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No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating
A culinary and cultural history of plant-based eating in the United States that delves into the subcultures and politics that have defined alternative food— Diet for a Small Planet for a new generation
The vegan diet used to be associated only with eccentric hippies and tofu-loving activists who shop at co-ops and live on compounds. We’ve come a long way since then. Now, fine-dining restaurants like Eleven Madison Park cater to chic upscale clientele with a plant-based menu, and Impossible Whoppers are available at Burger King. But can plant-based food keep its historical anti-capitalist energies if it goes mainstream? And does it need to?
In No Meat Required, author Alicia Kennedy chronicles the fascinating history of plant-based eating in the United States, from the early experiments in tempeh production undertaken by the Farm commune in the 70s to the vegan punk cafes and anarchist zines of the 90s to the chefs and food writers seeking to decolonize vegetarian food today.
Many people become vegans because they are concerned about the role capitalist food systems play in climate change, inequality, white supremacy, and environmental and cultural degradation. But a world where Walmart sells frozen vegan pizzas and non-dairy pints of ice cream are available at gas stations – raises distinct questions about the meanings and goals of plant-based eating.
Kennedy—a vegetarian, former vegan, and once-proprietor of a vegan bakery—understands how to present this history with sympathy, knowledge, and humor. No Meat Required brings much-needed depth and context to our understanding of vegan and vegetarian cuisine, and makes a passionate argument for retaining its radical heart.
The vegan diet used to be associated only with eccentric hippies and tofu-loving activists who shop at co-ops and live on compounds. We’ve come a long way since then. Now, fine-dining restaurants like Eleven Madison Park cater to chic upscale clientele with a plant-based menu, and Impossible Whoppers are available at Burger King. But can plant-based food keep its historical anti-capitalist energies if it goes mainstream? And does it need to?
In No Meat Required, author Alicia Kennedy chronicles the fascinating history of plant-based eating in the United States, from the early experiments in tempeh production undertaken by the Farm commune in the 70s to the vegan punk cafes and anarchist zines of the 90s to the chefs and food writers seeking to decolonize vegetarian food today.
Many people become vegans because they are concerned about the role capitalist food systems play in climate change, inequality, white supremacy, and environmental and cultural degradation. But a world where Walmart sells frozen vegan pizzas and non-dairy pints of ice cream are available at gas stations – raises distinct questions about the meanings and goals of plant-based eating.
Kennedy—a vegetarian, former vegan, and once-proprietor of a vegan bakery—understands how to present this history with sympathy, knowledge, and humor. No Meat Required brings much-needed depth and context to our understanding of vegan and vegetarian cuisine, and makes a passionate argument for retaining its radical heart.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published August 15, 2023
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5380 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 88 reviews
September 11, 2023
My first foray into the history of plant-based eating, and unfortunately…I didn’t care for this one.
The issue I had with this book was that it felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to be. Is it a history of plant-based eating? A review of restaurateurs in the US (mainly NYC)? A personal essay of why Kennedy just gets so, so sad about the thought of meat? I don’t know.
Each chapter has a premise—lab meat, vegan cheese, tofu, etc, but I felt they went off topic every single time. We’d start talking about one thing and suddenly I’m reading about Superiority Burger, again. It’s a very repetitive book. Did you know the US subsidizes the meat and dairy industry with $38 billion a year? I sure do now.
Additionally, I felt like a lot of this book was hypocritical. You’re talking about how tofu is a historically important protein source in Asia, and yet it’s also our enemy in the climate movement because of monocropping…monocrops are bad, mind you, but there’s no acknowledgement of this. And, I have to say, GMO DOESNT MEAN ANYTHING. I am sick to death of that phrase and the demonization of food.
I also believe this book is far too dismissive of fake and lab-grown meats. I think anyone even remotely interested in plant-based eating—for any reason—will tell you they are not the basis of diet. But that doesn’t make them useless. For a lot of people it’s their door into a new form of diet—it was for me. I’d much rather have more people eating beyond burgers than continuing to eat beef without a second thought. This is hardly comparable to an oven that can be run through an iPhone.
There’s very little discussion about accessibility. Much of the US population lives in food deserts, where they don’t have access to these magical fruits and veggies, only to fast food giants like McDonald’s. Many of them simply do not have the time, energy, resources to cook a meal with lentils instead. This is a critical issue, not just with factory farming. What else are people supposed to eat? What are they supposed to do? If McDonald’s having an Impossible patty is the only way anyone is supposed to get away from meat, so be it. It’s easy to stick your nose up to these alternatives when you have a wealth of options to choose from.
It is an unfortunate reality that right now, our only solutions are based in capitalism. I don’t like it, not one bit; we’re never going to be serious reforms without getting rid of the whole system. But until we get to that point—if ever—we have to play ball. Whether we like that or not. Our system isn’t capable of solely supporting small farmers at the moment, and to think we could make that switch so easily is just naive.
It’s not all negative. I learned a lot about vegan cheese (as another reviewer mentioned), as well as a lot of history about vegetarianism as counterculture, etc. I found this fascinating, and I wish more of the book focused on these elements.
Yeah. I don’t know. This book just felt way too personally about Kennedy’s experience and life, and less about the history as a whole. Anecdotes are one thing, but this almost felt memoir-like at times—and i don’t know Kennedy at all, so I just wasn’t interested. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The issue I had with this book was that it felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to be. Is it a history of plant-based eating? A review of restaurateurs in the US (mainly NYC)? A personal essay of why Kennedy just gets so, so sad about the thought of meat? I don’t know.
Each chapter has a premise—lab meat, vegan cheese, tofu, etc, but I felt they went off topic every single time. We’d start talking about one thing and suddenly I’m reading about Superiority Burger, again. It’s a very repetitive book. Did you know the US subsidizes the meat and dairy industry with $38 billion a year? I sure do now.
Additionally, I felt like a lot of this book was hypocritical. You’re talking about how tofu is a historically important protein source in Asia, and yet it’s also our enemy in the climate movement because of monocropping…monocrops are bad, mind you, but there’s no acknowledgement of this. And, I have to say, GMO DOESNT MEAN ANYTHING. I am sick to death of that phrase and the demonization of food.
I also believe this book is far too dismissive of fake and lab-grown meats. I think anyone even remotely interested in plant-based eating—for any reason—will tell you they are not the basis of diet. But that doesn’t make them useless. For a lot of people it’s their door into a new form of diet—it was for me. I’d much rather have more people eating beyond burgers than continuing to eat beef without a second thought. This is hardly comparable to an oven that can be run through an iPhone.
There’s very little discussion about accessibility. Much of the US population lives in food deserts, where they don’t have access to these magical fruits and veggies, only to fast food giants like McDonald’s. Many of them simply do not have the time, energy, resources to cook a meal with lentils instead. This is a critical issue, not just with factory farming. What else are people supposed to eat? What are they supposed to do? If McDonald’s having an Impossible patty is the only way anyone is supposed to get away from meat, so be it. It’s easy to stick your nose up to these alternatives when you have a wealth of options to choose from.
It is an unfortunate reality that right now, our only solutions are based in capitalism. I don’t like it, not one bit; we’re never going to be serious reforms without getting rid of the whole system. But until we get to that point—if ever—we have to play ball. Whether we like that or not. Our system isn’t capable of solely supporting small farmers at the moment, and to think we could make that switch so easily is just naive.
It’s not all negative. I learned a lot about vegan cheese (as another reviewer mentioned), as well as a lot of history about vegetarianism as counterculture, etc. I found this fascinating, and I wish more of the book focused on these elements.
Yeah. I don’t know. This book just felt way too personally about Kennedy’s experience and life, and less about the history as a whole. Anecdotes are one thing, but this almost felt memoir-like at times—and i don’t know Kennedy at all, so I just wasn’t interested. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
November 1, 2023
Rating this a cool two stars because there was a lot that worked for me, and then a good deal that didn't.
What I liked:
- I liked how grounded in the present this book was. I appreciated how the pandemic was discussed (particularly its impact on meat production) and how up-to-date/relevant everything felt.
