best crash diets 2013

rachel o'mara: thanks everyonefor joining today. thanks for coming during lunchin san francisco, and welcome to authors at google. my name is rachel o'mara, andi'm really excited today to host our author, john robbins.

best crash diets 2013, so john robbins is the author ofnine best-sellers that have collectively sold more than3 million copies, and been translated into 26 languages. his books include "the foodrevolution," "the classic diet

for a new america," and mostrecently, "no happy cows, dispatches from the front linesof the food revolution." currently, he is also one ofthe most bloggers on the "huffington post." as an advocate for acompassionate and healthy way of life, john is the recipientof the rachel carson award, the albert schweitzerhumanitarian award, the peace abbey courage of consciousaward, green america's lifetime achievement award,and many other accolades.

well done, john. that's great. the only son of the founder ofthe baskin robbins ice cream empire, john robbins was groomedto follow in his father's footsteps, but choseto walk away from baskin robbins and the immense wealthit represented to pursue the deeper american dream, the dreamof a society at peace with its conscience, becauseit respects the lives in harmony with all life forms.

john is the founder and boardchair emeritus of earthsave international, and has servedon the boards of many nonprofit organizations. his work has been the subjectof feature articles in the "san francisco chronicle," the"la times," "chicago life," the "washington post," "thenew york times," the "philadelphia inquirer," "time,""us news and world report," "newsweek," and manyof the nation's other major newspapers and magazines.

his life and work have alsobeen featured in an award-winning hour-long pbsspecial titled "diet for a new america," and that's the bookwe'll be talking about today. john lives with his wife of 45years, deo, and their son, ocean, and his wife, michelle,and their grandsons river and bodhi, outside santacruz, california. their home is powered entirelyby solar electricity. john also has a website, www.johnrobbins.info, for more details.

so please welcome withme john robbins. [applause] thank you for being here. thank you. as was mentioned in your--thank you for the introduction. i was born into an ice creamcompany family, baskin robbins 31 flavors. my father and uncle foundedthe company, owned the

company, ran the company. i'm an only son. i have sisters, butno brothers. and my father groomedme to succeed him. that was his plan for my life,that i would one day run baskin robbins, which wasbecoming and became during my childhood the world's largestice cream company. it's a billion dollar company. and it was assumed that'swhat i would do.

and i loved it. i grew up eating moreice cream-- i don't eat ice cream anymore. and when people find that out,they sometimes look at me as if they're feeling sorryfor me, i think. and i say, pleasedon't, please. really, i ate enoughice cream in my childhood for 20 lifetimes. we had an ice cream cone-shapedswimming pool in

our backyard. we had freezers with all of themonth's 31 flavors, plus experimental flavors, plus-- it was every kid's dream, in away, in a way, in that there was unlimited ice cream. i did eat ice creamfor breakfast. it's true. it was really gross, actually. there's a shadow sideto all that.

ice cream is reallynot a health food. it's not kale. and you can put some fruitin some of the sherbets, and so forth. it's still basically very highin sugar, and most of the flavors are very high in fat,and the fat is highly saturated fat. it's not healthy. and so people who eat a lot ofit have health problems.

my uncle, burt baskin,my dad's partner and brother-in-law, died of a heartattack at the age of 54. he was a very big man. he ate a lot of ice cream. and when he died, i asked myfather, do you think there could be any connection betweenmy uncle's fatal heart attack and the amount ofice cream he would eat? and my father looked atme and very piercingly said no, no, no.

his ticker just got tiredand stopped working. and the expression on his faceand the tone of voice said something else. it said, don't you ever askthat question again. do you understandwhat i'm saying? john bradshaw, the psychologistused to talk about there being "no talk"rules in families, taboo subjects that you just don'ttalk about in a given family, elephants in the living roomthat take up a lot of space,

but no one mentions it. because there's some kind offamily dynamic at play in which there's not an abilityto talk about that topic. in my family, one of the bigelephants in the living room was that there could be aconnection between ice cream and heart disease, or ice creamand health, or even food and health, that there mightbe a connection there. because if you start downthat slippery slope-- food and health--

you pretty soon get to icecream and heart disease. and my father did not want toeven consider the possibility that there might be a link. and i couldn't understand whyhe would not want to. by that time, by the time of myuncle's death, which was in 1968, my father had manufacturedand sold more ice cream than any humanbeing that had ever lived on planet earth. he didn't want to think thefamily product was hurting

anybody, much less than it couldhave contributed to his partner, his brother-in-law,my uncle's death. but i felt i should. i felt i needed to consider,might there be that link? and the more i looked into it,the more i felt there was. and not just between ice creamand heart disease, but ice cream and diabetes. my father developed diabetes-- serious diabetes--

later on. everybody in the family hadthese various issues, problems with weight, everywhere. and want to make it clear, it'snot just baskin robbins as a company. it's ice cream. you know ben and jerry's. ben cohen-- marvelous man, peace activist,very engaged person--

big guy, ate a lot of icecream, co-owned ben and jerry's, co-founded it,had a quintuple bypass in his late 40s. these kinds of things tendto happen when you eat a lot of ice cream. and if you're in the icecream business-- if you're running baskin robbinsin particular, that's what i would know about-- you want people to buyas much as possible.

