever have a sustainable, ecological, and ethical food system (or any system)... over-population really needs to be addressed. Severely. It will solve itself eventually, but it can either be messy and violent, or orderly and peaceful. Not many authors writing a mainstream book are bold enough to state it so plainly.

4 stars: There are three issues I had with the book: (1) The author slips into "appeal to emotion" a bit much, (2) It's hard to weed out the good science from the bad or mediocre, and (3) There is no index... which means you have to take notes, write in the margins, and highlight, or just have a really good memory. ;) Geez. Books like this *have* to have an index. I blame her editors. What a disappointment.

Great book. Folks, if you are confused as to why the vegan/vegetarian lifestyle is unsustainable, unnatural, relatively unhealthy, un-ecological, and ultimately more than a bit silly (but with non-silly implications)... this is a great book to to read. Even more importantly, it is a great discussion about environmentalism, food security, and agricultural sustainability, and of course, overpopulation -- topics that I am particularly passionate about, even more so than the main topic of the book.

Recommend. ( )

I'm a vegetarian. I'll get that out of the way. I really liked this book at first, because it was challenging my concept of environmental vegetarianism. Lierre talks about annual mono-crop agriculture, and how it's very very unsustainable. Cool. Did not know that. Because of Lierre, I've learned about perennial polyculture and permaculture farming. Awesome. I don't disagree with Lierre's ideas about how you could feasibly have a permaculture farm with animals, and it be humane to those animals to later on eat them. I'm ok with that.
That being said, the rest of this book is filled with misconceptions, mistakes, half-truths, and straight out bat-shit nonsense...that I found it very difficult to read.
http://vegetarianmythmyth.wordpress.com/
http://vegetarianmythmyth.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/hi/
http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/09/review-of-the-vegetarian-myth.html ( )

This is NOT an anti-vegetarian book.
This is NOT a pro-human carnivore book.
My understanding of the book's message: humans need to relearn how to live local or the consequences are dire. And no, Local doesn't mean driving an hour from home.

Good book, could have used a better editor perhaps..
..though, if you take into consideration what her stated objective was for writing the book in the first place, she doesn't need an editor for her book, we readers do.

I think it could be helpful to, before reading too far into the book, what you the reader are hoping to get out of the experience. People I've encountered don't tend to respond well to having their beliefs (and by extension, identity) "challenged" and this book seems to have something to offend everyone.

If you're a vegan, you'll probably hate the book. You probably won't even finish the book, and if you do finish and you're still vegan then you weren't actually learning.

If you're an omnivore who considers yourself something of an environmentalist, but goes to -insert-grocery-store-chain-name-here- and buys meat products after reading the book, then you weren't actually learning.

If you're vegetarian, the Why of your choice to be vegetarian will probably influence your take on the book content.

If you're anti-1970s style feminist, you'll probably balk at the author more than her book's message.

If you love when authors cite their sources so you the reader can double check the presented info for yourself -regardless of whether you agree with the perspectives or not- you should read this book. ( )

The author brought up some interesting points and I even believe her about the devastation that agriculture has wrought on our ecosystem. But I think she is being too idealistic in thinking we can change the landscape enough to reverse the damage of the last 10 thousand years (at least enough to support a population of 7 billion and growing).

I suppose I have a pessimistic outlook but I would prefer to stay closer to realism than idealism. We need to understand that even if we cleaned up all the messes we've created industrially, agriculturally, etc., there are emerging 3rd world countries with billions of people who are poised to strike the death blow to Earth as we know it. It's bleak but a very real danger.

Understanding that this book was aimed more at vegan and vegetarian democrats than meat-eating libertarians like me, I still enjoyed the very informative presentation. I had no idea that a vegetarian diet was so damaging to our bodies (or to the soil, for that matter). I respect what the author was trying to do and to the extent that we can do it, I'm on board. I will make a greater effort to consume more local food than previously and I'm glad I read this book. ( )

I find it hard to write a review that does this book justice. It is potentially very important, but there are some serious flaws too.

