John Robbins is an American author, who popularized the links among nutrition, environmentalism, and animal rights. He is the author of the 1987 Diet for a New America, an exposé on connections between diet, physical health, animal cruelty, and environmentalism.
Biography
Robbins is the son of Irma Robbins and Irv Robbins co-founder of Baskin-Robbins. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1969, and received a master's degree from Antioch College, in 1976. Rather than following the ice-cream parlor legacy of his father, he left the company to seek a simpler life. He and his wife Deo were married on March 10, 1967. Ocean Robbins, their son, is the founder of Food Revolution Network. In 1987 Diet for a New America was published. In the book he advocates a plant-based vegan diet. Additionally, he gives his views on the meat and dairy industries, world hunger and human health. A year later he founded EarthSave. In 2001, Robbins updated and reiterated his views on veganism for ethical, environmental and health reasons in the book The Food Revolution. The book includes information on organic food, genetically modified food, and factory farming. He worked with PETA in 2002 to sue the California Milk Advisory Board over its 'happy cows' television advertisement. The Milk Advisory Board won on a technicality. His 2006 book Healthy at 100, published by Random House, was printed on 100% post-consumer non-chlorine bleached paper, a first for a book from a major U.S. publisher. Robbins is also on the advisory board of Naked Food Magazine, for which he is also a regular contributor of articles espousing a plant-based diet.
EarthSave
In 1988, Robbins founded EarthSave, an international, non-profit organization. The organization was born out of the reader response to his Diet for a New America. The organization works to promote healthy, environmentally sound food choices, produce independence from the medical system and raise awareness of "the ecological destruction and cruelty linked to the production of food animals." EarthSave's head office is in New York, USA, with local chapters throughout the United States and Canada. "Taste of Health" is their annual vegetarian food festival. Earthsave Canada was established as a registered non-profit charity in British Columbia in March 1990.
Books
Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness and the Future of Life on Earth,.
May All Be Fed: Diet For a New World,.
Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing the Source of True Healing,.
The Awakened Heart: Meditations on Finding Harmony in a Changing World, 1997.
The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World, 2001.
Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World’s Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples, 2006.