that's the business model. that's how it works. so you want them to consume asmuch ice cream as possible. and the reality is, when peopleeat it in excess, they get these health problems. so i was faced with anexistential quandary-- on the one hand, a lot offinancial security; on the other hand, my integrity. and i made a choicefor integrity.

and i told my dad that under thecircumstances, i was not going to follow inhis footsteps. i was not going to work anylonger in the company. and what i specificallysaid to him was this. i said, dad, we live in adifferent time now than when you grew up. we live under a nuclear shadowwhere at any moment the unspeakable could happen. we live in a time when theenvironment is deteriorating

rapidly under the impactof human activities. we live in a time when the gapbetween the haves and the have nots is increasing. and that does not, to my eyes,create social stability or security for anybody, even thewealthy and privileged. it's undermining thesocial fabric. we live in a time when 60,000people on earth, many of them children, die of hunger, die ofstarvation every day, while elsewhere there's abundantresources going to waste.

and then i said to him, dad, doyou understand that for me, feeling these issues andconcerns as intensely as i do, inventing a 32nd flavor wouldjust not be an adequate response for my life. and he understood to theextent that he could. but i needed to be true tomyself, and so i made a choice for integrity andi walked away. and i also walked awayfrom the money. to be in alignment with myintegrity and my choices, i

needed to have noaccess to it. and i told him that i didn'twant a trust fund. i didn't want to depend in anyway, not one dollar, on his fortune, his achievements. and with deo, my wife-- we've been together 46 yearsnow-- we moved away, and lived very simply, back to the land,built a log cabin, grow our own food. 95% of what we ate for10 years we grew.

and it was a realpendulum swing. in the family i'd grown up in,i jokingly would say, perhaps flippantly would say thatroughing it meant that room service was late. now we were really roughingit, because we were living very simply on land and tryingto grow our food and dependent on what we could grow. eventually i wrote "diet for anew america," and it became a best-seller.

it sold over a million copies,and became something of a phenomenon. i received 60,000 letters-- these are actual letters. this is before email-- from people who read thebook and wanted to communicate with me. and almost all of them said,this touched me deeply. how can i get involved?

what can i do? and i want to give you a littlebit of what i was-- tell you a little bit about whatthe book says, that so many people felt that theywanted to respond to that way. we just recently came out witha 25th anniversary edition of "diet for a new america," andthat's what we have here today, with a new-- not a preface, but a newepilogue by me, a lengthy epilogue describing what'shappened in the interim years.

and i will talk a littlebit about that too. basically, something hashappened in modern meat production, and dairyproduction, and egg production, and animal factoryindustries that most people don't know about, and theindustries do not want people to know about. in fact, this year, they areinitiating in many state legislatures what arecalled ag gag bills. this is legislation that makesit a felony to videotape or

photograph what takes place inslaughterhouses or feed lots or factory forms. because there's been a seriesof exposes where people went undercover working for humanesociety united states, or mercy for animals, or compassionover killing, or some other animal protectiongroup-- have gone undercover as workersin these places with hidden cameras, and gottenfootage of what takes place. and it comes out, and peoplewho see it are abhorred.

they just find it deplorable-- the cruelty, the lackof sanitation. sometimes there'sfines, sometimes there's jail sentences. people get upset. there was a recent one in acalifornia feedlot where one of the largest suppliers ofbeef for the school lunch programs, and they were breakingall of the rules. we don't have very many rules,but they were breaking all of

them that we have. and so the industry doesn't wantthis kind of footage of getting out. they don't want you to knowwhat's happening. they don't want you to know-- this is a war against awareness,basically. so the ag gag bills makeit illegal to do that. and they've passed infour or five states. they've been initiatedin another 12 or 14.

there's a real effort. all of these are the billsare almost identical. they were written by alec, theamerican legislative exchange council, which is a corporatefront group. and they're basically tryingto lock the veil down so people can't know. well, i'm trying tolift the veil. and i have been for 25 years,wanting to lift the veil so people can see.