- I loved the focus on gender and food and now want to read The Sexual Politics of Meat. If you are interested in this topic, I would highly recommend checking out some of Emily Contois' work–I've read a few of her articles on what she calls "dude food" (and this article that is super interesting even if it doesn't directly touch upon gender: https://emilycontois.files.wordpress....) and she has a book out called "Diners, Dudes and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture" that may be good for future reading.
- I loved how forthright Kennedy was with her argument that food is political (loved the discussion of punk culture), and her acknowledgement of the gentrification of veganism/vegetarianism.
- I was so here for Kennedy's disillusionment with lab-grown meat–I agree that plant-based food should be about celebrating the vegetable and not imitating meat
- I will always cheer for someone calling out Malthus and the insidious nature of Neo-Malthusian logic.
What I didn't like:
- Cite your sources properly!! I don't have the book with me currently, so I can't be specific (ironic, I know), but Kennedy made a casual reference in an early chapter to a study on hierarchical mindsets/meat consumption, but when I checked the endnote, it cited the book that referenced the study–not the study itself. That's not cool, because I had wanted to read the study and check it out for myself, and I would bet my bottom dollar that this is not an isolated incident.
- I felt like Kennedy danced around a lot of the ways that some vegan/raw eating groups can cause (political and personal) harm. This avoidance was most salient to me in the "Wheatgrass and Wellness" chapter where raw food/food is medicine extremists were mentioned. Ann Wigmore straight-up believed that raw food could cure cancer and AIDS, lied about her medical credentials, and founded an institute that is still around today (Hippocrates Health Institute) that claims to be able to reverse MS, but I did not feel that Kennedy appropriately represented the degree of harm that people like Wigmore cause. Again, I'm perhaps more sensitive to this than the average person because of the amount of times people have told me that my health problems would be solved by eating differently (to the vegan triathlete who told me that I would feel so much better if I just gave up eggs–fuck you specifically!), but it also goes much farther than individual choices to eat raw/vegan. The "clean eating" ethos that can be associated with veganism can lend itself to anti-vax stances (https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdzx...) and the raw food movement (egg slonking, raw milk) has well-documented relationships to alt-right groups/subculture (https://gnet-research.org/2022/10/10/...). Although such groups are obviously not representative of vegetarians/vegans as a whole, I thought it was odd that Kennedy did not delve into the darker/more conservative/more fringe side of things more thoroughly despite taking such deep dives into veganism and punk culture/anarchist culture. In my opinion, you can't just name-drop Wigmore, discuss for a few sentences, and run away.
- I didn't think that Kennedy's expressed disgust for meat was helpful. I waffled over including this in my review because I hold no issue with someone having a personal distaste for food, but towards the end of the book I found it to be a bigger problem. Kennedy describes the flavour of chicken as coming from "death and decay" and went on for a few pages about how she wouldn't eat lionfish unless you held her down and force-fed it to her through gritted teeth. Again I appreciate how Kennedy clearly showed that plant-based eating has roots in every culture (not just white hippies), but I think that she didn't ever acknowledge that meat consumption also has deep cultural roots (e.g., hippophagy in various parts of Russia, Iñupiaq whale hunting, relationships between Sami people and reindeer). To associate disgust with meat and meat-eating on a broad, general scale (e.g., down to just the taste of chicken) is not constructive in my opinion, and is, at worst, disrespectful of how some cultures perceive relationships with meat and animals.
- Food access? Hello?? Barely any discussion on that, babes.
- When I finished the book, I kind of sat there and thought "Okay... what now?" What I'm trying to say is that I didn't fully understand what the intended takeaway from this book was–it seemed to bounce between history, political manifesto, personal journey, and, yes, Michael Pollan's specific brand of preaching (even though Kennedy tries to separate herself from Pollan and Waters). If Kennedy was trying to get me to think that plant-based eating is the best and most moral option, I honestly didn't finish the book convinced of that. It just got me back into my anti-capitalist, low-key nihilist frustration with the food system.
Anywho, that's a wrap on this book. It was an interesting read, but I was left wanting something more.
What I liked:
- I liked how grounded in the present this book was. I appreciated how the pandemic was discussed (particularly its impact on meat production) and how up-to-date/relevant everything felt.
- I loved the focus on gender and food and now want to read The Sexual Politics of Meat. If you are interested in this topic, I would highly recommend checking out some of Emily Contois' work–I've read a few of her articles on what she calls "dude food" (and this article that is super interesting even if it doesn't directly touch upon gender: https://emilycontois.files.wordpress....) and she has a book out called "Diners, Dudes and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture" that may be good for future reading.
- I loved how forthright Kennedy was with her argument that food is political (loved the discussion of punk culture), and her acknowledgement of the gentrification of veganism/vegetarianism.
- I was so here for Kennedy's disillusionment with lab-grown meat–I agree that plant-based food should be about celebrating the vegetable and not imitating meat
- I will always cheer for someone calling out Malthus and the insidious nature of Neo-Malthusian logic.
What I didn't like:
- Cite your sources properly!! I don't have the book with me currently, so I can't be specific (ironic, I know), but Kennedy made a casual reference in an early chapter to a study on hierarchical mindsets/meat consumption, but when I checked the endnote, it cited the book that referenced the study–not the study itself. That's not cool, because I had wanted to read the study and check it out for myself, and I would bet my bottom dollar that this is not an isolated incident.
- I felt like Kennedy danced around a lot of the ways that some vegan/raw eating groups can cause (political and personal) harm. This avoidance was most salient to me in the "Wheatgrass and Wellness" chapter where raw food/food is medicine extremists were mentioned. Ann Wigmore straight-up believed that raw food could cure cancer and AIDS, lied about her medical credentials, and founded an institute that is still around today (Hippocrates Health Institute) that claims to be able to reverse MS, but I did not feel that Kennedy appropriately represented the degree of harm that people like Wigmore cause. Again, I'm perhaps more sensitive to this than the average person because of the amount of times people have told me that my health problems would be solved by eating differently (to the vegan triathlete who told me that I would feel so much better if I just gave up eggs–fuck you specifically!), but it also goes much farther than individual choices to eat raw/vegan. The "clean eating" ethos that can be associated with veganism can lend itself to anti-vax stances (https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdzx...) and the raw food movement (egg slonking, raw milk) has well-documented relationships to alt-right groups/subculture (https://gnet-research.org/2022/10/10/...). Although such groups are obviously not representative of vegetarians/vegans as a whole, I thought it was odd that Kennedy did not delve into the darker/more conservative/more fringe side of things more thoroughly despite taking such deep dives into veganism and punk culture/anarchist culture. In my opinion, you can't just name-drop Wigmore, discuss for a few sentences, and run away.
- I didn't think that Kennedy's expressed disgust for meat was helpful. I waffled over including this in my review because I hold no issue with someone having a personal distaste for food, but towards the end of the book I found it to be a bigger problem. Kennedy describes the flavour of chicken as coming from "death and decay" and went on for a few pages about how she wouldn't eat lionfish unless you held her down and force-fed it to her through gritted teeth. Again I appreciate how Kennedy clearly showed that plant-based eating has roots in every culture (not just white hippies), but I think that she didn't ever acknowledge that meat consumption also has deep cultural roots (e.g., hippophagy in various parts of Russia, Iñupiaq whale hunting, relationships between Sami people and reindeer). To associate disgust with meat and meat-eating on a broad, general scale (e.g., down to just the taste of chicken) is not constructive in my opinion, and is, at worst, disrespectful of how some cultures perceive relationships with meat and animals.
- Food access? Hello?? Barely any discussion on that, babes.
- When I finished the book, I kind of sat there and thought "Okay... what now?" What I'm trying to say is that I didn't fully understand what the intended takeaway from this book was–it seemed to bounce between history, political manifesto, personal journey, and, yes, Michael Pollan's specific brand of preaching (even though Kennedy tries to separate herself from Pollan and Waters). If Kennedy was trying to get me to think that plant-based eating is the best and most moral option, I honestly didn't finish the book convinced of that. It just got me back into my anti-capitalist, low-key nihilist frustration with the food system.