This book really makes two points. The first one is that vegetarianism does not really solve anything. It does not stop us from killing other creatures, it does not stop world hunger, and it is not healthy. The second point is that the real problem stays unadressed this way, and the real problem is that agriculture and industrialization, helped by fossil fuels, have allowed us to put more people on this planet than it can handle in the long term. We need to do something about overpopulation, we need to stop using fossil fuel, we need to do it as fast as we can, and thinking we can do something about it by having another soy burger is fooling ourselves.

I think those are important points, and I think they are valid as well. She does seem to have her facts straight - either I already knew them, or they made sense. Sometimes they even made sense of facts that had been puzzling me for a while, such as why people with low cholesterol have a higher chance of dying of violence.

I think she is very brave to write this book as well. These are things that people do not want to hear and that do need to be said.

Now for the flaws. As well-researched as the facts are, the argumentation is not as solid. She first spends some time explaining to us that just because cholesterol is often found in plaques, this doesn't mean that it has caused them, and then she tells us that polyunsaturated fats may be dangerous because they are often found in plaques. On a related plane, she does not always seem to have her action priorities straight. After telling us we really need to do something about overpopulation, she gets all worked up about the possible side effects of soy infant formula.

I also think the tone is very "tree-hugging". I don't mind hugging some trees on occasion, but it gets too much.

I would have liked an index too, it is pretty impossible to find things in this book.

And one last thing that is not a fault of the book, but still might be a reason not to read it. I found this book seriously depressing. It paints a very dark picture of where this world is going, and it does not give much hope that we can change it before it is too late. I do think it's brave that she shows so much problems without a ready-made solution, but uplifting it's not.

Still, altogether, I do recommend this book. If you can stand it. ( )

Regardless of the content, this book is simply unreadable. Surely it cannot be the book on this subject? One extra star plus a review to make it clear that I didn't give it a low rating just because I am vegan/vegetarian (I eat meat). ( )

First: minus 1 star for an occasionally snarky tone and a poor sense of humor. If you lack the ability to relate to your audience in a basic way, it doesn't matter how good your arguments are.

Now, as for content, Keith basically tears apart the environmental and political arguments for vegetarianism. She concludes with a very convincing chapter on nutrition that has me ready to buy a cow (or any grass-fed animal) and eat it--now.

Keith is arguing against agricultural subsistence based on annual grains and for a polyculture based on animal products and ultimately grass. The former has destroyed human health and ecosystems for 10,000 years; the latter has sustained human life and ecosystems for four million years (her number).

While it doesn't flow as seamlessly or have the flashy presentation of Michael Pollan's work, it is just as thought provoking, and it has what I feel [b:The Omnivore's Dilemma|3109|The Omnivore's Dilemma A Natural History of Four Meals|Michael Pollan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1192945129s/3109.jpg|3287769] lacks: explicit politics. Altogether well done. ( )

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. ( )

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.



( )

God damn it. I really did not want this book to be true. I hated it when it came out, I cheered when vegan anarchists in my hometown of San Francisco threw a pepper-laced pie in Keith's face. Such an angry vegan was I. I wrote a whole book about factory farms and I have a vegan tattoo.

And I can't do it anymore.

Depression? Check. Anger? Check. Exhaustion? Check. Mild eating disorder? Check. Apparently these are not symptoms of living in 21st century America, but rather, of not eating meat. And I believe it. I've been "vegan" since I was about 17 and there hasn't been a solid year in the last decade that I haven't eaten meat and dairy at some point. If I can't stick to it, maybe it's because we aren't meant to.

The idea that my suicidal thoughts are just a dietary deficiency is revolutionary to me. Is that the case for everyone? No, and she makes that quite clear in the book. But my story sounded far too much like hers: a girl in her twenties with no health problems can't even walk up a flight of stairs or make it through a day of work. And then I eat meat, and I feel better. And hate myself for it.

