Proteinaholic: How Our Obsession with Meat Is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It

I discovered that all the pro-protein studies have a couple of things in common. First, they’re all really short. As in, they follow their subjects for days or weeks—seldom longer than a year.

When I tell them to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, it’s not that they actually object. They’re just so focused on getting more and more protein into their diets that they don’t have room for plant-based foods.

There’s nothing good in fish that we can’t get from plants, minus the sky-high mercury levels that appeared on my blood tests during my pescetarian phase.

The key message here is not “zero meat” but rather “more plants.” More than 100 percent dietary purity, I want you to shift your overall dietary pattern.

I finally understood the great Czech-German writer Franz Kafka’s decision to become a vegan. Looking through the glass at an aquarium, he is reported to have told the fish, “Now I can at last look at you in peace. I don’t eat you anymore.”

Meat disrupts your intestinal bacteria, which leads to weight gain. Most meat contains antibiotics, which lead to weight gain. Meat creates acidosis and inflammation, which lead to weight gain.

Modern chickens are cooped up in dirty cages, lacking room even to turn around. In order to keep them alive under those conditions, their food is dosed on a regular basis with antibiotics. So you are eating a fatter chicken pumped full of antibiotics that can mess with your natural bowel flora that can affect your weight; and it is filled with toxi

Here’s something else to consider: the RDA recommendations are actually optimal values, not minimal needs. Since some people require more protein than others, the USDA chose as their recommendation a value that assures adequate protein for 99 percent of the country. Based on the assumption that too much is safer than not enough (not true, as you’ll

a book by John Robbins, onetime heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream fortune who renounced his inheritance when he discovered the harmful effects of animal product consumption at every level. In his epic The Food Revolution (an update to his earlier, groundbreaking Diet for a New America), Robbins lays out as clearly and forcefully as possible the