Anywho, that's a wrap on this book. It was an interesting read, but I was left wanting something more.
January 4, 2024
Every so often I feel called to read a book about vegetarianism, as a way to fortify my resolve against eating mammals or maybe even inspire me enough to make the push back into vegetarianism or veganism, which is why I picked this up. Unfortunately, this is not a well-written book. Kennedy's writing is so scattered and generalized that I am struggling to summarize it using language more descriptive than what you find in the subtitle.
What does the history of plant-based eating look like to Kennedy? It's a rich set of traditions that originates in every corner of the world; these traditions have been wrongfully labeled as a diet for privileged white people. Yet, the rich nonwhite histories are completely glossed over in this text, and only explored to the extent that they intersect with white culinary history. Kennedy didn't seem interested in providing anything more than lip-service to BIPOC perspectives, specifically Buddhist and Hindu philosophies and histories, which you would think would be an important thing to cover.
What is the culinary present of plant-based eating according to Kennedy? It is a world where corporate interests are at odds with the interests of consumers. New factory-made fake meats are being churned out every day, but who is buying them? Most consumers who would choose the vegetarian option also prefer to eat whole foods, not highly processed mystery patties. I myself absolutely prefer a house-made veggie burger to a beyond burger. So while we may be in agreement in that department, Kennedy's disgust towards all types of "flesh" was a bit alienating to me. She asserts that no vegetarian would even want to eat something that resembles meat, which has not been my experience at all. Personally, the more convincing and widely available the substitutes are, the easier it is for me to give up the "real thing." When discussing vegan cheese and milk alternatives, she recognized the importance of the vegan option being just as good. Her failure to extend a similar level of empathy to meat eaters was one of the major flaws in her rhetoric.
What is the culinary future of plant-based eating? This is the area where Kennedy's argumentation was the most exhausting to listen to. Kennedy has no solutions, just vague statements about the importance of fair wages, locally-sourced ingredients, labor protections, zines, environmental action, and access to healthy foods. Yes Kennedy, I, too, hope to someday live in utopia. But talking about all the great vegan restaurants that you have been to in Brooklyn isn't a roadmap on how to get there.
Kennedy fails to do anything more specific than quote other vegan philosophers. She talks about the nutrition of a plant-based diet, rolling her eyes at the nay-sayers while acknowledging the ties that veganism has to fat-phobia, but she never goes into the nitty-gritty. If you're going to call your book, "No Meat Required," prove it! Answer the protein question, once and for all! Give me the numbers, share an example daily menu, show what vegetarian eating actually looks like, experientially and nutritionally. I think the only number in the whole book is the billions of dollars in tax-payer money that the government spends on meat and dairy subsidies every year, but she never actually talks about the cost of the diet that she is espousing. Is it more or less expensive than an omnivorous diet? A book like this should have facts, plain and simple.
As much as Kennedy tried to set herself apart from the whiny, proselytizing vegan stereotype, she failed. Though her heart is in the right place, this book lacked the vision and clarity to see her message through.
What does the history of plant-based eating look like to Kennedy? It's a rich set of traditions that originates in every corner of the world; these traditions have been wrongfully labeled as a diet for privileged white people. Yet, the rich nonwhite histories are completely glossed over in this text, and only explored to the extent that they intersect with white culinary history. Kennedy didn't seem interested in providing anything more than lip-service to BIPOC perspectives, specifically Buddhist and Hindu philosophies and histories, which you would think would be an important thing to cover.
What is the culinary present of plant-based eating according to Kennedy? It is a world where corporate interests are at odds with the interests of consumers. New factory-made fake meats are being churned out every day, but who is buying them? Most consumers who would choose the vegetarian option also prefer to eat whole foods, not highly processed mystery patties. I myself absolutely prefer a house-made veggie burger to a beyond burger. So while we may be in agreement in that department, Kennedy's disgust towards all types of "flesh" was a bit alienating to me. She asserts that no vegetarian would even want to eat something that resembles meat, which has not been my experience at all. Personally, the more convincing and widely available the substitutes are, the easier it is for me to give up the "real thing." When discussing vegan cheese and milk alternatives, she recognized the importance of the vegan option being just as good. Her failure to extend a similar level of empathy to meat eaters was one of the major flaws in her rhetoric.
What is the culinary future of plant-based eating? This is the area where Kennedy's argumentation was the most exhausting to listen to. Kennedy has no solutions, just vague statements about the importance of fair wages, locally-sourced ingredients, labor protections, zines, environmental action, and access to healthy foods. Yes Kennedy, I, too, hope to someday live in utopia. But talking about all the great vegan restaurants that you have been to in Brooklyn isn't a roadmap on how to get there.
Kennedy fails to do anything more specific than quote other vegan philosophers. She talks about the nutrition of a plant-based diet, rolling her eyes at the nay-sayers while acknowledging the ties that veganism has to fat-phobia, but she never goes into the nitty-gritty. If you're going to call your book, "No Meat Required," prove it! Answer the protein question, once and for all! Give me the numbers, share an example daily menu, show what vegetarian eating actually looks like, experientially and nutritionally. I think the only number in the whole book is the billions of dollars in tax-payer money that the government spends on meat and dairy subsidies every year, but she never actually talks about the cost of the diet that she is espousing. Is it more or less expensive than an omnivorous diet? A book like this should have facts, plain and simple.
As much as Kennedy tried to set herself apart from the whiny, proselytizing vegan stereotype, she failed. Though her heart is in the right place, this book lacked the vision and clarity to see her message through.
January 24, 2024
I enjoyed this! I was a vegetarian for 7 years before we moved to Utah a couple years ago and the state’s dismal food scene (plus all the stress, loneliness, etc that come with a cross country move to a city where you don’t know anyone) broke my resolve. But my conscience has been nagging at me recently and I was hoping this would help guide me back to the noble path. There wasn’t anything totally new to me here, at least not conceptually, but I still found it a helpful and interesting read. It’s what I was looking for.
It’s equally interesting looking through some of the criticism here. It seems opinions differ, but I think she accomplished what she set out to do: a cultural history (not an academic study or totally comprehensive industry history), rooted in the personal, rooted in the political, that opens the door for a nuanced and sometimes challenging conversation. No one book can be everything to everyone, and what she says about vegan chefs and vegan foods (that they’re held to a higher standard than their omni counterparts) might apply here too. Plus I think most readers of this will already be converts (each for their own reasons and hoping to see those reasons done justice here) and we can be our own harshest critics sometimes.
It’s equally interesting looking through some of the criticism here. It seems opinions differ, but I think she accomplished what she set out to do: a cultural history (not an academic study or totally comprehensive industry history), rooted in the personal, rooted in the political, that opens the door for a nuanced and sometimes challenging conversation. No one book can be everything to everyone, and what she says about vegan chefs and vegan foods (that they’re held to a higher standard than their omni counterparts) might apply here too. Plus I think most readers of this will already be converts (each for their own reasons and hoping to see those reasons done justice here) and we can be our own harshest critics sometimes.
December 6, 2023
The key message for me: Food and what you eat are highly political. While somehow obvious I never really thought of it in that way. Definitely an interesting overview of veganism and plant based eating and how different influences combined to get us where we are right now. Not surprisingly the book itself is political and sometimes crosses the border towards a manifest. I don’t agree to everything and some combinations towards feminism seem a bit far fetched for me, but still an interesting and entertaining overview.
May 27, 2025
I wish I liked this book better - from the title, I was expecting a delightful and informative romp through the history of plant-based cuisine (e.g. Indian, Buddhist, Ethiopian food), modern plant-based movements in other countries (e.g. Brazil, Germany), and delectably-described innovative vegan dishes.
Instead, this is mainly the sort of screechy diatribe that plays *exactly* into the “pedantic, preachy” vegan stereotype that the author is aware of and against!
