The World Peace Diet
By Will Tuttle PhD
Lantern Books
I want to start off by saying something nice about this book. The front cover has a colorful, pretty picture on it. And then there’s. . . well, that’s about it. Moving on.
The basic premise of this book is that violence against animals leads to violence against people. I will actually agree that people who sadistically abuse animals often fit the pattern that ends in human violence. This author goes further, however, by asserting that any animal-based agriculture is de facto violent to animals, and anyone who eats or is in any way an accomplice to animal-based farming will become violent also. Anyone familiar with the scientific method knows you only need one counter example to shoot a theory down. Shooting this one down is almost too easy. The Amish and Mennonites present a major problem for his theory.
At this point a trend is emerging that continues throughout the book. Tuttle repeatedly ignores any inconvenient evidence that does not suit his agenda. He insists that confining animals in any way is an act of terrorism. Confined animals are tormented animals. Therefore, according to Tuttle, since factory farms are evil, veganism is the only dietary solution.
Tuttle never even considers small grass-based, humane farms. As far as I can tell he has never been to a farm anything like Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm. I’ve been there many times. I’ve seen chickens that were completely free-range and able to bolt if they didn’t like it there. They didn’t go anywhere. All the animals there look quite content and happy. However, this option would muddy Tuttle’s agenda, so he ignores it.
Tuttle then attempts to add credibility to veganism by claiming it is promoted by major world religions, and he makes several references to Gandhi. True to form, there is no mention of the fact that while Gandhi tried very hard to achieve pure veganism, he simply couldn’t do it. He had to resort to raw goat milk to survive.
Then there is Christianity and we are told that Jesus was a vegan. It is a mystery to me how anyone can make such an assertion when one of Christ’s more well known feats was feeding five thousand people with bread and fish. Tuttle goes on to insist that the Apostle Paul was not a legitimate, good Christian because he was not a vegan. I’m sure Christians worldwide will be intrigued to learn this.
We next see this incredible, selective scholarship and bias go to work on nutrition basics. We are told about the “myth of complete protein.” Tuttle claims that animal fats contain bad trans fat. He provides no reference for this “fact” and I doubt he could find one if he tried. He might stumble onto the fact that butter does technically contain natural trans fat but it is not the harmful form that he and everyone else warns against. There is no evidence that he knows anything about this distinction, however.
The pattern continues as the author moves on to other specific nutrients. Vitamin B12 is a subject he clearly can’t avoid. His claim is that B12 is abundant in the soil and we could get it from plants except for industrial processing methods. If this is true, am I to believe no vegan-oriented farmers out there are willing to produce veggies that are not subjected to industrial cleaning?
Tuttle continues by pointing out that the vegan diet is higher in sixteen out of nineteen nutrients than the Standard American Diet. Now there’s high praise. Nutrients that are conspicuously absent from his list include the ones Weston Price found to be so crucial to real health—the fat soluble vitamins A, D and K2. Tuttle does not say one word about them. I would guess he doesn’t dare.
We learn later that testosterone is a nightmare. Come to think of it, I didn’t notice much evidence of testosterone in the writing or style of the book in general. There is so much more I could say, but that wouldn’t be very nice.
The thumb is very DOWN on this book which is packed with sloppy logic full of holes, the occasional scientific façade, and oft-repeated emotionally charged drivel. If this is one of the better examples of vegan thinking it should stand as a testament to why you do not want to sacrifice your brain cells or general health to veganism. I will concede that if everyone in the world adopts a vegan diet, there will be world peace by the time the last one of us drops dead from malnutrition.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Fall 2010.
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Thanks for another recommendation for a great book. I occasionally check this propaganda driven website for great books. I just look in the thumbs down section and know it will be of great value. You provide a good service for people doing their research. Thanks again.
I think this is an excellent book by Will Tuttle – really eyeopening. Everyone who thinks that animals have a moral value will be effected by this book.
A quote from Will Tuttle:
The second form of slavery is animal slavery. In just the U.S. alone, over nine billion animals enslaved on factory farms and family farms are killed for food and leather annually, as well as untold billions of fishes in aquaculture operations. Beyond the meat, dairy, and egg industries, many millions more animals are enslaved in breeding operations (such as dogs, birds, and horses), as well as in zoos, circuses, research and testing facilities, and for other products such as feathers, wool, and silk. The scope of animal slavery today is so vast that it is seemingly beyond human conception, involving billions of animals used for an almost limitless variety of products and services, and inflicting a relentless avalanche of depravity and cruelty on these animals who are seen as property objects existing merely to give us more milk, more offspring, more products, and more profits.