I think her most powerful points are about grain production and oil. I don't own a car and I try to bike everywhere. I sold my car right around the time of the BP oil spill and never looked back. But veganism isn't the answer to our environmental problems - it is, in fact, part of the problem. This is something we as vegans put our fingers in our ears and went "la la la la la" to whenever someone tried to bring it up.

Is this the greatest book ever? No. Her writing is at times awkward, and she could have cited more nonpartisan sources, but at the end of it, her theories are sound and the evidence is overwhelming. It explains too much of why I have suffered for so long.

You should read this book if you've ever 1) been vegetarian or vegan 2) care about the environment 3) care about animals 4) want to understand humanity's place in the "food system" or 5) live in a big city or urban area and have no access to your own food. It's not perfect but it is radical and revolutionary in a culture that's increasingly losing touch with reality and coming up with dumber and simpler ways to "save" the planet.

Review here: http://lady-of-letters.blogspot.com

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. ( )

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. ( )

This was a frustrating book for me. I sympathize with Keith's critique of the factory farm system and defense of humanely pasture-raised animals as a sustainable food source. However, she goes overboard in her attacks on veganism and vegetarianism. She attributes her health problems to over a decade on a low-fat vegan diet, and she may be right. But that does not mean that all vegetarians or even all vegans eat such a diet lacking in basic nutrition. It also is possible for vegetarians and vegans to eat largely (or even entirely) from local sustainable sources rather than rely on big agribusiness for veggie burgers and other processed foods. Most of all, her aggressive tone of superiority will turn people away from her arguments more than will it win her converts. ( )

To say that I hated this book would be incorrect. It's not that there's much in this book to hate, it's too vacillating, confusing, and utterly contradictory for that. Simply put, this book is under-researched and laden with unsupported statements, speculations and anecdotes. The only thing to hate about this book is that people will read it, trusting Keith to have given them good, true, useful information, and go on to make bad dietary choices.

The first problem with this book is that it almost never attacks veganism. It does attack many things: agriculture, big corporations, industrialization, environmental destruction, factory farms, and low fat diets (to name just a few). I think you'd be hard pressed to find any veg*ns who don't also believe that most, if not all, of the above mentioned have terrible ramifications and should be prevented. While not all US veg*ns are committed to ending the destruction of our planet, I think that many become enlightened as to the problems with many of the systems of our US culture and become committed to ending them.

So really, this book could have been called "The Agriculture Myth," but that wouldn't have generated as much shock value or sold as many books.

Keith does a makes a lot of radical statements, and then goes on to list many unrelated (and mostly un-referenced) "facts" that don't substantiate that claim, implying that the "facts" directly support her radical statements. For example, she states that veg*ns eat grains, grains are made out of carbohydrates which are turned into glucose and lead to diabetes. This implies that all veg*ns are at high risk of developing diabetes. Is there any peer-reviewed study referenced that makes this statement directly? Of course not. She leaves it to you to jump the gaps between her unsupported statements to make your own conclusions.

Keith also likes to take facts to their logical extremes. Eating plants destroys microorganisms and insects, therefore veg*nism is a product of death. So you may as well eat meat. Annual grains destroy soil and lead to monocrops of annual plants. Hence anybody who eats grains is directly causing the destruction of topsoil. Humans can't eat cellulose, and cows can, therefore humans should eat cows and not plants. I would say that this is a faulty philosophical system at best. It's also a great way to build up big straw-person arguments to support a point.