I will give some credit: the writing is good, the author makes some insightful policy points, and I liked the sections on non-dairy dairy and vegan restaurant history - the chapters where the author mainly lets interesting stories and histories speak for themselves (also, love going like, hey that’s the cookbook author I like! And, hey, I’ve been to that restaurant!)
But there’s a lot I find wanting. My critiques in no particular order:
- I have to roll my eyes nowadays at the navel-gazey, self-aggrandizing torture of the hard-left individual who hates how the world is, but also fell into their worldview because they wanted to be cooool and go to punk conceeerts (see: Falls into the Sea review), but also repulsively rejects any sort of actual mainstream adoption of their worldview despite how much they demand the world listen to them.
- For instance, the author is very against fake Beyond/Impossible and lab-grown meats. Well how, pray tell, do you expect society *on the large scale that is needed to become sustainable* to shift its consumption habits or have new options available to them *without* utilizing the sort of capitalist influencer mechanics that have historically spread new ideas and lifestyles quite well? (The answer is imo goverment policy, but this is discussed in the book far less often than a general wish that people would just, y’know, change.)
- Despite claiming a desire to lift up diverse voices, this book does so in an unnatural, circa-2021 way, is very U.S. focused, and seems to mainly draw from the author’s past experiences.
- Despite wanting increased plant-based eating, the author constantly policies and virtue-signals entry into the ethical vegan world (this does include self-policing, which, idk, I don’t think makes this better).
- I swear some of their ideas on returning to locally-focused agriculture (which I agree with in the way that the government should subsidize ag differently) sound like they were ripped out of Pol Pot’s idea diary written seconds before national starvation.
In short, this book would find the right audience if the subtitle was more like “A Radical Call to Use Plant-Based Foodways to Dismantle Industrialized Agriculture and Imperialist Capitalism.”
Instead, this is mainly the sort of screechy diatribe that plays *exactly* into the “pedantic, preachy” vegan stereotype that the author is aware of and against!
I will give some credit: the writing is good, the author makes some insightful policy points, and I liked the sections on non-dairy dairy and vegan restaurant history - the chapters where the author mainly lets interesting stories and histories speak for themselves (also, love going like, hey that’s the cookbook author I like! And, hey, I’ve been to that restaurant!)
But there’s a lot I find wanting. My critiques in no particular order:
- I have to roll my eyes nowadays at the navel-gazey, self-aggrandizing torture of the hard-left individual who hates how the world is, but also fell into their worldview because they wanted to be cooool and go to punk conceeerts (see: Falls into the Sea review), but also repulsively rejects any sort of actual mainstream adoption of their worldview despite how much they demand the world listen to them.
- For instance, the author is very against fake Beyond/Impossible and lab-grown meats. Well how, pray tell, do you expect society *on the large scale that is needed to become sustainable* to shift its consumption habits or have new options available to them *without* utilizing the sort of capitalist influencer mechanics that have historically spread new ideas and lifestyles quite well? (The answer is imo goverment policy, but this is discussed in the book far less often than a general wish that people would just, y’know, change.)
- Despite claiming a desire to lift up diverse voices, this book does so in an unnatural, circa-2021 way, is very U.S. focused, and seems to mainly draw from the author’s past experiences.
- Despite wanting increased plant-based eating, the author constantly policies and virtue-signals entry into the ethical vegan world (this does include self-policing, which, idk, I don’t think makes this better).
- I swear some of their ideas on returning to locally-focused agriculture (which I agree with in the way that the government should subsidize ag differently) sound like they were ripped out of Pol Pot’s idea diary written seconds before national starvation.
In short, this book would find the right audience if the subtitle was more like “A Radical Call to Use Plant-Based Foodways to Dismantle Industrialized Agriculture and Imperialist Capitalism.”
January 28, 2024
More than just the ethics of meat eating - this dives into the broader political meaning of food and how our way of eating can be resistance to corporate power. And how ethical eating is more than just meatless, diving into a critique of the tech meat movement. And how abundance is found in community and connection to the earth, not in dominance over it. Everyone - wherever you fall on the omnivore to vegan spectrum, can learn something from Kennedy (plus, ENJOY her witty and fun writing). Read this while eating my way through San Juan on a bit of an Eat, Pray, Love journey and it hit the spot.
September 8, 2023
Not exactly what I expected. This is a well-researched cultural history, with a great bibliography and interesting quotes, but it's weirdly bloodless - animal rights as an issue is an obvious absence here - there's a chapter on feminists, a chapter on punks, a chapter on proteins, and so forth... but very little discussion of perhaps the most obvious reason to abstain from animal products. Also, the last chapter becomes bogged down by a long discussion of Kennedy's strong personal aesthetic preference for unprocessed foods, which doesn't feel relevant to the rest of the text.
November 20, 2023
A book I didn't realize I was so desperate for, as someone who has been eating plant based for most of my life. I've been a fan of Alicia's writing for years, and a loyal reader of her newsletter, so imagine my thrill when I learned she was writing a book. A thoughtful & detailed history of plant based eating that is simultaneously a critique of our current food system through an intersectional lens. I would love for everyone to read this book! What you eat, whether you intend for it to be or not, is political. TLDR to me, being vegan is punk and anti-capitalist 🤘
December 31, 2023
Struggled w this one because I have liked Alicia Kennedy’s writing generally but I thought the book could have done a lot more. Particularly hated the part where she was talking about how tofu has been around as a protein source in Asia forever and then goes on to talk about how she never cooks it at home because pressing tofu is too laborious… but pressing tofu is a modern treatment for the western palate to make tofu more meat-like. Don’t think I ever recovered from that
June 14, 2024
An engaging and vibrant read discussing the ethical, spiritual, environmental, economic and political concerns that underpin vegetarianism and veganism as practices
The book convincingly argues that supporting local food economies and the pursuit of food sovereignty got historically and consistently colonised lands should be a part of practicing meatless eating such that to be plant-based should not just mean rejecting industrial agriculture; it should encompass supporting local agriculture that allows for biodiversity and dignified lives for farmers
The political nature of food is discussed through the consumption of beef in the USA, where the creation of the beef industry required settler colonialism and the resulting 19th century government policy that saw the Great Plains ecosystem turn from a grass-bison-nomad system to a grass-cattle-rancher one, with the displacement of Indigenous Indians and extermination of bison population seen as necessary. Then in its current iteration, the USA, which as a settler state had destroyed ancestral knowledge of the land and the medicinal purposes of what it could grow, now as an imperialist entity, has its corporate arms go around the world to extract resources to sell back to its people
Under capitalism, the spread of vegan and vegetarian food, which historically has been the realm of counterculture folks - hippies, anarchists, punks interested in alternatives to animal agriculture, is now being captured by the world of tech and venture capital due to its potential to make money whilst greenwashing, which is often explicitly seen in its lack of real solutions, being rooted in money making rather than caring for how people eat, cook, or love food
Alongside greenwashing, the obsessive health-washing of meatless diets is well discussed including the health ideology that focuses solely on the maintenance of an acceptable thin body and the utilitarian appeal of raw foods and greenwashed tech meat that stand in contrast to concerns about the environment and people, one that supports universal basic income, guaranteed housing, free college tuition and nationalised health care that would create conditions for people to cook and grow their own food
The book convincingly argues that supporting local food economies and the pursuit of food sovereignty got historically and consistently colonised lands should be a part of practicing meatless eating such that to be plant-based should not just mean rejecting industrial agriculture; it should encompass supporting local agriculture that allows for biodiversity and dignified lives for farmers
The political nature of food is discussed through the consumption of beef in the USA, where the creation of the beef industry required settler colonialism and the resulting 19th century government policy that saw the Great Plains ecosystem turn from a grass-bison-nomad system to a grass-cattle-rancher one, with the displacement of Indigenous Indians and extermination of bison population seen as necessary. Then in its current iteration, the USA, which as a settler state had destroyed ancestral knowledge of the land and the medicinal purposes of what it could grow, now as an imperialist entity, has its corporate arms go around the world to extract resources to sell back to its people
Under capitalism, the spread of vegan and vegetarian food, which historically has been the realm of counterculture folks - hippies, anarchists, punks interested in alternatives to animal agriculture, is now being captured by the world of tech and venture capital due to its potential to make money whilst greenwashing, which is often explicitly seen in its lack of real solutions, being rooted in money making rather than caring for how people eat, cook, or love food
Alongside greenwashing, the obsessive health-washing of meatless diets is well discussed including the health ideology that focuses solely on the maintenance of an acceptable thin body and the utilitarian appeal of raw foods and greenwashed tech meat that stand in contrast to concerns about the environment and people, one that supports universal basic income, guaranteed housing, free college tuition and nationalised health care that would create conditions for people to cook and grow their own food
October 6, 2024
As Kennedy writes, “one can have concerns about animal rights while still wanting to enjoy a really good meal.” I'm vegetarian, and I love to eat! And “plant-based” doesn’t have to mean substituting faux meat for real flesh. In fact, as she explores, VC-backed plant-based alternatives aren’t the only or the best future for planet-friendly eating. Let’s hear it for real food, sustainably and ethically produced and available to everybody, not just those of us who can afford to shop at Whole Paycheck. (I admit that I’ve enjoyed the occasional faux-chicken nugget and Impossible Burger.)
