Essential Reading For Vegetarians Vegans

Becoming Raw - By Brenda Davis, Vesanto Melina, Rynn Berry Wow! Fantastic!  No matter what you currently eat, try including a lot more raw foods into your diet.  The writing team of Brenda and Vesanto have made another fantastic comprehensive book.

Becoming Vegan - By Brenda Davis, Vesanto Melina For those raised consuming animal products, this book gives the very basic information on having a diet and lifestyle free of animal products. Perhaps, even if you weren't raised consuming animal products, you could very well learn many things from this book.

The New Becoming Vegetarian - by Vesanto Melina, Brenda Davis If you were raised consuming animal products and would like to reduce your intake and are not yet ready to eliminate all animal products from your diet, very well, then this is the book for you. It is called The New simply because it has been updated.

Diet for a New America - by John Robbins This book doesn't seem to be talked about so much these days. It was written back in the 1980s, that is one reason, but another reason is that people are just so much more informed these days. He grew up the son of the Robbins side of the Basken Robbins ice-cream empire. Somewhere along the line, the put two and two together and saw that his diet was not doing him or his family any good. John essentially went on a food journey, to discover the food that he ate. His first book was probably going to be the only book he'd ever write, so he crammed as much information into it as he could. Therefore, it's a pretty tough read, in that it is just so full of facts and figures and for many, just a mind blowing new point of view. This book spurred a whole new movement where not only was one's diet connected to one's health, but to the health of animals, and of the whole planet.

Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture - by Jeremy Rifkin This book deals with the topic of how we in North America (and Western Culture) came to the point where we are eating the massive amounts of meat we are today. Many other books look at meat eating from a health perspective or environmental perspective, but this book really looks at meat eating from a historical perspective. Once you see the broader picture of our current food culture a new perspective can bring about all sorts of new thoughts and ideas.

Vegetarianism: A History - by Colin Spencer This book follows the history of vegetarianism, or perhaps more appropriately, the history of not eating meat. Just as Beyond Beef follows the history of meat eating culture, this book follows the history of the vegetation eating culture. It is very eye opening to discover that abstaining from animal flesh is not a new modern idea, but a very old and ancient one. Originally published as The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism by Fourth Estate, London, 1993. Published as Vegetarianism by Grub Street, London, 2000.

Silent Spring - by Rachel Carson The modern environmental movement is said to have been spurred by a book called Silent Spring. It awakened many North Americans to the modern world around them where chemicals such as DDT were being used for just about everything imaginable and permeating the air, soil, and water.  This book was one of David Suzuki's early influences. Every generation seems to find their own 'movement' and thinks it very original and radical when in fact it is merely a continuation of a previous movement or perhaps even history repeating itself; such as the oppressed rising up against the oppressors, there have always been fighters, and those that will speak out while the masses follow the herd. You will find that the words of your ancestors still ring true today and it is up the current generation to carry those words onward to the next generation.

Living The Good Life The Better Way - by John Lausevic and Ruth Lausevic (1993, Better Way. G & R PUBLISHING CO, (Waverly IA). This was a self-published book, therefore perhaps next to impossible to find, but it is a great cookbook and I wish it was more widespread. Every recipe is so short, simple, with a handful of ingredients and a line or two of directions; I would never have suspected that such easy recipes could be so delicious. These are truly tried-tested-and-true recipes. Yum! They now live in Western Australia. Facebook id=1159713904 |  facebook.com/djani.lausevic

Macrobiotic Pregnancy and Care of the Newborn - by Michio and Aveline Kushi First off, you do not need to be following a macrobiotic diet, or any sort of diet for that matter, to read this book.  Prior to my children being born I read every book I could get my hands on.  None of these books contained a lot of the information found in this particular book.  This book really helped fill in a lot of the blanks which other books were, basically, completely ignorant on.  I believe that becoming a parent and raising a healthy child begins before conception, for healthy parents will bear healthy children, as the opposite is also true.  There is a great companion book to this one called Macribotic Family Favorites [sic] which is full of healthy recipes for growing children.

Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating - by Jane Goodall I think it is safe to say that there are no humans left on this planet that are currently eating a truly natural wild diet, but a close relative of ours still is. They do not have that bit that humans have that I can only describe here as the bit that makes us strive for 'more', therefore their lifestyles have not changed over the eons. Through studying them, we can get a hint at what our own natural diets were like prior to us wanting 'more'. Our bodies, digestive system, and so forth are so similar that to not study the diet of chimpanzees in relation to our own would be quite unfortunate. Yet, here is someone who has written a book on the subject (along with a helping hand from a couple co-authors), so read it, eyes wide open.

...more to come.