“In no other book will you find such a comprehensive discussion of the key factors that should be driving our food choices.”

J. Morris Hicks, author of Healthy Eating, Healthy World

“This is an absolute must read for anyone who is concerned about the environment, suffering of animals and human and non-human health.”

Anteneh Roba, MD, Founder of the International Fund for Africa

The ethical wasteland of Big Business, Big Medicine, Power Politics, and Advertising has manufactured a diet that is the root cause of so many diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, as well as a broad range of common ailments. It has also created an industry that kills over 70 billion land animals every year. Too few of us realize how our food choices actually contribute to the climate change we are now experiencing worldwide. Recognizing and understanding the impact of our food choices is the first important step in reversing habits that damage the body, heart, and soul.

How to Eat Right and Save the Planet cuts through the hype and nutritional confusion that surround us by first showing how they hide the truth. It then explains how the food that we eat can be a massive force for good in creating personal, social, and environmental health. The author not only provides vital nutritional facts based on the latest dietary and medical research, but also explains in plain English how our diet impacts social justice and environmental sustainability.

How to Eat Right and Save the Planet offers a complete guide to creating a healthy and earth friendly diet for you and your family. With this book in hand, you will understand that each of us can take back control of our health, our family’s health, and, to a great degree, the health of this planet—and it can all begin with our next meal.

Bill Tara has been an active advocate for natural heath care since 1967. He has served as a senior faculty member for the Kiental Institute in Switzerland and the Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He was Chairman of the European Macrobiotic Assembly for four years and served as Chairman of the North American Macrobiotic Congress for two years. He was also Director of Natural Health Care at the SHA Wellness Clinic in Spain.

Tara has been a health counselor, teacher, author, entrepreneur, and creator of health education centers in Europe and North America. His innovative and creative teaching of traditional approaches to health, healing, and personal development have taken him to over twenty countries as a seminar leader. He has appeared on a variety of radio and television shows in England, America, and Australia, speaking on dietary policy and human ecology.

The author founded the Community Health Foundation in London, England, which was the largest natural health education center in the world. He was the co-founder of the Kushi Institute and served as Executive Director of the institute’s programs in both London and Boston. Together with his wife, Marlene Watson-Tara, he teaches workshops and intensive training in macrobiotics, vegan nutrition, and natural health care.

Contents

Acknowledgments, v

Foreword, vii

Preface, xi

Introduction, 1

Part One How Did We Get Here?

1. Who’s in the Kitchen?, 9

2. Searching for the Silver Bullet, 27

3. Bad Medicine, 49

4. Questioning Authority, 65

5. The Healing Kitchen, 81

Part Two A Natural Perspective

6. Food for Thought, 101

7. Ancient Wisdom, 116

8. Diet and Human Ecology, 136

Part Three Cause and Effect

9. The Living Earth, 155

10. Collateral Damage, 176

11. Bad Karma, 191

How to Eat Right & Save the Planet interior.indd 3 8/8/19 2:00 PM

"Impressively informative and expertly presented . . . provides the reader with a complete informational guide and instructional manual to creating a healthy and earth friendly diet for themselves and their family . . . especially and unreservedly recommended."

Preface

The very real crisis created by our food choices needs resolution and needs it quickly. The research has been done and the positive steps to a healthy diet identified and yet the powerful machine that governs the food system grinds on with little sign of significant change. One fact is stunningly apparent, the modern diet is killing us and we are not acting to make the changes necessary Part of the problem is that nutrition is not simply an issue of the chemical features of our foods. Cultural and emotional factors often seem to outweigh logic and ethics. A modern vision of nutrition needs to take into account the social and environmental costs of what we eat as well as the price we pay at the market. Vested interests are so deeply embedded in the political, medical, agricultural and food manufacturing sectors that powerful forces can be called into play when challenges are made to the status quo. The internet has provided a perfect growing medium for fanciful nutritional theories, magical supplements and direct attacks on any ideas that challenge cultural dietary traditions. There is no greater battlefield in the nutrition wars than the entrenched ideas we have about the use of animal sourced foods. It is time for a new understanding of our historical relationship to what we eat. From our ancient origins, human life has migrated to almost every location on the planet. We have settled in deep jungles, arctic tundra, deserts, and forests. Our primary concern has always been to find food. It is a matter of life or death. We did not have to concern ourselves with eating locally or in season; that was a given. We ate what was available. The forces of nature were in charge. If there was an abundance of nutritious plants, that was where we focused; if not, we used animals. We discovered over time that out of the 391,000 species of plants there are a fairly small number that are safe for us to eat and we focused on those. These were not decisions we made in a conference hall. Decisions were made through human experience. They were pragmatic actions aimed at staying alive and creating homeostasis, that life-producing relationship with nature that governs all life. That was then, this is now. Nature is still in control. It is nature that supplies our air, water, and food—a simple truth we seem to have forgotten. When we look at the modern food chain, we see that we have made every attempt to break down that relationship. This is a futile and childish struggle to dominate rather than adapt and it has produced chaos. This struggle between humankind and nature lies at the root of much of the confusion and endless arguments about nutrition as well as ecology. The modern diet produces disease and death, not only for humans but non-humans as well. Our food choices are the main cause of death from degenerative disease, creates environmental chaos, the senseless slaughter of billions of sentient creatures and supports an economic system that makes regional self-sufficiency and food security impossible. Yet we march on. We fixate on fantasy stories about magical properties of the newest “super-food,” the power of reducing the sugar content in soft drinks or avoiding meat one day a week. None of these stop-gap measures are effective or timely. There is still time for us to make the easiest and most important contribution we can to creating a healthy world for all life on planet earth. It is important that a new conversation about the food we eat is engaged in and that action is taken. We can change what we eat, right now, today and then move to more complicated issues