In a relatively slim book, Kennedy serves up a lot of culinary-cultural history that made me think about the political as well as ethical considerations involved in vegetarianism and veganism. It’s not a “pure” or straightforward set of choices. Hippies, punks, ecofeminists, wellness gurus, tech bros, and celebrity chefs all feature in the story, which is a complex and evolving one. In a different era, I’d describe this book as meaty—but that would be more evidence of just how important meat has been to the American way of life. Maybe someday we’ll say “beany” instead.
In a relatively slim book, Kennedy serves up a lot of culinary-cultural history that made me think about the political as well as ethical considerations involved in vegetarianism and veganism. It’s not a “pure” or straightforward set of choices. Hippies, punks, ecofeminists, wellness gurus, tech bros, and celebrity chefs all feature in the story, which is a complex and evolving one. In a different era, I’d describe this book as meaty—but that would be more evidence of just how important meat has been to the American way of life. Maybe someday we’ll say “beany” instead.
August 25, 2023
Kennedy’s book is a well-written and fascinating exploration of the history of vegetarian and vegan cooking, eating, and philosophizing. Regardless of whether you eat meat/animal products or not, if you care about food and are curious about how our choices relate to broader social, political, and environmental themes, you will find this book thought-provoking. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the vegan punk movement and vegan zine culture — a world I knew little about until reading!
February 29, 2024
Very wordy, but interesting and informative.
March 6, 2024
Interesting read— I thought it had a very broad/intersecting perspective, and good application. I would like to consider the concept Kennedy forwards of a “conscientious omnivore” future
February 4, 2025
good topic
cool to hear about modern vegan businesses and how products are made
was pretty bored w the audiobook
maybe if i read with eyes i would have liked more
cool to hear about modern vegan businesses and how products are made
was pretty bored w the audiobook
maybe if i read with eyes i would have liked more
August 13, 2025
seminal text
December 28, 2023
I love Alicia's writing. Here are some of my favorite clips...
It's been clear for over 50 years that the way land is used for farming - 80% of farmed land is used to grow feed for livestock, which provides only 18% of the world's calories supply and 37% of its protein supply - is inefficient.
A world in which animals aren't confined to factory farming operations and fed genetically modified corn, then processed by underpaid and overworked meat-processing workers, is a different world than what we in the U.S. have become accustomed to, of course.
Cooking is a chore for many who spend all day laboring, and the idea of taking eating seriously is regarded as bourgeois affectation: something nice for people with money and time, but everyone else has to just stuff something in their mouths and get on with their lives. Being concerned with the provenance of one's food, too, is seen as classist, and discussing nutrition leads almost directly to fatphobia. Given the reality of food apartheid, which keeps mainly BIPOC communities from having access to fresh fruits and veggies, making overtures about going to the famers market is wildly out of touch with reality.
The only way to have large-scale responses that serve local ecologies, economies, and traditions would be to radically transform the global economy away from fossil fuels and capitalism toward a much more collectively oriented political system that does not solely prioritize growth and profit but sees that value in culture and keeping the planet alive. Food could be at the heart of this transformation.
There is a rich history of resistance to industrial ag and its horrors, and if there is much more work to be done, this history shows us that change is possible.
The amount of meat and the type of meat that is broadly consumed in the U.S. was created to fulfill the desires of capital, not our bodies, and we are coming to a crucial moment in the life of the planet.
Now I know how to do the delicate dance, to show how individual choices work as tiny bricks thrown against the windows of tyranny. Still, quitting meat is a hard sell when it represents so much in the broad culture and eating meat is, admittedly, a hugely pleasurable act. There can still be pleasure, though - even this specific pleasure - in a way of eating that takes into account larger systems and the cumulative consequences of the industrial scale at which we've come to produce and process meat.
An argument people make all the time. "Corporations alone are responsible for 71% of GHG emissions. It's not my responsibility to go vegetarian/vegan." These have always been the standard retorts, and they are what I'll be arguing against in this book. My response now is to say that our lives, our ways of eating, will have to change if those corporations are held to account for those emissions - and we don't know when that might happen. We each have a personal role to play in making things a little easier on the planet.
Eating ethically is an effort, a constant attempt to make choices regarding the consumption of food and goods that treads as lightly on the planet as possible while doing the least harm to humans and nonhuman animals. That means, of course, the most obvious thing: avoiding animal products. But it also means concern for labor rights of farmworkers and the land rights of Indigenous and Black people, as well as recognition of the necessity of access to fresh, local, culturally appropriate food and clean water for all the world's people. Not eating meat is to seek balance in ecology and the relationships between humans and nonhuman animals.
Vegetarianism/veganism reject the consumerist, efficiency-driven, labor-abusing, environmentally taxing status quo upon which the U.S. food system is based - a status quo supported through government subsidies and advertising, as well as more insidious cultural ties to patriarchy, white supremacy, and imperialism. If to be "weird" means to not participate in the pillage of the earth's natural resources, then yes: not eating meat and focusing on local ag rather than industrialized food is weird.
Nothing that can be bought will prove a solution to the GHG emissions caused by centralized, globalized food system that prioritizes efficiency yet still leaves 854 million people on the planet undernourished and 25,000 people per day dying of hunger.
Individual consumption isn't causing the climate crisis; it's the conditions of individual consumption that are causing it. But if these conditions are changed by states that act upon our dire situation, there will be, by necessity, less meat and dairy available for eating. Diets will change, whether we like it or not.
The 'wellness' movement and diet culture have co-opted plant-based cooking to make it into something restrictive, something fatphobic, rather than a way to live in abundance.
The earliest recorded vegetarians living in ancient India and practiced the Hindu and Jain religions.
The 1960s were a time of deep and extensive conversation about the role of food and diet in forming a Black national identity. Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, put out How to Eat to Live i 1967, and advocated moving away from 'soul food' and any food associated with slavery, most prominently pork, and gradually came to advocate for a vegetarian diet. Muhammad and Malcolm X both used eat consumption as a means of differentiating Black people from whites, specifically the brutal means of slaughter without any ritual or compassion that had come into practice with industrial animal ag.
In the 1960s, the average Chinese person ate less than 5 kg of meat per year, but consumption rose to 20 kg per capita by the late 1980s. How, China consumes 28% of the world's meat.
in Indonesia, tempeh, another staple meatless protein, was created from fermenting soybeans in banana leaves.
Just as de Beers created the diamond engagement ring to sell jewels, we've been sold an endless supply of hamburgers to line the pockets of those in the beef and fast-food businesses.
The IPCC: "Healthy and sustainable diets are high in coarse grains, pulses, fruits and vegetables, and nuts and seeds; low in energy-intensive animal-sourced and discretionary foods (such as sugary beverages).
Numbers aren't all that matter when we're talking about the food system, because the quality of the ingredients we're cooking with and the good feeling of talking to the person who grew those ingredients aren't really quantifiable.