i think you have a right toknow how your food is produced, where it comes from. i think actually any animalwould want to know. this is a basic biologicalthing. before you eat something,you'd want to know, is it safe? is it what it says it is? what's the back story here? how did it arrive here?

is it healthy for me? what's going to happento me if i eat it? we have a food industry thatdoes things to food. the problem isn't the food. i'm not trying to makeyou afraid of food. i don't want you tobe afraid of food. i want you to love food. but you can't love what they'vedone to the food. because if they geneticallyengineer it, and much of our

food is today, if it's grownwith poisons that residues are in the food, thesethings harm us. and they harm the biosphere uponwhich we depend, and on which our economy depends,on which our whole future depends. so when we expose when i expose,when others like me expose what's being done inthe media industry, in the dairy industry, in the eggindustry in particular, i do so because i want people to havefreedom of choice, not

because i'm trying to tellyou what to eat. and this is a criticaldistinction. i myself, i eat a veryplant-strong diet. i'm virtually vegan. but i'm not askingthat you be. i'm asking that you be authenticto who you are, to what your values are, to whatis in your heart, to what helps you live the highest andbest life possible for you. and that's your decisionand your determination.

but you can't make thosechoices honestly and authentically if you don't haveaccurate information. and the industry won'tgive it to you. in fact, the industry is workingvery hard to prevent you from having it. i'm working very hard to allowyou to have it, so i'm at odds with them. they don't like me very much. and that's ok.

what i want you to know is thatmodern meat production has become-- it treats the animals very,very differently than the images most peoplehave of farms-- lassie and timmy runningaround on a farm. they will use photographsof beautiful-- i'll give you an example. the california milk producersassociation has an ad campaign called "happy cows." it'sa national campaign.

they've spent hundredsof millions on it. and the tagline is "great cheesecomes from happy cows. happy cows come fromcalifornia." and they're selling california cheesenationally. we try to compete with wisconsinto become the largest dairy state. so the photographs show cowsgrazing on beautiful green grass, pastures. those photographs were takenin auckland, new zealand,

because the california dairyindustry is centered in the central valley, particularlythe san joachin valley. and it's a desert there. it's dry. there's no grass. these are feedlot dairies. there's 20,000, 15,000 cowsin a penned area. it's nothing like the imagesshown in the ads. in fact, i have sued-- alongwith peta, sued the california

milk producers association overthis ad campaign, because i think it's falseadvertising. and i think there'sa point here. if you-- we know that people will payextra for organic food. there's a subsection ofthe marketplace-- i happen to be part of it--that values organic food. and we'll pay a little bitextra for that value. if someone were to sell asorganic, label as organic food

that was not, that was grownwith poisons, that would be false advertising. that would actually be acriminal act against the people, cheating the peoplewho value this. and i'm willing topay extra for it. we don't allow that. we have organic certification,which is third party, and it's objective, and it'sverifiable. but when it comes to claimsabout humane treatment of

animals, "happy cows come fromcalifornia," they say. that's a claim. it's not true, but we don't haveany way of asserting any kind of verification on that. so they can get away with it. and then the people like me,maybe like some of you, who care about how animalsare treated-- and we're going to be eatingtheir flesh or their milk. it's going to be consumedby us--

and want those animals to havea decent life, to be treated with some degree of basicrespect for their needs, are being exploited. because we'll pay-- wesee an ad like that. oh, happy cows comefrom california. that touches us. that speaks to our heart. so we'll go out of our way toget the cheese that actually comes from a feedlot, but wedon't know that, because

they're lying. this is one example. the examples are numerous,way, way numerous. and what's happened is we haveput modern livestock in confinement under conditionsthat frustrate their natures, that violate their natures tosuch an extent, you do not have to be a vegetarian or ananimal rights activist or even a particularly empathic humanbeing-- if you see it, how severe it's become--

to find it abominable,appalling. if you have any feelingwhatsoever for animals-- and most of us do. most of us, actually-- most americans, actually, loveanimals, to some degree. now, i'm not saying you lovethem more than people, but you love them for who they are. and as a country, we treat ourdogs and our cats pretty well as a rule-- not always,but as a rule.

many of us to consider thempart of our families. we pay their vet bills. we buy their food. we have them sleep onour beds with us. we give them names. they're part of our families. we feel enriched by thoserelationships as human beings. we love them. they love us, very often quitebeautifully, back.