The "Nutritional" chapter of this book was really the worst of it, and here's why. According to Keith - who assumes that the plural of anecdote is data - here are approximately some of the problems I, a vegan, should be suffering from:

memory loss, depression, anorexia, diabetes, vitamin defficiency, "holes in [my] brain", exhaustion, breast cancer, Alzheimer's, bad teeth, digestive inflammation, rage, bone and joint problems, menstrual problems, fibroids, cysts, giving birth to babies with birth defects, thyroid problems, coldness, dry skin, early death and suicide

Whew. Unfortunately for her thesis (and fortunately for me), I do not and have not suffered from any of the above ailments. I'm sorry that Keith suffers from terrible health issues, but to assume that everybody has the same life experiences as her is incorrect. To assume that her health issues were directly related to veganism is also probably incorrect, but not being a doctor or nutritionist, I'm not qualified to make that claim. (Nor is she.)

Keith also drags out a lot of those tired, old, debunked stereotypes about veg*ns. You've heard them. We don't eat any fat or protein. We're sick all the time. Male veg*ns grow boobs because they eat too much soy. Really?

At one point Keith rails against conflating correlation and causation, on approximately page 164. I agree. I'm a scientist and a natural skeptic, and I know a thing or two about statistics. Rewind to page 151: "[E]pidemiologists do know that multiple sclerosis... is most prevalent in cultures where wheat and rye are staple foods." Did you catch the correlation being confused for causation in that statement? It's not blatant, but subtle and implied. Fast forward to page 172: "The past fifteen years have seen a reduction in fat consumption of almost 25 percent... Did you get healthier? Or did you notice that the incidence of diseases commonly blamed on animal products has gone from high to epidemic?" Maybe Keith just doesn't realize that those correlated facts aren't necessarily directly related, but she goes through such great pains to tell us how smart and enlightened she is that I'm sure she realizes it.

There are some truly baffling statements in this book. "Anorexics have holes in their brains; so do eaters of soy." Needless to say, that statement wasn't followed up by a reference. Also, "remember the many happy endings provided by another estrogen mimic [she is referring to soy isoflavones], diethylstilbestrol, aka DES." Soy products aren't synthetic estrogens, so why compare them like this?

Keith also imparts on veg*ns the mindset of the naive, the hopelessly child-like and the ignorant. Such a patronizing attitude is insulting and hostile. I don't know what Keith hopes to gain from making such an attack, and it is clearly not backed up by any peer reviewed scientific research, but Keith's own prejudices.

This book is just plain bad. There is no general thesis, no cohesion, just a long, rant-filled look at how terrible veg*nism (but more likely, Big Ag) is. If you were to take the points in this book to their logical conclusion, you would have to eat a diet composed entirely of raw meat that you hunted yourself from indigenous animals that forage on polycultures of perennials. Good luck with that. ( )

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. ( )

A sermon on how we will all be better off when we return to our noble-savage roots and live as hunter-gatherers. As is often the case with passionate screeds, Keith discusses many interesting ideas & theories.

"I didn't call this book THE VEGETARIAN LIE. I called it THE VEGETARIAN MYTH for a reason. It's not a lie that animals are sentient beings currently being tortured for our food. It's not a lie that the rich nations are siphoning off the life of the planet for literally oceans full of endless, empty plastic junk. It's not a lie that most people refuse to face the systems of domination - their brute scale - that are destroying us and the earth.
"But the vegetarians' solution is a myth based on ignorance, and ignorance as encompassing as any of those dominating systems. Civilization, the life of cities, has broken our identification with the living land and broken the land itself. 'The plow is the ... world's most feared wrecking ball,' writes Steven Stoll. For ten thousand years, the six centers of civilization have waged war against our only home, waged it mostly with axes and plows. Those are weapons, not tools. Never mind reparations or repair: no peace is possible until we lay them down." pg. 246

"No one told me. No one told me that life is only possible through death, that our bodies are a gift from the world, and that our final gift is to feed each other. No one told me that soil was the beginning place, made of a million tiny creatures who turned this bare rock into a cradle." pg. 236

"The further humans move (or are moved, often by force) from hunters to horticulturalists to agriculturalists to urbanists to industrialists, the further the sacred receded, first to heaven, then condensed to monotheism, until finally it dies in irony." pg. 72

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... ( )