Book Review

The Face On Your Plate: The Truth About Food

by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

What you eat affects not only your own health, but the environment, the livelihood of farmers and merchants, and can mean actual life or death for an animal. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson has written many books about animal rights, including the bestselling When Elephants Weep. In The Face On Your Plate, he covers the many issues associated with the production and consumption of animal foods, giving readers the information they need to be able to make conscious informed decisions about what they want to put on their own plates.

The Face On Your Plate explains the affects of eating animal foods on human health and how diets high in saturated fats from meat and dairy products, increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and certain types of cancer. Masson also relates the impact on the environment from the clearing of land, overuse of water, and the devastating impact of the all the animal waste-which he says is over 130 times greater than that of human waste and the greatest source of pollution to our rivers and lakes, not to mention the oceans polluted from the waste of farmed fish. Masson also reports on the treatment of animals in factory farms?the horrible life endured by laying hens and dairy cows, as well as animals raised and slaughtered for meat.

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Much of The Face On Your Plate is similar to Erik Marcus' Meat Market or Pete Singers The Way We Eat, but this book goes a step further into the emotional life of the animal. Masson argues that even if and cages were to be enlarged and conditions improved, the animals are still after all in cages. They cannot live they way they evolved to live and they can never be happy while in a cage. He also effectively refutes many of the typical arguments given by those who eat meat and shows that our ancestors were actually less hunters and more gatherers and that meat-eating is not so much natural as traditional. He also uses his psychoanalytic training also is the basis for the chapter on denial. He asserts that humans use denial as a defense mechanism and that most people really don't want to know where there food comes from.

Masson ends the book with a little snapshot of his life as a vegan-what he and his family eat; the different diets they've tried from raw to gluten-free; what works for him and what doesn't. At 68 and the father of three children-two of whom are under the age of 15, Masson feels he is healthier than he has ever been.

This is an excellent book to introduce someone to the truth about how animal foods are produced. It's also a great book for those who are already vegan to become recharged and re-inspired to help end animal suffering and reduce environmental pollution.

Cathe Olson is the author of the new nondairy ice cream cookbook: Lick It! Cream Dreamy Vegan Ice Cream Your Mouth Will Love, as well as Simply Natural Baby FoodSimply Natural Baby Food and The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook. Visit Cathe's Web site at www.simplynaturalbooks.com and her blog at http://catheolson.blogspot.com.

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