This animal slavery is more deeply entwined and ingrained into the fabric of our culture than human slavery, and it is this underlying pervasive and invisible violence of animal slavery that conditions our minds, feelings, and behavior to create a human society that mirrors the injustice and cruelty we routinely inflict on the animals we own. Historically, human slavery followed on the heels of animal slavery, and by stealing the sovereignty of animals, we historically created precisely the mindset of reductionism, domination, privilege, and disconnectedness that has led to and continues to generate slavery and injustice in our human society. How can we ever expect to create a society of freedom, equality, and harmony among humans when we routinely and heedlessly inflict the opposite on other living beings on such a large scale?
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/what-are-the-roots-of-freedom-and-slavery/
I love this book! I believe that ALL “animal-based agriculture is de facto violent to animals”! What is NOT violent about raising a creature simply eat it? That is the ultimate in reductionism! Its abundantly clear that this reviewer fails to understand the basic premise of “cause and effect”, obvious by his use of the oxymoron “Humane farm”. I guess that’s sort of like a humane slave driver on a humane cotton plantation!
The only “theory” around here that has several holes in it is Dr. Prices assessment that you need animal based cholesterol to absorb minerals, perhaps this reviewer should also read the book “Thrive” by Brendan Braizer, which explains this myth, and refutes it with facts. The Engine 2 diet is another good one!
I think The World Peace Diet is brilliant. It’s the first book I ever read that put all the pieces together for me. If we really do want world peace, if it’s not just an idea we talk about in our churches and on our holy days, it’s going to take a shift in our behavior. Believing in world peace is revolutionary. Will Tuttle offers a game plan, and he walks the walk. Any man that is willing to defend the sacred feminine, and to challenge the status quo of domination, has my vote. This is what real men are about.
from the John Robbins article:
“I regret to say that those running the Weston A. Price Foundation today seem to have their own agenda. They are proponents of the philosophy that in order to be healthy, people must eat large amounts of saturated fat from animal products. They insist that only with the regular consumption of lard, butter and other full-fat dairy products, and beef, can people derive the nutrients they need to be healthy.
Toward that end, the Foundation has widely publicized an article written by a former member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, Stephen Byrnes, titled “The Myths of Vegetarianism.”
The article is harshly critical of vegetarian diets, and concludes with an “About the Author” section which states: “Stephen Byrnes… enjoys robust health on a diet that includes butter, cream, eggs, meat, whole milk, dairy products and offal.” In fact, Stephen Byrnes suffered a fatal stroke in June, 2004. According to reports of his death, he had yet to reach his 40th birthday.”
He had AIDS.
Holistic health coach
The World Peace Diet is the most brilliant book I have ever read and nails the disconnection people live on a daily basis. Denying the truth about our diet and how we treat animals is nothing but moral failure. I find it disturbing that a website which promotes the industrial abusers and their foods of death even has the guts to trash a book which had been voted one of the best of the 21st century.
Propaganda driven website – darn straight! Thanks for the publicity on this book. One of the greatest healing books out there. But what does Weston Price know about that? Weston Price promotes cruelty to animals.
You sound really really sad. No Dr Price does not advocate cruelty to animals. Eating animals doesn’t mean animal cruelty. It’s just like saying eating plants is plant cruelty. Get yourself straight and eat what will nourish you because our environment doesn’t like people who change their diet because “it’s better” for protecting animals
The Okinawan elders are the healthiest and longest-lived population ever studied (the NIH studied them for years). 12% of their calories come from soy (both fermented and unfermented products), which the Weston Price Foundation considers a poison.
During WWII, when the Nazis commandeered the farmed animals of Norway, and Norwegians were essentially on a vegan diet, heart disease rates plummeted. After the war, when Norwegians resumed eating animal products, heart disease rates shot back up. These were all free-range animals.
Thanks!
Thank’s to this stupid review I have placed an order for this book.
There is no world peace if human are not allowed to eat meat
This reviewer fails to mention the unseen aspects of eating violence and fear. Obviously he is so addicted to his dead food diet that he tries to justify his bloody hand.