but sadly, we also have a veryschizoid relationship to animals, in that in thiscountry, if it's an animal that we call a companion animal,we treat it very well. but if we call the animaldinner, if we find its flesh tasty, we put it in adifferent category. now, there are laws in everyone of the 50 states about cruelty to animals, restrictingcertain things you can't do. but in every one of the 50states, the legislation that

exists exempts animalsdestined for human consumption. so, animals destined for humanconsumption have no protections under the law. and this is how theindustry wants it. and so their standard operatingprocedures, the way they treat the literallybillions of animals in modern meat production that areinvolved, if you did it to a dog or cat, if you treated a dogor cat that way, you would

be subject to felonyprosecution. and i am not talkingabout the fact that the animal is killed. i'm not talking about that. i'm talking about the livesthat the animals lead in factory farms. it's severe. it's really extreme. i'm going to give just oneexample so you know what i'm

talking about. and that's what happens to thebaby calves, the male calves, born to dairy cows. if you think about it, theyhave to keep dairy cows pregnant all the time, becausethey need them lactating to get the milk. otherwise their udderswould dry up. so they're re-impregnatedevery year. and then half the calves thatare born are female.

half are male, roughly. and the females are shunted offto become four-legged milk pumps like their mothers. but what happens to the males? can't get milk from a male. infant calves, newborn calves,are taken from their mothers at birth, and they're put inveal barns where they're chained at the neck. and they have the space ineach stall so small, they

can't take a single stepin any direction. and they they're chainedthere for four months. they can't take a single stepin any direction, and they can't lay down in their normalsleeping position because the chain is so short. so to sleep, they haveto kind of hunch. they're kept in the dark for themost part, often for four months in the dark. most of them go blind.

they are fed a diet thatis deliberately and systematically devoid of iron,so they become increasingly anemic, eventuallypathologically anemic. now, why would they wantthem blind and anemic? well, if the animal'sanemic, its flesh-- which, at birth, is kindof a grayish color-- doesn't become pinkishor reddish. that's the iron thatwould do that. and we've been taught--

that the culture at large hasbeen taught that white meats are healthier. so they call it milk fed veal. now, it's not themother's milk. it's actually government surplusskim milk powder. that's part of whatthey're fed. it keeps them-- and there's no iron in milkat all, nor in anything else they give them.

they don't use nails. they use plastic nails in thestall so the animals can't lick and get any ironfrom the nails. the whole thing is designed tomake them anemic so that the flesh will be thiswhite color. now, they chain them at the neckso tightly because they don't want them to move. the reason they don't want themto move is because if the animal moves, it will developsome muscle tone, so

musculature. and they want the muscletissue to be as flaky and tender-- ie., as undeveloped asa muscle as possible. they call this tender veal. so this high-end productthat's made into veal cacciatore and these dishesthat you'll find in fancy restaurants, particularlyitalian restaurants, is actually the flash of a torturedbaby animal, a

newborn animal that is keptunder conditions that i think violate just about anybody'ssensitivities. i really want to emphasize,again, this isn't an issue, i don't think, for animal rightsactivists and vegetarians. in fact, the vegetariansare the people what don't eat this. if i were eating meat, i'dreally be alarmed about this. i don't want to eat theproducts of torture. and i actually believe, to tellyou the truth, that there

is some correlation. i can't prove this. i don't know how todocument this. but i do feel intuitivelythere's some correlation between when animals are treatedwith this degree of cruelty, their lives are thismuch misery and fear, what happens to the people'semotional states who eat this, day in, day out? what happens to us as humanbeings if the meat we're

eating, the dairy products we'reeating, are coming from conditions, animals kept inthese kinds of conditions? that kind of question i thinkneeds to be raised. i think it's an authenticquestion. i don't know how toanswer it totally. but i think it's a questionwe need, as a society, to look at. if your prayer is at some level,let there be peace on earth and let it beginwith me-- you

know that old prayer-- if you hearken to that, if thatspeaks to you, does it make sense, does it helpthe manifestation, the actualization of that impulseto be eating food that comes from conditions like that? i don't think so. i really don't. and if you see howsevere it is. and what i've described as theconditions in veal calf

raising is equivalent-- the details are a littledifferent-- but the degree of control and the degree ofrestriction of movement and the degree of giving themfeedstuffs that are unnatural to their physiology,that's rampant. that's across the board, infeedlot beef, in dairy cows, in chicken-- in hens producing our eggs, inturkeys, in hog production. the industry has become allabout the dollar, all about

the dollar. not about the dollar and otherthings, like the health of people eating the product. it's only the dollar. so the health of the peopleeating the product is not part of the equation. it's not part of the thinking,nor is the well-being of the animals involved. these people don't wake up inthe middle of the night

thinking, how do i becruel to animals? how i produce a product that'sas unhealthy as possible? they don't do that. they do wake up in the middleof the night asking themselves, how doi cut costs? and it just so happens that thethings they end up doing that cut costs almost invariablyend up being harder and harder on the animals, andproducing food that is less and less healthyfor us to eat.

