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The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability (Flashpoint Press) Paperback – Illustrated, May 1, 2009

by Lierre Keith (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 862 ratings
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Part memoir, nutritional primer, and political manifesto, this controversial examination exposes the destructive history of agriculture—causing the devastation of prairies 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.
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Previous page
  1. Part of series
    Flashpoint Press
  2. Print length
    320 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    PM Press
  5. Publication date
    May 1, 2009
  6. Dimensions
    6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1604860804
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1604860801
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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"Everyone who eats should read this book. Everyone who eats vegetarian should memorize it . . . This is the single most important book I’ve ever read on diet, agriculture, and ecology." —Aric McBay, author, What We Leave Behind

"This book saved my life . . . [It] offers us a way back into our bodies, and back into the fight to save the planet." —Derrick Jensen, author, Endgame

"[Vegetarian Myth] is one of the most important books people, masses of them, can read, as we try with all our might, intelligence, skill, hope, dream , and memory, to turn the disastrous course the planet is on." —Alice Walker, prize-winning author, The Color Purple



"We may not want to face the facts, but Keith sees this as no excuse to stay in denial. If delivered as a speech, you could see that no one in the audience would be [seated] at the end. I have never seen such rousing prose." —www.ZoeHarcombe.com (August 7, 2011)

"In The Vegetarian Myth ex-vegan Lierre Keith argues that saving the planet and ending the suffering found in factory farms can not be achieved by refusing to eat animals, it can only be achieved by boycotting modern agricultural practices, which Keith calls 'the most destructive thing that people have done to the planet.'" —www.mercola.com

"The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith has taken a drubbing by some vegans and vegetarians but I think it is a brilliant book about the reality of eating on this planet . . . . A very worthwhile immersion." —Alice Walker, alicewalkersgarden.com

About the Author

Lierre Keith is a writer, a farmer, and a feminist activist. She is the author of the novels Conditions of War and Skyler Gabriel. She splits her time between Northampton, Massachusetts and Humboldt, California.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ PM Press; Illustrated edition (May 1, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1604860804
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1604860801
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 862 ratings

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Lierre Keith

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
862 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Lydia
5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating, eye-opening book about agriculture
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2012
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Two years ago I was invited to a Raw Vegan Thanksgiving. I attended. There was a rainbow of beautifully prepared raw vegan masterpieces. Surely, this must be the healthiest Thanksgiving meal on record! Everyone raved about how DELICIOUS everything was. I secretly did not think it was "delicious," or really "filling" no matter how much I ate, or "satisfying" at all... but hey, it's ultra healthy, right? And all these other people are loving it, right?

I spent the next 24 hours with the worst indigestion of my life. And my sister, who also attended, promptly went into labor. (She was full term anyway. Could be a total coincidence. Although we do joke that the baby came out so he could get some milk.) I swore that was the last raw vegan meal I'd ever eat, EVEN IF IT WAS THE HEALTHIEST THING EVER. Now I've read Lierre Keith's tour de force book The Vegetarian Myth, and I understand for the first time why the "vegan is best" conventional wisdom is a well-constructed myth.

I wish that the author had named this book its subtitle: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. That's really what it is about. She does thoroughly dismantle the moral, political, and nutritional cases for veganism. However, as has been pointed out, this unfortunately makes it seem like the "bad guys" here are the vegans. This is obviously not the case! Her real argument is about agriculture. Rather than seeing veganism as the answer (as so many thoughtful and caring people do), she points out that only an end to modern agriculture as we know it can really save the environment and humankind.

For many years I thought that vegans were the ones championing the true best diet, the healthiest possible lifestyle for people and for the planet. Now I know better. Now I'm not surprised one bit when I hear that a vegan child has cancer, or that a vegan athlete dropped dead during a run on the beach. I no longer feel guilty for all those years when I thought I was deficient in some way because vegan food left me cold. And although I still feel as passionate as ever about ending CAFOs and animal cruelty, I now understand that eating a local grassfed beef patty is a thousand times healthier for myself and the planet, AND MORE ETHICAL, than a tofurky and a bowl of noodles. This book just blew my mind again and again. Such a good read! Well worth ordering the paperback so you can lend it out, but also a great download for Kindle.
28 people found this helpful
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M. JEFFREY MCMAHON
5.0 out of 5 stars The Vegetarian Myth Challenges Simple Conclusions About the Vegetarian-Carnivore Debate
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2009
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The author of The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith was a vegan for twenty years and developed in very short time a host of physical and mental ailments: degenerative disc disease, hypoglycemia, depression, to name a few. She now eats meat, but not farm-factory meat because of the horrors and cruelty that makes vegetarians abstain from meat. However, Lierre Keith does now eat organic sustainable animal protein.

Of course, for every vegan who has similar problems, there are those who say meat-eating was their curse and veganism was their "salvation."
So much for advocating any one-size-fits-all diet.

Back to the book: It challenges a lot of easy conclusions about the vegetarian debate. Here are two that really intrigue me:

1. Agriculture and the infrastructure that sustains it, such as dams, kill more wildlife than a carnivore does eating meat.
2. Fertilizers and other nutrients used for crops contain animal products, so vegetarians are usually eating their vegetables that grow from animals.

From these two points, we can see that the complex interaction that goes on in the ecosystem makes it difficult to make simple conclusions about any kind of diet. Even more fascinating, terms like "vegetarian" and "omnivore" and "carnivore" aren't as clear cut as some of us would like to believe.