Fantastic book. Violence and brutality in our society has a root. And it people like this critic that blindly promotes this continued slaughter for profit, not health.
God Bless Tuttle. I’m off to purchase even more copies to bless humanity.
I dont know about this book. But ask yourself this question. When a bear steps into the copper river in Alaska and bites the head off of a salmon, do you think she’s thinking about the morality of it? Do you think when she feeds her cub, shes thinking about world peace? What about a lion that kills a gazelle, an owl the kills a rabbit? Are you telling me these animals eating the flesh of another is not peaceful? Do you think they are eating violence and fear? These animals are doing what they naturally do. I do not agree with factory farming. I abhor it!! This is a great article and really resonates with me. Blessings to all!!!
http://www.colorfulcanary.com/2013/02/vegan-vs-paleo.html
Bears, Lions and owls have no choice and I do not fault them for eating other creatures. But I do have a choice, so I look to members of my own species who embody characteristics that I aspire to have myself — who exemplify compassion, peace, and brilliance — Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Louisa May Alcott, Pythagoras, George Barnard Shaw, Leonardo Da Vinci, These luminaries, all shunned killing animals for food. They have shown us humanity’s future. Now it’s time for the rest of humanity to evolve.
MALNUTRITION!!! You’re joking right. Tell that to the amazing line of vegan athletes who are outperforming their clogged up, oxygen hungry meat eating counterparts. Tell Patrick Baboumian, Germany’s STRONGEST man, he’s malnourished as he carries world record weights to be the world champion in his field. Tell Scott Jurek he is malnourished as he relaxes after finishing the Appalachian Trail in record time. Tell Mac Danzig he is malnourished as he continues to win in his class of power built boxers. Tell Jim Morris, 75 year young body builder, still totally buff and muscle bound, he is malnourished. The lengthy list of VEGAN athletes goes on.
If it were not so dangerous to think this obsolete, unsustainable, incalculably cruel way, it would be laughable that anyone in this day and age, who can still think that a whole food, nutrient dense, non-violent diet, the optimal diet for all concerns, can’t give humans everything they need! The world’s disease both environmental and human chronic diseases, are the consequence of this organizations ideology.
http://vegnews.com/articles/page.do?pageId=7067&catId=1 Ask 101 year young cardiologist Dr. Ellsworth Wareham what HE prescribes to get people OFF medications and away from the surgeons knife.
This is a great book. This article is very misleading.
This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It doesn’t matter how free-range, grass fed, well looked after any animal is, it still ends up with it’s throat cut for our food preference – not choice. The animal has no choice. You say in this review that no one backs up any of Will Tuttle’s claims regarding various vitamins. Could I please point you in the direction of Dr’s Caldwell Esselstyne, Colin Campbell, Neal Bernard, Doug Lysle, Ellsworth Wareham, Ornish, Clapper and Michael Gregor of the Physician Committee’s 2015 lecture pretty much debunks most of your criticisms. As a non believer myself whether Jesus was a vegetarian seems relatively unimportant. But the book ‘The Lost Religion of Jesus’ written by Keith Akers argues the point well. It certainly makes a lot more sense of the crucifixion than just upsetting a few money-changers! This latter book was critiqued by blogger and filmmaker Kamran Pasha. In his thorough examination this Muslim scholar agrees that Akers conclusion is probably correct. Also watch Conspiracy, Earthlings, Unity, The Witness, Speciesism, Peaceable Kingdom, Forks Over Knives, Plant Pure Nation. I could go on. All of the above, whether from a health, environmental or animal liberation perspective, sing from the same hymn sheet.
Sorry error in my previous missive – should be Cowspiracy not conspiracy – think word check changed it!
A great book! Weston Price foundation I have seen so many ardent followers of your advice destroy their health and become obese and develop chronic illness. The only aspects of your advice that have any value are your acknowledgment of the value of high quality fruits and vegetables in the diet. The rest contradicts the large amounts of medical research that shows your advice to be inaccurate and dangerous.
This is such an important book! It affirms our connectedness with all life and offers hope for living cooperatively in a non-violent world driven by justice for all beings. Thank you so much for your ongoing work to make our world a better place, Dr Tuttle! I have heard you speak many times and You are a great leader among sapiens.