so i think we need to be awareof this, in order to protect ourselves, in order to reclaimour food system, from monsanto, from mcdonald's, fromindustrial agriculture, from the agrochemicalorientation, from the gmo mentality. you see it in factory farms,this a degree of chasing the dollar at all costs. nothing else matters. the well-being of theenvironment doesn't matter.

if you pollute-- you find a way to externalizethe cost. someone else picks up the tab,eventually the taxpayer, eventually the larger earthcommunity does, and then you just move on. and that's how it's done, andwe're all paying a really terrible price for it. right now, as a country, wehave the highest rate of obesity that any countryhas ever had in the

history of the planet. we have the highest rate ofchildhood diabetes of any country that has ever existedin the history of the earth. we spend more money on what wecall health care than any other country. in fact, we spend more moneyon what we call health care then the next 10 countriescombined. and we are the onlyindustrialized country that doesn't provide basic healthcare to all of our citizens.

we don't really have ahealth care industry. we have a disease managementindustry. the money is not in helpingpeople to keep their blood pressure level, which is prettysimple to do with a healthy diet, actually. but the money is in the pills,and so we let people eat food that raises theirblood pressure. we actually encourage that. we subsidize those foods.

make them cheaper. people buy them. their blood pressure goes up,then the drugs companies profit from the sale-- this isa disease-based economy. we spend $300 billion a year inthis country annually every year on drugs, pharmaceuticaldrugs. that is half of the amountthat's spent in the entire world. we're 4% of the world'spopulation.

we buy 50% of the drugs, and70% of the antidepressants, which, you can decidewhat that means. why do we have a food anddrug administration? did you ever think about that? did you think food isn'timportant enough to have its own agency? our food? it's because if you eatthe food, you're going to need the drugs.

this is the systemwe've created. and under these circumstances,it's a revolutionary act, i think, to be aware, and to takeaction, to swim upstream, against the current of societywhich will wash you down to the fast food joint, the burgerking and mcdonald's. and that's your choice. that's your freedom. that's consumer freedom. i don't think freedomis, which of the 31

flavors do i want? believe me, i grew upwith that stuff. i think the freedom that we wantis to live-- how do we choose and have availablechoices that we can live healthy lives and create healthycommunities, have healthy families, look forwardto a healthy future on a healthy planet? i mean, i think that seemslike a radical thought. that seems like pie in thesky, almost idealistic

thinking, under the conditionsof today. that's why i call itrevolutionary. it does go against the grainof our "ain't it awful" society, and our victimthinking. but we can take these actions. i just finished, a couple daysago, a food revolution summit, which i co-ran withmy son ocean. and we had 73,000 participantsfor the week, for eight days. there are a lot of people wakingup, a lot of people

wanting to be part of this foodrevolution, wanting to make their lives a statement ofcompassion and how they eat and their health, so that whatyou're eating is actually contributing to your well-being,and actually contributing to the kind of lifeand experience in your body that you want to have, thevibrancy, the vitality, the beauty, the mental clarity,the emotional serenity, and the spiritualalignment that makes life fulfilling and wonderful.

so that's the basics of-- [inaudible] there'slots i could say. but why don't we open to somequestions or comments. what's being invokedin you hearing me? do you have any thoughts? do you want to sharea question? audience: and i think the openquestion, at least in the omnivore's dilemma, as far as iknow, is whether sustainable farming is scalable.

we know that big food ismistreating animals and polluting the environmentin order to maximize their profit. but at the same time, theydo produce a lot of food. and so has anyone figured outwhether the sustainable farming methods can feedour entire country? john robbins: yes. well, the reason that big foodis profitable and does produce extravagant amounts of food-likesubstances is that

they are subsidized heavily. for example, feedlots andfactories farms don't pay their own pollution costs. the government'spicked that up. if they had to pay for thepollution they caused, that would raise the prices of theirfoods considerably. people would be less inclinedto buy them. another example is thefeed that they're-- it's basically corn and soy--

that they feed to the hogs andthe cattle and the chicken and the dairy cows comes fromindustrial plantations, huge monocultures, most of themgmo, saturated with herbicides, just saturatedwith them. and that's subsidized. so the cost to the industry ofthose feedstuffs is almost nothing, almost nothing. we pay for it as taxpayers, beyou vegetarian or a meat eater, you're paying for thatthrough your taxes.

