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The Great Plant-Based Con: Why eating a plants-only diet won't improve your health or save the planet Hardcover – 9 Jun. 2022
Jayne Buxton (Author) See search results for this author |
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Plant-based is best for health, go vegan to help save the planet, eat less meat... Almost every day we are bombarded with the seemingly incontrovertible message that we must reduce our consumption of meat and dairy - or eliminate them from our diets altogether.
But what if the pervasive message that the plant-based diet will improve our health and save the planet is misleading - or even false? What if removing animal foods from our diet is a serious threat to human health, and a red herring in the fight against climate change.
In THE GREAT PLANT-BASED CON, Jayne Buxton demonstrates that each of these 'what-ifs' is, in fact, a reality. Drawing on the work of numerous health experts and researchers, she uncovers how the separate efforts of a constellation of individuals, companies and organisations are leading us down a dietary road that will have severe repercussions for our health and wellbeing, and for the future of the planet.
THE GREAT PLANT-BASED CON is neither anti-plant nor anti-vegan - it is a call for us to take an honest look at the facts about human diets and their effect on the environment. Shocking and eye-opening, this book outlines everything you need to know to make more informed decisions about the food you choose to eat.
- Print length544 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPiatkus
- Publication date9 Jun. 2022
- Dimensions15.8 x 4.6 x 23.6 cm
- ISBN-101408717441
- ISBN-13978-1408717448
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THE GREAT PLANT-BASED CON is persuasive, entertaining and well researched ... the book will help to alleviate the guilt many of us feel about our diets -- Louise Eccles ― Sunday Times
[A] forensic examination of the evidence ... Buxton is brilliant at reminding us of some basic statistical truths, ones that are usually forgotten these days ... It's refreshing to read a book which recognises that life is complicated -- Mark Mason ― Daily Mail, Book of the Week
A calm, incisive dissection of veganism's salvationist claim to protect human health and the planet -- John Lewis-Stempel ― Country Life
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- Publisher : Piatkus (9 Jun. 2022)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 544 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1408717441
- ISBN-13 : 978-1408717448
- Dimensions : 15.8 x 4.6 x 23.6 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 5,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 10 in Vitamins
- 18 in Ecological Pollution
- 33 in Public Health & Preventive Medicine
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Apparently, Jayne Buxton has no beef with the likes of me, one of the 1.16% (gasp!) of the UK population who identify as vegan – a 20 year veggie who took the dive three years ago to become a 99.9% vegan (I’m getting there) - because I’m doing it privately, in my own time, and not publicly haranguing the Whopper noshers. No, it’s those high profile proselytizers she’s gunning for. Except she isn’t: despite what she says she wants to convert me back and she intends to stop you even going there. The book is littered with anecdotes from ex vegans whose health, they say, was all but decimated by the attempt to cut animals out of their plate. I’d have had more respect for her if she had acknowledged that those high flyers she despises like Greta Thunberg, George Monbiot, Joachim Phoenix and, er, me, are all plant eaters, or whatever she likes to call us, and actually look and feel rather well. But she has to keep up an unrelenting chorus that a vegan diet is injurious to health because it’s inextricably bound to the notion of the need for a meat and dairy industry.
But the problem is all rather muddled isn’t it? First there’s the poor farmers. It seems it’s the vegans that have been giving them bad press and not their own animal husbandry: cannibalising their cattle (but no one remembers that now!), salmonella in those eggs, mass slaughter of badgers; contamination of rivers in Wales by intensive chicken farms. Not to mention the role played by retail in keeping prices artificially low and forcing economies of scale. But as Patrick Holden of the Sustainable Food Trust opines there is ‘...no differentiation between livestock systems and meats that are part of the problem, and those that are part of the solution.’ (He’s talking about sentient animals by the way). Only he intends to educate the masses on his farm about the good guys. Pull up that drawbridge!!!
Vegans are all middle class, she jeers in one chapter and yet later on in the ‘tips’ section, she exhorts you to trade up financially on meat quality and eat less of it. Easy if you’ve got a good income but bugger all help if you live in a food desert on income support. So I think class wise we’re all in the same carriage on this one Jayne.
Anyway, even though I now run 5k twice a week and feel pretty damn good since alpha covid finally went, I can expect to suffer anything from ‘gastrointestinal conditions to neurological disorders and muscle wastage’, anytime soon. Ms Buxton said it, so it must be true. Could that be why I felt so stressed at the end of the read? The last thing I wanted to do was eat anything at all. My lovely Dad swore by the nutritious benefit of all meat and often brought home skinned rabbit, and fresh caught whole mackerel for gutting, to make ends meet. We ate bacon, pressed tongue, black pudding, boiled ham and pigs liver and the Sunday roast. For years I thought that was what you had to do. He died of colorectal cancer aged 69.
My reality didn't quite match what I was told, but I was just not doing right I just wasn't good enough. But, I started to do my own research which wasn't easy, and I listened to my body. And I had already come across some of the information in this book.
This book is very well researched. And is packed full of information. The nutrition side is very fascinating, although I have been a member of several vegan groups I was never advised about properly about nutrition and I had no clue what I lacked until problems arose. But all the book interests me. As for the environmental side I am amazed how many times I have been mislead. As it wasn't my motivation for veganism I blindly accepted every statement without question. Its interesting to see it from another angle. And there are areas I plan to learn more about after reading this
The how should we eat section also proved useful. Again it has given me new inspiration and ideas. I know I have a lot still to learn but its a good starting point
I bought the kindle version but do plan to get the paperback as well, as I want to keep it as a reminder as to why after over 20 yrs I am no longer vegan. It shows the need for there to be an open discussion, and education
After some further research on the book and author itself I have to say if anything this book has made me wonder if the animal ag industry (check who funded this book) is running scared of the hugely expanding plant based fad and is trying any way it can to claw back it’s customers with cherry picked and disconjointed and in some points contradictive information presented here… either way they aren’t helping their chances with this tripe.
The author clearly isn't anti-vegetarian or anti-vegan but the vegan army will try and close down the argument rather than have a sensible discussion on this topic.
It is not healthy to eat a decaying corpse.
Animals get Cancer too, and It is not profitable to inspect each corpse and remove each tumour.
So Cancer tumours are ground up and put into your food.
Yum Yum.