Update After Rereading the Book, a Revised Opinion Lowering It to 2 Stars

I re-read Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth since a few years ago or so and I have a lower opinion of it now. Here's my revised opinion:

While Lierre Keith in The Vegetarian Myth is correct that many aspects of veganism can be unhealthy and harmful to the environment, her overall thesis that vegetarianism is a "myth" and is inferior to a Paleo-style meat-eating diet is too mired in egregious flaws and logical fallacies to be a worthy "meat-eating manifesto."

Her first flaw is that she takes the very worst vegan habits and uses these misguided vegans as being representative of veganism as a whole.

Another flaw is the book's over simplification in which Keith promotes the Paleo diet as the greatest in achieving health benefits when in fact any diet, either meat-eating or vegetarian, makes people mindful of what they eat, generating less calorie consumption, less processed food consumption, and, inevitably, healthy results.

A related flaw is Keith's assumption that any diet can be a One Size Fits All Panacea that can be imposed on the entire human race. Some may flourish on a vegan diet; others may not and the same applies to the Paleo diet.

Yet another flaw that makes Keith's book unworthy of manifesto status is the laughable impracticality of her wanting to feed our overpopulated planet in the primitive way of hunters and gatherers. While organic, farm-raised meat might be good for the rich and privileged, it is not realistic to think we can distribute this kind of boutique-style, "all-organic" animal protein world-wide, rendering her half-baked Paleo "vision" naive, starry-eyed and utterly preposterous.
26 people found this helpful
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Quentin Bargate
5.0 out of 5 stars Written with passion, underpinned by hard facts
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 21, 2024
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A carefully argued and well researched deconstruction of veganism, written by a former vegan whose health was damaged by her vegan diet. Essential reading for anyone considering becoming a vegan. A very brave and necessary contribution to this controversial topic.
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Charlotte
5.0 out of 5 stars Moving, insightful and well researched
Reviewed in Germany on June 17, 2021
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Ich habe in manchen Kommentaren gelesen, dass Keith ihre Quellen aus Wikipedia zieht und somit kaum ernst zu nehmen ist. Das ist totaler Schwachsinn und diese Leute fühlen sich wohl in ihrem Glaubenssystem angegriffen. Das ist verständlich, da man in unserer Welt eingetrichtert bekommt, dass Fleisch böse ist und wir uns für dessen Konsum schuldig fühlen müssen... Diesen Glauben loszulassen braucht viel Überwindung. Ein Anfang wäre dieses Buch. Denn wer lebt schon gerne mit dem Wissen, dass man brainwashed ist. Keith bezieht sich auf etwa 200 Quellen an Literatur, der Bibliographie Abschnitt ist sehr lang und voll von angesehener professioneller Literatur, die unser einer wohl nicht mal annähernd verstehen würde. 5 dieser 200 Quellen sind Wikipedia. Natürlich ist das nicht die seriöseste Seite, doch völlig vertretbar um eine einfache Definition oder einen einfachen Zusammenhang zu zitieren.

Das Buch ist mit das beste Buch, das ich je gelesen habe. Auch wenn ich vorher schon tierisch basiert gegessen habe, hat es meinen Blickwinkel auf viele Sachen nochmal verändert. Man merkt, dass das Buch mit viel Herzblut geschrieben wurde und auf keinen Fall einen Mensch aufgrund seiner Ernährung angreifen möchte.

Wenn jeder Mensch dieses Buch gelesen hätte, würden wir in einer besseren Welt leben, da bin ich sicher!

The book has changed the way I think in so many ways. Nature is beautiful and society slowly loses its connection to it. Vegans are on the very wrong path and falsely believe to be so connected to mother nature and being on a spiritual level 'normal people' can't understand. Which is due to being high on sugar all the time, btw. I love how the book respectfully and profound describes every single aspect of all the things that are wrong with not eating meat. But Keith goes far beyond that. On most pages I totally forgot that the book is about vegetarianism, rather than nature, plants and animals.

I'd give more than 5 stars if I could.
6 people found this helpful
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Mary D
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read for everyone!
Reviewed in Canada on March 20, 2019
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The Vegetarian Myth is really a science book, not a novel or a thriller - and I could hardly put it down! This is a beautifully written and well- researched discussion of human eating practices through history. It manages to be interesting and entertaining and funny and personal, at the same time as being factual and scientific - no small feat! This is an important book that calls into question so much we thought we knew about agriculture, health, the environment. I recommend this for everyone, not just vegans or vegetarians. Omnivores will benefit their own health and that of the planet by this discussion of both plant and animal farming. This IS a personal book, so it does sometimes diverge into somewhat unrelated topics, but that is what keeps it real and interesting, besides being scientific and factual. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Read it and pass it on!
7 people found this helpful
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Daniel Odier
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good. book
Reviewed in France on August 15, 2020
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Great book!
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Drew Niemeyer
5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly detailed
Reviewed in Australia on January 17, 2020
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Lierre Keith writes the journey of her life into this book, from her values and ideals as a vegan until the time of writing. I found the book incredibly insightful and very thought provoking. Lierre still holds many of the values of life that she had as a vegan, and her journey recounts her struggle to align her early vegan ideals with the facts about how our world works - the climate, the animals, both small and large, sentient or not, and their behaviour, microbes and other life that we cannot see. Of greatest importance is life and death - the circle of life. How are our ideals about food affecting our world? What are we doing that is affecting the life of other animals on the planet? What is happening to their habitats? What is happening to our rivers, and plains? The way that we eat - what is the most sustainable way to nourish ourselves and help the planet to survive at the same time. I am far from being vegan and found this book to be very reassuring about my food choices, and has given me more food for thought about how to make the way I live much more sustainable.
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