and also to the pollution thatwe live with, the decrease in soil fertility, the loss ofwater resources, the drying up of the wells throughoutthe midwest. we're paying for itin so many ways. but those costs areexternalized. we don't subsidize organicagriculture. we subsidize agrochemical-based agriculture. so that tilts the playingfield and makes

organics very expensive. have you ever wondered why whenyou go to whole foods or anywhere, the organicfood costs more? i mean, some people want itmore, will pay that premium and can, but why doesit cost more? because of the subsidies. in the farm bill,it's all there. i think-- and more than think i'mworking for this--

that we should not just tiltthe playing field so it's level, although that wouldbe an improvement. i want to tilt it in the otherdirection so that organic-- i want to put a tax onpesticides, for example, and then use the income from thatto lower the price to the consumer of organic food. it's a revenue-neutralsolution. it's fairly simple. and what happens, is then,that conventionally-grown

food, as we call it, foodgrown with agrochemicals becomes more expensive. same thing, i would tax factoryfarm meat production and use the revenue to decreasethe cost of humanely raised, again, turning theturning thing topsy-turvy from where it is now. the incentives are perversethe way they are. could we produce enough meatthat way, as much as we produce now?

no. we eat way too much. we have heart disease. it's still the leading killerin the country. and people who eat farless meat, we know-- all the data show. there's a mountain of studiesthat shows this-- have far less heart disease. they have far lesscolon cancer.

and it's a healthier dietto get away from that. so we don't neednearly as much. now, mcdonald's, though, wantsto sell all-- see, they've got a tremendous marketing plan. i have to tell you, ray krocwas the founder, owner for many years, ceo for manyyears, of mcdonald's. ray kroc, before he startedmcdonald's, worked for my father. and my father inventedfranchising.

baskin and robbins was the firstfranchised food place. and ray kroc was in charge ofthe franchising department. and he said to my dad, i wantto go and try this with burgers, and that becamemcdonald's. i've actually never evenat mcdonald's, because i don't want to. i may be the only one in thecountry that hasn't. when i see those signs, youknow, that brag about how many billions have been sold, ialways think of how many

thousands of square milesof rainforest have been destroyed, how many heartattacks have happened, how many animals havebeen tortured. i think of the families who,like my uncle when he died at the age of 54, his family,what happened, the loss, the pain. i think of the families wherethat's happening. so i'm not, oh wow, anotherbillion sold. i'm like, how do we getthem out of business?

i would like to see plant-strongdiets become the norm, people eating lots offresh fruits and vegetables. how about we put into a tax onjunk food and then use that income to lower theprice of fresh vegetables and fresh fruits? so people now who are veryprice-sensitive, the cheapest calories are always junk, alwaysjunk, high fructose corn syrup, isolated soyingredients, highly processed foods, mcdonald's.

you get a lot of calories peryour dollar, but you do not get a lot of nutrition. that is why we have poor people,financially stressed people, who are obeseand malnourished. it's a terrible predicament,and it's what we've created with our food system. and there are ways we can changethe food system, and then we could feed everybodywith good food, not at the level of meat consumption thatwe've grown accustomed to,

that we identifywith affluence. we've come to think of meet asthe reward of affluence, and eating things like legumes,lentils, and split peas, and garbanzo beans aspeasant food. we have a class stratificationthere. and when you think that way,then you feel bad about yourself if you're justeating peasant food. and you're eating bakedpotatoes, and you're eating cabbage, and you're eatingcarrots, and you're eating

lentils, and you're eatingsplit pea soup. and you feel like you're atthe bottom of the rung, whereas veal parmesan islike the high thing. but that's going to kill you. it's killing-- it's a terriblething to the veal calf. we've got to find our roots backin the earth and not be ashamed of it, thatwe're creatures-- human comes from the sameroot as the root humus, or earth, or soil.

and we can find our roots, andthen we can feed ourselves a plant-strong diet, a healthyone, with less resources, less land than it is now going toproduce a meat-based diet. yes? audience: what actually is goingon in terms of the data? because if you look around,i feel like i see a lot of people giving up meat. you see juice bars popping up. you see a lot morehealthy food.

i read an article abouthummus taking off. but then you go to the ferrybuilding and there's a store called salty, tasty pig parts. and there's all these coolrestaurants popping up that are all about the most obscurekind of meat you can eat. so, you know the data. what really is growing? what's happening? john robbins: both.

