Jonathan Spitz
Jonathan Spitz is an environmental and animal rights activist. In 1990, after reading Diet for a New America by John Robbins, he realized that humans lacked the anatomy or physiology of apex predators and our true role in a sustainable ecosystem is as a plant-eating species. With this new understanding of the human place on the food chain, at the age of thirty-seven he adopted a plant-based vegan diet and began defending the rights of all animals to live free from human exploitation.
Through the 1990s, he served on the Board of Directors of the Willits Environmental Center to thwart the relentless destructive forces of local economic development. In the 2000s and 2010s, he authored an op/ed column, Connecting…the…Dots, that focused on environmental and animal rights issues for his hometown newspaper, The Mendocino County Observer. For thirty years, Jonathan kept abreast of the most current studies on the complex relationship between the human food niche and the Earth’s ecosystems. When he realized there were no books in the ecological canon telling the story of how humans evolved from an obscure herbivorous species to become the world’s most populous carnivorous apex predator species, and how this change in human diet has led to epidemics of chronic degenerative disease, runaway climate change and mass species extinction, he decided to write it himself. Jonathan has lived in Mendocino County on the California North Coast since the 1980s. |
Man Eating Plants
Non-Fiction
Over the past two million years, humans have evolved from an obscure herbivorous species living in the tropical forests of equatorial Africa to become the world’s most populous apex predator. Unfortunately, this fateful change in the human diet to include animal-sourced foods is the leading cause in the 21st century of chronic degenerative disease, runaway climate change, and mass species extinction. Man Eating Plants: How a Vegan Diet Can Save the World weaves together published works by the world’s leading scientists and historians to narrate how we arrived at these three interrelated crises and how we can save the world by transitioning back to our natural plant-based diet. Arranged chronologically in terms of timeline and strategically to facilitate an easily digestible experience for readers, Spitz’s case for this lifestyle spares no empirical detail. Covering everything from the evolution of the human diet and the history of agriculture to the inception of the animal industrial complex and the harm this does to our planet, and all written in Spitz’s clear and concise prose, Man Eating Plants is sure to be an enriching experience for readers of any background. |