We’ve been told that a vegetarian diet can feed the hungry, honor the animals, protect our health, and save the planet. Lierre Keith believed in that plant-based diet and spent twenty years as a vegan. But in The Vegetarian Myth, she argues that we’ve been led astray–not by our longings for a just and sustainable world, but by our ignorance.

The truth is that agriculture is a relentless assault against the planet, and more of the same won’t save us.  In service to annual grains, humans have devastated prairies and forests, driven countless species extinct, altered the climate, and destroyed the topsoil–the basis of life itself. According to Keith, the question we need to ask is way bigger than what’s dead on your plate–it’s what died to get that meal there.

For agricultural foods, the answer is whole continents. “Agriculture is carnivorous,” Keith writes. “What it eats is entire ecosystems, and it swallows them whole.

Keith argues that if we are to save this planet, our food must be an act of profound and abiding repair: it must come from inside living communities, not imposed across them.

The author says her book is a cautionary tale, as she once persisted with a vegan diet even after she claims it permanently damaged her body. She explores the psychology of vegetarian identity while still remaining true to the values that informed her veganism. The book is part memoir, part nutritional primer and part political manifesto, challenging notions about food politics.

“Last week I went to hear Noam Chomsky in Oakland and on a table outside the theatre I found The Vegetarian Myth. I’ve been reading it for the past week. I think it 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. Or rather that we are on because of our abuse of the planet. It’s a wonderful book, full of thoughtful, soulful teachings, and appropriate rage. My admiration for Lierre’s sharing of life experience and knowledge is complete. Thank you.”
–Alice Walker

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“This book saved my life. Not only does The Vegetarian Myth make clear how we should be eating, but also how the dominant food system is killing the planet. This necessary book challenges many of the destructive myths we live by and offers us a way back into our bodies, and back into the fight to save the planet.”
–Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame and A Language Older than Words

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