If you're not trying to feed the whole country, you're not going to produce at a scale that creates waste, taxes the soil, uses excessive water, or gets packaged in plastic and Styrofoam to make long trips while remaining intact.
The lack of a big, broad, diverse coalition to keep pressure on the government has meant taxpayer money subsidizes industrial meat and dairy at a rate of $38 billion per year.
About 40% of the meat-processing workers in the U.S. are immigrants, of whom about 14% are undocumented, and thus w/o even the bare minimum of state protection to safeguard them against poor working conditions and pay.
Between 2013 and 2017, 8 workers died, on average, each year because of an incident in their plant.
Most of us in the U.S. grow up believing meat is an inevitable and undeniable part of our diets, a birthright, and that its production - the slaughter necessary to make it available - can and should be invisible if that is what is required to make sure nothing about its abundance changes.
It's that connection to American identity that leads people to shout and shut their eats when any of the horrors of meat productions are noted, much like the killing of Indigenous peoples has been made invisible in the national narrative.
Consider the ads for beef and pork that were so popular in the 1980s and 1990s, funded with taxpayer money through what's called a 'commodity checkoff program' that allows taxes paid on these commodities to go into research and marketing.
Interest in kale peaked in 2014 when Beyonce wore the world 'kale' on a sweatshirt, and has been a steadily popular search term on Google ever since.
Settler colonialism, the term that describes the displacement of Indigenous peoples in favor of European settlers, was essential to the creation of the beef industry.
Cattle ranchers and bison hunters, supported by the U.S. military, fundamentally reshaped the Great Plains.
In the Impossible Foods version, the DNA of soy plants is inserted into a GE yeast and then fermented. This results in both the pink color and 'blood' of their patties.
Recent scientific studies confirm that those of us who hold authoritarian beliefs, who think social hierarchy is important, who seek wealth and power an support human dominance over nature, eat more meat than those who stand against inequality.
Even w/o actual beef, how does a corporate tech-faux-meat patty manufactured from GMO soy, served by underpaid labor and likely garnished with a tomato picked by a slave-wage worker on a bun made of processed what flour, truly change the system that beef built?
That nothing can be perfect doesn't mean that ethics shouldn't be part of a serious effort.
Almond milk was first mentioned in a manuscript by the 'scribe of Baghdad in 1226 CE.
Indigenous farming practices and agroecology are the documented ways forward, a well as a new economic system that isn't built upon cancerous, endless growth.
It's important to say that what Elon did with Tesla is one of the greatest contributions to climate change anyone's ever made - this is a car for individuals; the cheapest model goes for $46,990.
The future needs justice, reparations, the redistribution of wealth, and radical restructuring of how has land, who farms and how land is used.
Locally-minded vegetarian.
It's been clear for over 50 years that the way land is used for farming - 80% of farmed land is used to grow feed for livestock, which provides only 18% of the world's calories supply and 37% of its protein supply - is inefficient.
A world in which animals aren't confined to factory farming operations and fed genetically modified corn, then processed by underpaid and overworked meat-processing workers, is a different world than what we in the U.S. have become accustomed to, of course.
Cooking is a chore for many who spend all day laboring, and the idea of taking eating seriously is regarded as bourgeois affectation: something nice for people with money and time, but everyone else has to just stuff something in their mouths and get on with their lives. Being concerned with the provenance of one's food, too, is seen as classist, and discussing nutrition leads almost directly to fatphobia. Given the reality of food apartheid, which keeps mainly BIPOC communities from having access to fresh fruits and veggies, making overtures about going to the famers market is wildly out of touch with reality.
The only way to have large-scale responses that serve local ecologies, economies, and traditions would be to radically transform the global economy away from fossil fuels and capitalism toward a much more collectively oriented political system that does not solely prioritize growth and profit but sees that value in culture and keeping the planet alive. Food could be at the heart of this transformation.
There is a rich history of resistance to industrial ag and its horrors, and if there is much more work to be done, this history shows us that change is possible.
The amount of meat and the type of meat that is broadly consumed in the U.S. was created to fulfill the desires of capital, not our bodies, and we are coming to a crucial moment in the life of the planet.
Now I know how to do the delicate dance, to show how individual choices work as tiny bricks thrown against the windows of tyranny. Still, quitting meat is a hard sell when it represents so much in the broad culture and eating meat is, admittedly, a hugely pleasurable act. There can still be pleasure, though - even this specific pleasure - in a way of eating that takes into account larger systems and the cumulative consequences of the industrial scale at which we've come to produce and process meat.
An argument people make all the time. "Corporations alone are responsible for 71% of GHG emissions. It's not my responsibility to go vegetarian/vegan." These have always been the standard retorts, and they are what I'll be arguing against in this book. My response now is to say that our lives, our ways of eating, will have to change if those corporations are held to account for those emissions - and we don't know when that might happen. We each have a personal role to play in making things a little easier on the planet.
Eating ethically is an effort, a constant attempt to make choices regarding the consumption of food and goods that treads as lightly on the planet as possible while doing the least harm to humans and nonhuman animals. That means, of course, the most obvious thing: avoiding animal products. But it also means concern for labor rights of farmworkers and the land rights of Indigenous and Black people, as well as recognition of the necessity of access to fresh, local, culturally appropriate food and clean water for all the world's people. Not eating meat is to seek balance in ecology and the relationships between humans and nonhuman animals.
Vegetarianism/veganism reject the consumerist, efficiency-driven, labor-abusing, environmentally taxing status quo upon which the U.S. food system is based - a status quo supported through government subsidies and advertising, as well as more insidious cultural ties to patriarchy, white supremacy, and imperialism. If to be "weird" means to not participate in the pillage of the earth's natural resources, then yes: not eating meat and focusing on local ag rather than industrialized food is weird.
Nothing that can be bought will prove a solution to the GHG emissions caused by centralized, globalized food system that prioritizes efficiency yet still leaves 854 million people on the planet undernourished and 25,000 people per day dying of hunger.
Individual consumption isn't causing the climate crisis; it's the conditions of individual consumption that are causing it. But if these conditions are changed by states that act upon our dire situation, there will be, by necessity, less meat and dairy available for eating. Diets will change, whether we like it or not.
The 'wellness' movement and diet culture have co-opted plant-based cooking to make it into something restrictive, something fatphobic, rather than a way to live in abundance.
The earliest recorded vegetarians living in ancient India and practiced the Hindu and Jain religions.
The 1960s were a time of deep and extensive conversation about the role of food and diet in forming a Black national identity. Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, put out How to Eat to Live i 1967, and advocated moving away from 'soul food' and any food associated with slavery, most prominently pork, and gradually came to advocate for a vegetarian diet. Muhammad and Malcolm X both used eat consumption as a means of differentiating Black people from whites, specifically the brutal means of slaughter without any ritual or compassion that had come into practice with industrial animal ag.
In the 1960s, the average Chinese person ate less than 5 kg of meat per year, but consumption rose to 20 kg per capita by the late 1980s. How, China consumes 28% of the world's meat.
in Indonesia, tempeh, another staple meatless protein, was created from fermenting soybeans in banana leaves.
Just as de Beers created the diamond engagement ring to sell jewels, we've been sold an endless supply of hamburgers to line the pockets of those in the beef and fast-food businesses.
The IPCC: "Healthy and sustainable diets are high in coarse grains, pulses, fruits and vegetables, and nuts and seeds; low in energy-intensive animal-sourced and discretionary foods (such as sugary beverages).
Numbers aren't all that matter when we're talking about the food system, because the quality of the ingredients we're cooking with and the good feeling of talking to the person who grew those ingredients aren't really quantifiable.
If you're not trying to feed the whole country, you're not going to produce at a scale that creates waste, taxes the soil, uses excessive water, or gets packaged in plastic and Styrofoam to make long trips while remaining intact.
The lack of a big, broad, diverse coalition to keep pressure on the government has meant taxpayer money subsidizes industrial meat and dairy at a rate of $38 billion per year.