the light is gettingbrighter, and the shadows are getting darker. we're living in an interestingtime of crisis, in many ways, in which both sides-- we're seeing some signs of realprogress, more awareness, people take steps to livehealthier lives. we're going to have a gmolabeling bill nationally within the next two years. we may have washington state.

vermont may passone this year. there's a lot of differentthings. organic food productionhas increased 26-fold in the last 25 years. feedlot beef consumption, after"diet for a new america" was published, went down 25%in the next five years. there's a lot of good signs. but, on the other hand, monsantois really trying to control policy, and they'resucceeding to quite an extent.

on the other hand, there's a lotof dark things happening. that's why it's so importantto be alive today, to be present, to be engaged,to be aware. because each of us makesa difference with the way we live. and sometimes you cansay, well, these forces are so great. the numbers that are involved,the dollar figures are so great.

these entities, corporations,industries that have so much to gain financially from theway things have been, even though it's destroying thehealth of our nation and our people, they're notgoing to accede lightly to their profits. so what can we do? it's very important that wedo everything we can. my experience has been thatwhen you do what you can, truly, and stretch yourself inthat way, you find yourself

capable of doing more. somehow you become morecapable of bearing the responsibility. you meet people, things happen,you become stronger. kind of a simplistic analogyis to weight training. if you work out with a weight,and you confront a weight that's heavy for you and you doso systematically, you find it becomes lighter for you,and you become capable of lifting more weight.

that's how the muscle respondsto the stress. that's a simplistic analogy,but when we, as existential beings, as spiritual beings,as people on a journey here together, do everything we can,and stretch, and work on that edge of ourselves, thatgrowing edge of how accountable can webe for our lives? how engaged can we be withothers in a respectful way and a passionate way? how connected can be to theearth, so that speak on its

behalf, we act on its behalf,we live on its behalf? and how engaged can we be withthe whole earth community, so we find ourselves living withsome reverence for life, even in a society that is asmaterialistic as ours? what happens is you becomea greater person. you become more human, andmore powerful, and more connected to your soul. and that's where yourpower comes from. and more of us that do this,the more we become a force.

that it's certainly goingto be heard from. will we be loud enough? will we be able to turnthe tide in time? we'll find out. but we're going to find outkicking and screaming, and we're going to find out doingeverything we can, as opposed to just hiding in the "ain't itawful" attitude, and being passive and resigned andsuspicious and cynical. it's very cool.

people are like, oh, yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. that's going to getus nowhere. audience: i actually had thepleasure to host ingrid newkirk here at google. so i learned a lot about thedairies, and how, like you just mentioned about the cows,how they're impregnated, and then their calvesare taken away. so i contacted strausto learn. because i don't need meat, buti do like my milk and cheese,

because i wanted to findwhat is available out there as a consumer. and one thing they shared withme, and i'm glad they actually share this, was the cows, yes,they're in the field. they're fed pure, naturalproducts. but when it comes to the actualslaughtering, not only is their life span extendedbecause they are given good food, which means, like, tothree to four years more of horror, of being constantlyimpregnated, but then what

they also shared is that theslaughtering, it's the same process, whether it's organicor non-organic. john robbins: yeah. the usda requires this. by the way, straus dairy, ifyou're going to eat dairy products in the bay area, strausis one of the best. i don't, personally. i feel healthier without it. i feel the data show most peoplewould be healthier

without any dairy products. but if you're going to, and wantto get them as humanely as possible, straus isnot a bad choice. but it's a low bar, becausethe factory dairies are deplorable. and as she was saying, the usdahas requirements about slaughtering of animals destinedfor hamburger, or any other form of meatconsumption. so they have to be slaughteredin usda-certified

slaughterhouses, which arethese horror chambers. so someone like straus or nimanranch, there's these niche groups really tryingto do something in a more environmentally positive way, amore humane way, and a more healthy way. and oftentimes they do,to some extent. there are improvements there. but then when it comesto slaughter-- and every diary cow, by the way,every dairy cow ends up

as hamburger. so it's not that there isn'tkilling involved there. and every one of their malecalves ends up as veal. so they're killed at the ageof three or four months. so the dairy cows, insteadof in the typical factory dairies, they live to four orfive, at straus, they may go to seven, but they end upbeing slaughtered in a conventional slaughterhouse,trucked there under conditions that are exactly theindustry norm.

nicolette niman, whose husband,leroy niman, founded niman ranch, the largesthumanely raised operation in the country, i've talked toat length about this. she just hates it. she used to go, because shewould know the animals. she'd have names for them. and then she would actually goin the truck with, because the poor animals were undersuch stress. and she saw the misery, and shegot out of it because she

couldn't bear that part of it. we don't let them do theirown slaughtering. we don't let them find ahumane way to do it. and i've got to tell you, if iwere to describe to you in detail what goes on in factory slaughterhouses, you would cringe. you just would notwant to hear it. would ruin your lunch. i promise you.

