This is the most important book of the 21st century...
because it’s the one that will get us to the 22nd century.
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Jeff Popick is a passionate man with a compelling message. In The Real Forbidden Fruit he describes, often with great brilliance, the reasons he and many others feel both a moral and intellectual imperative to be vegan. As outspoken as he is thoughtful, Jeff Popick isn't about to sit back in resignation and watch humanity descend ever deeper into darkness. Shining like a torch, his writings come from deeply held convictions, and profound concern for the welfare of all sentient beings.
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WARNING: This book is not for the faint-hearted!
In "The Real Forbidden Fruit," Jeff Popick blows wide open the myths and misconceptions surrounding meat and its effects on our planet, our bodies, our society and our spirituality - and it's not a pretty picture.
Using thoughtful and thorough analysis, "The Real Forbidden Fruit" demonstrates how the animal industry, and our complicity with it, has created the dysfunctional and self-destructive world we live in today. Disease, famine, environmental disaster and even war are demonstrated to be direct results of our callous treatment of our fellow inhabitants of this planet.
Fortunately, there is a solution that can lead us all back to the Paradise this world once was, but it requires that we finally recognize what was "The Real Forbidden Fruit".
Foreword by Howard Lyman (The Mad Cowboy)
Today, in my opinion, the Earth is poised on the brink of disaster. For many years I've been concerned at the rate we are trashing the planet. At the rate we are destroying rain forests, they will cease to exist in our lifetime.
The Earth's topsoil is being displaced by our farming practices. In three hundred years, the United States has lost the majority of topsoil that was here when the boat people arrived. Lost topsoil and chemical runoff draining down the Mississippi have caused an area in the Gulf of Mexico as large as the State of New Jersey to be devoid of life.
If these problems are not enough, we can add global warming. The millions of tons of carbon being exhausted into the atmosphere have changed the temperature on the planet. The Earth is warning to the point where the temperature of the water off the coast of California has increased four degrees in the last forty years. The ice fields are shrinking at a rate of about fourteen thousand square miles of ice pack each year. Studies indicate the Arctic ice fields have eroded about forty percent since the 1950s. Melting at today's rate would mean the Arctic ice cap would disappear within eighteen years.
The Antarctic ice cap is also deteriorating. Recently, a piece of the South Pole ice pack, which is one and a half times larger than the State of Rhode Island, broke off and is drifting north into warm water, where it will melt. There is concern that if a larger section breaks off and moves north, it could raise the levels of the world's oceans by seventeen feet.
You look at all of these things and you ask yourself, What in the world does this have to do with eating a vegan diet? The answer is: everything.
The population has exceeded six billion people and is doubling every fifty years. There is great concern about how we are going to feed a hungry world. Yet we continue to waste valuable food (grain) and energy to raise animals for food. The fact is, it takes at least twelve pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat.
Global warming, loss of valuable top soil, feeding a hungry world and not wasting energy are at the core of the reasons for adopting a plant-based diet. The largest area of change available to planners in the short term to avert mass starvation will be a change in the global diet.
It makes no difference if the reason you are exploring a plant-based diet is your love of animals, your concern for the environment or just your own health; this book has the answers. Jeff Popick has taken a very complex and personal issue and put it in a factual, easy-to-read form that can change your life. He has also given us the justification for our action as it affects all of creation.
"The Real Forbidden Fruit" has something for everyone. Jeff shows the interconnected nature of power, greed, violence, freedom, love and many other aspects of our lives as they relate to a vegan diet. I was totally drawn into the fabric of this book. When I finished reading it I knew what the reader should do to make a start on the path to a better life before it is too late for our children and grandchildren.
I wish I had read this book twenty years ago. Then I could have started on my own path toward better health for the planet, the animals and myself. I pray we change in time to save the future generations.
-- Howard Lyman
(Howard Lyman is a fourth generation cattle rancher turned vegan who achieved notoriety when his explanation on "Oprah" about how beef is produced caused Ms. Winfrey to exclaim, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!"
The resulting lawsuit brought by a group of Texas cattlemen was finally dismissed "with prejudice" (meaning it cannot be appealed or filed again anywhere, including the Supreme Court) in August 2002.
Lyman is former president of EarthSave International and the International Vegetarian Union, and is the best-selling author of Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat.
As Founder/President of Voice for a Viable Future, Lyman spends his time writing and speaking on the calamitous ramifications of a meat-based economy, for which his background in agribusiness prepared him so well.
His latest book is NO MORE BULL! The Mad Cowboy Targets America's Worst Enemy: Our Diet.)