About 40% of the meat-processing workers in the U.S. are immigrants, of whom about 14% are undocumented, and thus w/o even the bare minimum of state protection to safeguard them against poor working conditions and pay.
Between 2013 and 2017, 8 workers died, on average, each year because of an incident in their plant.
Most of us in the U.S. grow up believing meat is an inevitable and undeniable part of our diets, a birthright, and that its production - the slaughter necessary to make it available - can and should be invisible if that is what is required to make sure nothing about its abundance changes.
It's that connection to American identity that leads people to shout and shut their eats when any of the horrors of meat productions are noted, much like the killing of Indigenous peoples has been made invisible in the national narrative.
Consider the ads for beef and pork that were so popular in the 1980s and 1990s, funded with taxpayer money through what's called a 'commodity checkoff program' that allows taxes paid on these commodities to go into research and marketing.
Interest in kale peaked in 2014 when Beyonce wore the world 'kale' on a sweatshirt, and has been a steadily popular search term on Google ever since.
Settler colonialism, the term that describes the displacement of Indigenous peoples in favor of European settlers, was essential to the creation of the beef industry.
Cattle ranchers and bison hunters, supported by the U.S. military, fundamentally reshaped the Great Plains.
In the Impossible Foods version, the DNA of soy plants is inserted into a GE yeast and then fermented. This results in both the pink color and 'blood' of their patties.
Recent scientific studies confirm that those of us who hold authoritarian beliefs, who think social hierarchy is important, who seek wealth and power an support human dominance over nature, eat more meat than those who stand against inequality.
Even w/o actual beef, how does a corporate tech-faux-meat patty manufactured from GMO soy, served by underpaid labor and likely garnished with a tomato picked by a slave-wage worker on a bun made of processed what flour, truly change the system that beef built?
That nothing can be perfect doesn't mean that ethics shouldn't be part of a serious effort.
Almond milk was first mentioned in a manuscript by the 'scribe of Baghdad in 1226 CE.
Indigenous farming practices and agroecology are the documented ways forward, a well as a new economic system that isn't built upon cancerous, endless growth.
It's important to say that what Elon did with Tesla is one of the greatest contributions to climate change anyone's ever made - this is a car for individuals; the cheapest model goes for $46,990.
The future needs justice, reparations, the redistribution of wealth, and radical restructuring of how has land, who farms and how land is used.
Locally-minded vegetarian.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 4, 2023
3.5 stars. No matter your beliefs and personal ethos, this book will contain ideas you agree with and ideas you don't, but if you're open, you'll also be introduced to some history/ideas that will make you think. I started following Kennedy for her nuanced, non-colonial ways of talking about food and her book follows through on the same kinds of ideas.
I think the biggest thing this book opened my mind to is vegan cheese. I assumed vegan cheese was all weird chemicals, but was pleasantly surprised to find out a lot of it these days is made with the same method as regular cheese. It's just the starting proteins and catalyst that are different. I will definitely give it a try the next time I encounter it.
I think the biggest thing this book opened my mind to is vegan cheese. I assumed vegan cheese was all weird chemicals, but was pleasantly surprised to find out a lot of it these days is made with the same method as regular cheese. It's just the starting proteins and catalyst that are different. I will definitely give it a try the next time I encounter it.
January 13, 2024
Lots of great information about the history and culture of vegetarian and vegan eating in the US, but the style of writing was really annoying. The author is very repetitive and introduces a concept and then introduces it again a couple pages later as if it’s brand new. To me it reads like essays or blogs from a passionate vegetarian and vegetarian chef super fan that got turned into a book, which is a bummer because it has great information about the history, controversies, and culture of vegetarianism and the structural injustice of the food system that have contributed to American eating norms. There is also a lot missing from that conversation, of course, but I didn’t expect this book to touch on it all. I did expect less personal opinion on disgust with meat. She said she doesn’t like to sound like a stereotypical pedantic vegan but spent plenty of time describing how eating meat was eating flesh flavored with death and decay and how you couldn’t force her to eat meat unless she was literally dying on a deserted island.
Also she must have some kind of brand deal with Superiority Burger because she mentioned it about a thousand times.
Also she must have some kind of brand deal with Superiority Burger because she mentioned it about a thousand times.
November 12, 2023
Part history, part personal opinion essay, this is an interesting and very accessible short history of the recent trends in plant-based eating. Kennedy does a great job of probing the inconsistencies, philosophical bedfellows, and considerations fueling vegetarian and vegan diets over the past 100 years or so. I personally didn't learn a ton of new information, but this is a thought-provoking book, and she hits the high points more people should be aware of when it comes to plant-based eating.
November 26, 2023
3.75. Not a single recipe! This had less history and more current culture critique than expected but was pretty interesting (and reaffirming, if you’re inclined to plant-based eating). Could have done without all the discussion of specific east and west-coast restaurants.
August 28, 2023
interesting + informative. totally missed impactful Jewish vegetarian movements for a fairly New York-heavy book (not one mention of the humble kosher dairy!) but that's to be expected
Read
September 12, 2023Captivating book , I really enjoyed 😉
January 16, 2024
Writing general thoughts as a stream of consciousness here:
Quite enjoyed the history and specifics, especially surrounding the intersection of various civil rights movements and veganism. I appreciated the harmonizing ideological premises surrounding self-sufficiency, holistic supply chains, and health of bodies. Her prose glitters when describing specific dishes and experiences, warm moments and ambivalent family situations. When the research is deep, it harmonizes with Kennedy's writing chops.
Also loved the notes about the east village, especially as someone who works in the area and loves many of the local spots. I'm sad that the Desi $5 veggie burger post-dates this book's writing.
Much less into the thinkpiece portions, which frankly got repetitive and general. Tech criticism was agreeable but needed some fleshing out, especially in the meat portions (the vegan cheese portion was more rigorous). I also disagreed with some sections, particularly the lionfish section. Even taking all of the premises with hunting lionfish (there's a lot of IFs that are taken for granted in the book), it's silly to presume that then vegans should join in. No, they're a tiny percentage of all dishes. The obvious switch would be to substitute comparable seafood meals. This is one of those things that's pretty obvious on a numerical policy side, and I understand the essay was speaking more in the language of the philosophical (ethics, ontology, et cetera) and the personal relationship to food, but the dissonance frustrated me.
Similarly, it's silly to presume that any problem with food comes from vegans not eating enough sustainable meat/cheese/et cetera. Given the land constraints on animal agriculture of all sorts, meat eaters can easily consume the entirety of sustainable animal products. The vegans can continue as is, no problem.
(note: I am a non-vegan vegetarian who is flexible due to the nature of my career)
Quite enjoyed the history and specifics, especially surrounding the intersection of various civil rights movements and veganism. I appreciated the harmonizing ideological premises surrounding self-sufficiency, holistic supply chains, and health of bodies. Her prose glitters when describing specific dishes and experiences, warm moments and ambivalent family situations. When the research is deep, it harmonizes with Kennedy's writing chops.
Also loved the notes about the east village, especially as someone who works in the area and loves many of the local spots. I'm sad that the Desi $5 veggie burger post-dates this book's writing.
Much less into the thinkpiece portions, which frankly got repetitive and general. Tech criticism was agreeable but needed some fleshing out, especially in the meat portions (the vegan cheese portion was more rigorous). I also disagreed with some sections, particularly the lionfish section. Even taking all of the premises with hunting lionfish (there's a lot of IFs that are taken for granted in the book), it's silly to presume that then vegans should join in. No, they're a tiny percentage of all dishes. The obvious switch would be to substitute comparable seafood meals. This is one of those things that's pretty obvious on a numerical policy side, and I understand the essay was speaking more in the language of the philosophical (ethics, ontology, et cetera) and the personal relationship to food, but the dissonance frustrated me.
Similarly, it's silly to presume that any problem with food comes from vegans not eating enough sustainable meat/cheese/et cetera. Given the land constraints on animal agriculture of all sorts, meat eaters can easily consume the entirety of sustainable animal products. The vegans can continue as is, no problem.