i'm not going to do it. i don't want to inflict that. but at the same time, if weeat the products of this system, that's how we reallyinflict it on the animals, because we're paying them, theproducers, to do this. every time we buy a product,we're basically saying to the seller, do it again. and they will. they'll read your purchasethat way.

and i don't want to supportthese people. i don't want to support themwith what they're doing. that's another reason why i amabstinent from their products. and also because i feelso much better. i'm 65. i'm a marathon runner. i'm a triathlete. i feel great. my blood pressure is 90 over 60,and that's not with drugs.

and i see at my age of 65,i see guys aging very differently, depending on howthey've lived and the choices they've made. and there's no guarantee. some vegans die at 30. there's no guarantees. but there are probabilitiesthat are very strong. and if you want a higher qualityof life and a longer health span, eat aplat-strong diet.

don't eat processed foods. don't eat a lot of sugar. don't eat a lot of ice cream. i have to say it. and if you make a choice foryour own integrity, you own well-being, instead of theconsumer obsessions of our society, you'll be a healthierperson and a happier person. you'll have more beautyinside yourself your life will be richer.

your relationships willflourish more. and you'll be glad thatyou're alive. and i think that'squite a lot. rachel o'mara: hi. one more question. don't clap yet. so can you talk a littlebit more about the food revolution? it sounds really interesting.

is that for folks in theindustry, or is it consumers who can go? how would people get involvedwith that to learn more and really be part of that? john robbins: the best way todo it, there's a fantastic website if you go tofoodrevolution.org-- food revolution, one word, doto-r-g, you will find a great amount of resources there. and the food revolutionnetwork, of which i'm

co-founder, just put on-- andwe do this annually, an eight-day summit. and that just ended, but we'lldo another one soon. but there are a lot of thingshappening in the meantime. it's a network to support peopleat whatever level of political activism theywant to be at. some people, their activism isjust to buy more consciously. that's a good step. that's real.

that's valid. that matters. other people start gettinginvolved with writing, or signing petitions, informingother people. there's those opportunitiestoo. we started the food revolutionnetwork 14 months ago. we now have 150,000 members. it's growing rapidly. and what we have found is thatif something is happening in

washington, and it's right thatday, we can send out an email that day, telling peoplewhat they need to do and giving them the wherewithal todo it, and we can get 150,000 people signing a petitionwithin 24 hours. and we can deliver that to-- and we can do it state by state,so if we're trying to influence a particularlegislator, or on particular legislation, we can do that. we can tailor it.

it matters. so it's a way thatyou can become involved with these issues. and you might be more concernedabout gmos, or you might be more concerned aboutpesticides, or you might be more concerned about thetreatment of animals in or you might be more concernedabout something i hadn't mentioned, but it's very big, isthe targeting of kids with junk food ads.

the soda pop industry spends abillion dollars a year on ads that target childrenwith soda pop ads. there is a small effort thatthe cdc just this month started to do. they have a budget of a milliondollars for it-- that's not much-- to try to encourage kids-- high school kids in particular--to have a soda-free summer.

there is a congressmanfrom illinois. his name is aaron schock,young guy. he has just proposed a bill thatwould make it illegal for the cdc or any other agenciesthat cdc supports, or the national institutes of health,or an organization that they support, to educate orcommunicate any message that would try to reduce theconsumption of any legally marketed food. ie., he's trying to make itillegal for the cdc to spend a

million dollars telling kids,soda pop isn't great for your health, whereas pepsi and cokespend a billion dollars telling kids to drinkthe stuff. this is a weird worldsometimes. he says that the messages ofthe cdc are propaganda. the reason that this guy, aaronschock is doing this, his district is the homeof hostess company. they went bankrupt alittle while ago. they made the twinkies,and the--

you talk about junk food. they're kind of ourjunk food central. end they're in trouble,and they're going through a buyout. they're going to be back inbusiness soon, and he doesn't want the government to put outmessages that would increase the consumption of twinkies. well, i ask, why are twinkiescheaper per calorie than carrots?

because of our subsidies. we've got to take this twistedsituation, this perverse situation, and twist it backso that we're in alignment with our the goodness in ourhearts and in each other. i think we can do that. and that's why i'minvolved in this. and i invite all ofyou to join me. rachel o'mara: great. thanks so much.

john robbins: thank you.