Hyeon Een

Joined: 24 Jun 2005
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Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 8:18 am Post subject: The Vegetarian Myth (Book) |
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Has anyone read this book?
It's one of the most annoying books I've read in recent years. In simple terms, the author addresses the problems that agriculture raises. (All our food depends on fossil fuels to provide fertilizer and transport, planting fields necessitates the slaughter of many many mammals and other animals etc.)
The book knocks the lipid hypothesis, explains why factory farming is not a good long term thing for us humans and gives some good arguments against moral vegeterianism or veganism.
In theory, it ticks the boxes for a book I'd like to read.
But, the author is an IDIOT. She ruins the book with random nonsense feminist shtick which has no relevance to the science in her book. She will randomly drop in comments which imply that all men are gang rapists and woman haters whilst in the same chapter explaining some quite interesting facts about corn.
It's got to be one of the most frustrating books I've ever read. I'm not quite through with it yet, but about every ten pages I want to bitch-slap the writer for being an idiot.
But she also has some good points. Grr..
One whole chapter is basically sourced from Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma", which is an EXCELLENT, well researched book. The writer of this book has done all of her research on the internet as far as I can tell.
She also introduces RIDICULOUS stuff. For example she references an online vegan forum on which a member supposedly recommended building a fence in the middle of the Serengeti and putting carnivores on one side, and herbivores on the other. Only an idiot would think that a post like that would be anything other than trolling; yet she references it in her book as an argument against the intelligence of vegans. Vegans may be misled (in my opinion) but none of them are so dumb as to think that would be a good idea. A vegan message board got trolled and she ran with it in her book.
But at the same time, she explains the fundemental problems of agriculture. These are very valid criticisms which will probably affect us in our lifetimes.
It's SO frustrating to read a book which COULD be good but turns out to be crap due to the author being a crazy idiot. I read this book, and think a GOOD author could really make something out of this.
Anyway, has anyone else read this book? |
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