The Great Plant-Based Con: Why eating a plants-only diet won't improve your health or save the planet

Description

Almost every day we hear a call for us to reduce our consumption of meat and dairy, with the long-term goal for many being the widespread conversion to a totally vegan lifestyle. 'Plant-based' has become a term so worthy and ubiquitous that many people have forgotten their historic antipathy to an extreme vegan cause. But what if the statistics driving the plant-based movement were misleading or even false? What if we were being manipulated by a happy coalition of vested interests that includes environmentalists, Big Pharma, Big Food, established dietary advice organisations, and even a little known but rich and powerful religious group with a long-standing commitment to a vegan diet? What if removing animal foods from our diet was 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 every one of these what-ifs is a real world actuality. Because most of us don't realise this, we are allowing ourselves to be dragged down a dietary road that will have severe repercussions for our health and wellbeing, and that of our children, and the climate, for decades to come. From statistics that show how a long-term deficiency in B12 can cause neurological damage and rheumatoid arthritis (B12 is only found in animal foods) to an examination of how the growing of 'plant based' food does not produce the global pollution levels we have been led to believe (85% of global emissions are generated from sources other than animal agriculture), Jayne interrogates and debunks many of the myths that have grown up in recent years and proposes a more balanced way forward.

Jayne Buxton is an ambassador for the Real Food Campaign and the Public Health Collaboration. In her twenty years as a published author Jayne has written on a wide variety of subjects. Her work includes a work of non-fiction, two novels, many short stories, a blog, and journalistic pieces for The Independent, The Guardian and others.

The most incredible book -- Delia Smith * The Food Programme, BBC Radio 4 * How I have waited for this book! A much needed, fact-packed, lucidly argued demolition of pervasive, endlessly recycled, anti-animal source food propaganda, and a very welcome, closely argued, well-reasoned defence of our traditional omnivore diet -- Joanna Blythman 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 * THE GREAT PLANT-BASED CON is absolutely exceptional. When you've read works of Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz, you'll need to add this to your essential reading list. I was ignorant of so much that is so elegantly explained -- Professor Tim Noakes Intelligent and very well-researched ... [Jayne is] able to be objective and speak out without losing a university seat or a research grant, but with knowledge of the food industry from a career in consultancy. She has sifted through all the scientific arguments fairly and produced a very readable book that explains it all in a way that can easily be digested ... a fascinating read and its intelligent explanation of the way that Big Food makes us ill, and Big Pharma makes another fast buck curing us, may yet make it a seminal classic, similar in its impact to Rachel Carson's brilliant expose of chemical pesticides, Silent Spring, two generations ago. There is no doubting Buxton's conclusion that we have been conned ... a brave book -- Jamie Blackett * Daily Telegraph *