(note: I am a non-vegan vegetarian who is flexible due to the nature of my career)
July 11, 2025
The contents don't match the title. This is actually a history of vegetarian dining establishments in NYC, with some broader outreach to some other east coast locations. The Farm gets a big mention, and the author tries really hard to draw out bigger conclusions about the importance and impact of vegetarian diets on the environment and health but ultimately it just reads like a tightly focused memoir of someone you've never met and don't know if you want to.
Not to be too harsh; I've been vegan for years so I'm sure we'd have lots to talk about. But the book is so tightly centered on NYC and the surrounding region, and mentions specific eateries I'll never visit and dishes I've never heard of, and does so in a way that makes me feel very much outside of the author's milieu. While touching on the importance of a plant forward diet and mentioning terms like 'decolonization' often, organizations like Food Not Bombs gets only a passing mention in relation to.... another restaurant.
The author mentions how important some chefs and books are to bringing tofu, miso and seitan to the american plate - but then doesn't explore the how or why that happened. The only relevance they bring is... getting dishes into restaurants.
If I'd have known the focus of this book is so narrow, I would not have picked it up. It's a very short listen, and I listened to almost all of it on a long bike ride - I probably would have DNF'd if I were doing a shorter activity. But I kept hoping it would get interesting and expand it's scope, so I didn't stop to change books.
I listened to the audiobook via Overdrive from my local library while running and/or cycling, and I don't process auditory info very well at the best of times so my recollection of details is suspect.
Reading Level: teen
Romance: NO
Smut: NO
Violence: NO
TW: none
Kindle/Audible only? NO
Not to be too harsh; I've been vegan for years so I'm sure we'd have lots to talk about. But the book is so tightly centered on NYC and the surrounding region, and mentions specific eateries I'll never visit and dishes I've never heard of, and does so in a way that makes me feel very much outside of the author's milieu. While touching on the importance of a plant forward diet and mentioning terms like 'decolonization' often, organizations like Food Not Bombs gets only a passing mention in relation to.... another restaurant.
The author mentions how important some chefs and books are to bringing tofu, miso and seitan to the american plate - but then doesn't explore the how or why that happened. The only relevance they bring is... getting dishes into restaurants.
If I'd have known the focus of this book is so narrow, I would not have picked it up. It's a very short listen, and I listened to almost all of it on a long bike ride - I probably would have DNF'd if I were doing a shorter activity. But I kept hoping it would get interesting and expand it's scope, so I didn't stop to change books.
I listened to the audiobook via Overdrive from my local library while running and/or cycling, and I don't process auditory info very well at the best of times so my recollection of details is suspect.
Reading Level: teen
Romance: NO
Smut: NO
Violence: NO
TW: none
Kindle/Audible only? NO
January 19, 2024
I was lead to believe (from an interview with the author on the LA Review of Books podcast) that this would talk about vegetarianism / veganism from a multicultural standpoint. This was not the case. Non-white cultures with plant-based cuisines were mostly mentioned in the context of them being not white — a criticism she levies against the cookbook publishing industry, but does not apply to herself. She primarily centers and platforms white chefs and white-led organizations and movements. Very little about the cuisines of non-white cultures, except in the context of stuff that was eaten by white groups, for example crediting the industrialization of the manufacture of tofu to the Farm — I mean, any Bay Area person with a cursory knowledge of tofu (it's not like I'm a historian, I just read the internet like a normal person) has read a story of tofu being manufactured in San Jose by Japanese immigrants in the early 20th century, right? So many generalizations and assumptions of what normal is that is very white-centered. Also bad science. The only other place I heard that cheese is addictive is from a Sea Shepherd nut wearing a Guy Fawkes mask soliciting on Market Street.
The eating of lionfish even though she doesn't want to eat meat because it is good for the planet…. well that's some of the most white-savior-lady shit I have read in a long time.
I know I am harping on the whiteness of it all but I WAS PROMISED multiculturalism!!!
I could write more but don't want to give this any more space in my head. Don't bother with this, just get a nice contemporary cookbook and just make some good food.
The eating of lionfish even though she doesn't want to eat meat because it is good for the planet…. well that's some of the most white-savior-lady shit I have read in a long time.
I know I am harping on the whiteness of it all but I WAS PROMISED multiculturalism!!!
I could write more but don't want to give this any more space in my head. Don't bother with this, just get a nice contemporary cookbook and just make some good food.
January 18, 2025
The book discusses events as recent as the decline in lab meat sales, but not as recent as Matthew Kenney’s legal issues. Phrases like 'decolonize our diet' and other 'woke' rhetoric is likely a major factor behind the book's low rating, and could also cause it to age quickly- time will tell.
It took me a while to understand that, although she frames the conversation around a plant-based diet, Alicia Kennedy's primary concern is replacing the current system with an anti-capitalist one. This perspective may help in understanding her arguments.
She advocates for political activism, while declaring herself a vegetarian (ex-vegan) who eats oysters, which she describes as "basically, meat plant of the sea". She also considers eating invasive species to be ethically moral, even if she wouldn’t do it herself. These views are different from mine, and I couldn’t always grasp her motivations.
There's an interesting chapter on the development of plant-based cheese, and I appreciated the many references she cited throughout the book.
I can completely relate to the feeling of disgust toward meat that goes beyond any ideology.
I agree that there was too much emphasis on meat alternatives before COVID, and perhaps more importantly, I also believe that there needs to be a more nuanced conversation on the subject.
It took me a while to understand that, although she frames the conversation around a plant-based diet, Alicia Kennedy's primary concern is replacing the current system with an anti-capitalist one. This perspective may help in understanding her arguments.
She advocates for political activism, while declaring herself a vegetarian (ex-vegan) who eats oysters, which she describes as "basically, meat plant of the sea". She also considers eating invasive species to be ethically moral, even if she wouldn’t do it herself. These views are different from mine, and I couldn’t always grasp her motivations.
There's an interesting chapter on the development of plant-based cheese, and I appreciated the many references she cited throughout the book.
I can completely relate to the feeling of disgust toward meat that goes beyond any ideology.
I agree that there was too much emphasis on meat alternatives before COVID, and perhaps more importantly, I also believe that there needs to be a more nuanced conversation on the subject.
October 17, 2023
kennedy opens with "the intention of this book is to change how you think of meat, whether you eat it or do not." as someone who already consumed more vegetarian meals than not, this book instead changed my relationship to vegetarianism. i still don't staunchly conform to (or claim) that identity, but, before this book, i saw my semi-vegetarianism as an individual choice that i made for the climate, my health, and, honestly, flavor. (i seem to have lost my meat mania with age, or exposure to californian produce.)
in reading kennedy's history of vegetarianism and veganism within the united states, i learned that a lot of foundational veg communities rooted their eating practice in activism (e.g., food justice, anti–US capitalism, localism), which has convinced me to reconsider the political angle of my own semi-vegetarianism. i also enjoyed seeing san francisco come up a lot in her timeline, which has deepened my understanding of the place where i started to amp up on plants.
highly recommend to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike!
in reading kennedy's history of vegetarianism and veganism within the united states, i learned that a lot of foundational veg communities rooted their eating practice in activism (e.g., food justice, anti–US capitalism, localism), which has convinced me to reconsider the political angle of my own semi-vegetarianism. i also enjoyed seeing san francisco come up a lot in her timeline, which has deepened my understanding of the place where i started to amp up on plants.
highly recommend to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike!
August 16, 2024
I enjoyed how broadly reaching this book was, touching on everything from the long-standing practice of eating primarily plants to whether anybody ever even asked for lab-grown meat. The last chapter had me highlighting every other paragraph haha. It was a great reminder that abundance is already found here, that appreciating a fewer number things that are high quality and actually sustainable for our environment will win every time, and that to get people to change their food habits it simply has to TASTE good! Diet has and will continue to be a hot topic that encompasses culture, climate, and science and I thought this well-written book balanced that with great nuance and thought. I would have loved to hear more about some of the historical transitions cultures have made from plant centered to meat centered, but if you’re looking for general thoughts and considerations regarding a plant-based diet this book is an interesting start.
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