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Two men lived on an exclusive meat diet for 1 year and a third man for 10 days. The relative amounts of lean and fat, meat ingested were left to the instinctive choice of the individuals. At the end of the year, the subjects were mentally alert, physically active, and showed no specific physical changes in any system of the body. Vitamin deficiencies did not appear. Kidney function tests revealed no evidence of kidney damage. In these trained subjects, the clinical observations and laboratory studies gave no evidence that any ill effects had occurred from the prolonged use of the exclusive meat diet.

In what's billed as the "world's first diet book," William Banting offered his strategy for losing weight. He ate four meals a day, didn't exercise much, drank alcohol, and swore off only a few foods. And, what's more, anyone familiar with current low-carb diets will find similar advice here -- advice given in 1864. William Banting was a carpenter in Victorian London whose weight spiraled out of control. His eyesight and hearing failed, he had weak knees, and he suffered an umbilical rupture, health problems he attributed to his weight. He consulted doctors but nothing helped. Then Banting discovered this diet and got results within just a few days. He ate lots of meat, a few vegetables, shunned some foods that he's previously overindulged in, and drank alcohol with lunch and dinner. He lost fifty pounds, and his health improved. He published this pamphlet detailing his diet and distributed the copies for free. By its third printing it had sold 63,000 copies, and the term "Banting" became synonymous with "dieting" in England.

We’ve been told that a vegetarian diet can feed the hungry, honor the animals, and save the planet. But, is it true? Lierre Keith believed in that plant-based diet and spent twenty years as a vegan. But in The Vegetarian Myth, she argues that we’ve been led astray—not by our longings for a just and sustainable world, but by our ignorance. The truth is that agriculture is a relentless assault against the planet, and more of the same won’t save us. In service to annual grains, humans have devastated prairies and forests, driven countless species extinct, altered the climate, and destroyed the topsoil—the basis of life itself. Keith argues that if we are to save this planet, our food must be an act of profound and abiding repair: it must come from inside living communities, not be imposed across them. Part memoir, part nutritional primer, and part political manifesto, The Vegetarian Myth will challenge everything you thought you knew about food politics.