No Happy Cows: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Food Revolution (Vegetarian, Vegan, Sustainable Diet, for Readers of The Ethics of What We Eat)

This book is like a crash course in subjects that everyone should know,and be very concerned about. So many of these subjects actually require a book or a set of encyclopedias to cover and explain,a 23 chapter,173 page book can't begin to do it. But it does provide fact-based and informative writing,plus a good selection of books and documentary films in the last six pages of the book,the Further Reading and Other Resources section.The meat,egg and dairy industry,food production and how our food choices deteriorate or benefit our health are topics intertwined with big business and profit. And commercialism and politics. These interests generally don't want the public to be influenced to avoid their products or question their practices and policies. Which is why we continue to be given entertainment,"part of the story"and loads of advertising in all forms of media the public consumes. Those interests generally influence or control most media sources. And so,compared to the entertainment,partial stories,misinformation and plain silence,we hear and see and read very little about topics we should care about and be well-informed of. The media is not providing this. Which is why this book will point so many people in the right direction,informing them and giving them the resources to find more information. Our choices are so often based on advertising and our assumption that what we're familiar with,doing what our parents and friends and everyone around us is doing,is what we should be doing. But people are making choices based on clever commercialism,well planned out psychological tricks that play on our thinking, emotions, mental make up and insecurities,not to mention our lack of information. But information allows us to think for ourselves and make decisions based on facts;and see the flimflam of "facts" commercialism presents us with to sell us their products or convince us we need them. Our choices are not our own when Madison Avenue shoves an attractive person in front of us and tells us how their product will enhance some aspect of our lives. This all plays on emotion and our mental make make-up. We don't realize or consider that no real facts are given to us to think about. In all the commercials and packaging for sweet,sugar loaded food,they never suggest or mention sugar consumption causes diabetes. I think sugar products should come with a warning like cigarettes do. And cholesterol-containing products. And high-calorie-no-nutrition products. But they never tell us how using their products can hurt us,like sugar and disease or one of our newer epidemic "diseases", obesity. Being overweight isn't deadly. But the condition your body chemistry and vital organs are in from the high calorie foods you spent years and years or all of your life eating,is what eventually makes obesity a killer disease. But they don't tell us about so many things.Making bad food choices not only gives you the health-destroying effects of the foods themselves,but bad food choices robs your body of the vitamins and minerals and nutrients found in good food choices. Two very bad results for the price of one.But they don't tell us these things. And on and on for every food product made from animals,milk,eggs or flesh,finned,furred,feathered and every living creature that doesn't fit that description. The packaging and advertisements never mention that ALL animal products,and I do mean ALL animal products,contain cholesterol. And animal products are THE ONLY SOURCE of cholesterol in the diet; your body needs cholesterol and your body produces all the cholesterol it requires. Dietary cholesterol is cholesterol in the foods people eat.And they never mention all the diseases connected to cholesterol or the death rate from heart disease alone. They want you to buy the products they paid good money to advertise to you. More information,or "the downside" is what would make people NOT choose their products,which makes their commercials or advertisement ineffective and a waste of money. So there are important things they never mention but people find out for themselves. Like when they're on insulin till they die or they need expensive cholesterol prescriptions,or need heart surgery. Or die unexpectedly with no life insurance or will that would have helped their spouse and children. It's like someone giving you a nice vacation house on the beach. What they didn't tell you was the water in the area is contaminated with carcinogens. The food industry and advertisements are literally like a Pandora's Box. When opened plagues and sickness and death engulf the world. And food-related illnesses are preventable and common and may well be the main cause of most of the diseases that amount to epidemics in modern life in so many developed countries where "the standard of living is high". I think that's another bit of commercialism. I can think of several changes that would change our familiar "high"standard of living,that would make people happier and healthier. But a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. A lot of people probably think we have a high standard of living and "a good life".This book provides facts and information. I am well enough informed,but I know a lot of information in certain, concentrated subjects or areas. This book focuses on some topics I have not concentrated on,and contains certain facts and details which are fresh pieces of subjects I am well informed on,or have figured out for myself. But this book has something most people,if not everyone,can learn much needed information from. And the less someone knows about these very important subjects, the more I recommend they read this book.

This was not remotely the book I expected. Robbins' first book, Diet for a New America, was the first wildly popular book to advocate veganism based on health, environmental, and ethical considerations. Since then, there have been a half dozen or so popular books covering much the same territory. They include my book Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating (1998), Robbins' DFaNA follow-up The Food Revolution (2001), Matthew Scully's Dominion (2002), my Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, & Money (2005), Singer and Mason's The Ethics of What We Eat (2006), and Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals (2009).Since it's been more than two years since the release of Eating Animals, we're overdue for a new research-and-analysis-heavy book intended to explore the evolving dialog surrounding animal agribusiness, food politics, and factory farming. Unfortunately, No Happy Cows doesn't carry things forward in a meaningful way. It's primarily a collection of previously published blog entries, with some new material worked in, and the subject matter is all over the place. That's not to say that Robbins chooses uninteresting topics. I was very interested, for instance, to hear what he had to say about the value of eating chocolate. But in a world where pink slime, ag-gag, giant meat recalls, and so forth are constantly in the news, I don't think Robbins' latest effort was the result of a conscious choice to select the most pressing food politics topics of our day, and to offer up a unified vision of where the food movement is at and how we can prevail over corporate agribusiness.Robbins is a visionary guy capable of writing engaging prose, and several of the book's essays are wonderful reading. I'm certain there will be omnivores who read this book and go vegan on the spot. But the essays feel like they were written to be published individually online, not collectively for this book. And there's little in this book that has advanced my thinking on its subject in any meaningful way.Robbins certainly has the talent and expertise to write the next major book on veganism and food politics, but No Happy Cows is not a serious effort to open up a new vein of conversation on the topic. If you're enchanted with Robbins' style of writing, you should buy this book, but I can't recommend it for anyone else. Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals remains the best recent book on the topic; and let's hope that Eating Animals is soon supplanted by a new title that brings the conversation up to date.(This review first appeared on Vegan.com)

Just finished reading this book. After reading it I was almost convinced to turn vegan but at my age I'm so used to eating meat I doubt I could do it. But one thing is clear from reading No Happy Cows, is that our food supply and how we treat animals destined for our dinner tables, needs changing. If only half of facts contained in this book are true, the food supply industry is feeding us crap while it continues to subject cows, chickens, pigs and other animals to the most inhumane conditions imaginable. In the end this is basically a moral issue that needs to be addressed; but will only be addressed if the public demands action on the part of the Congress, the FDA and the USDA. But what really got me upset is how we allow Hershey, Folgers, Maxwell House and other food conglomerates, can allow child slavery to exist to harvest the crops that go into their products, by burying their head in the sand and pretend that the problem doesn't exist.

This is a book that everyone should read as well as Diet for a new America then there would be more for everyone to eat and cruelty would end for animals.

John Robbins' has undoubtedly written some very good books on nutrition over the years."The Food Revolution", was the one that brought me on-board, now over a dozen years ago.I own a copy of this book, but I don't really need to read it, in order to encourage others to get off of cow's milk.Still, it amazes me that seemingly well educated people, will sometimes still try to defend cow's milk, as a "food group".