Book Review: The World Peace Diet: Compassion for Animals, Compassion for Others

As long as governments wage wars and people endure violence and oppression, compassionate individuals will ask themselves, "What can I do to make the world a more peaceful place?" The book "The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony" offers an answer.

Written by Will Tuttle, Ph.D., (www.willtuttle.com/WPD) and published in 2005 by Lantern Books (www.lanternbooks.com), "The World Peace Diet" offers eye-opening revelations about the food choices we make and the ramifications of those choices. It provides insight into how our food choices affect our attitudes toward our fellow creatures and toward other human beings. The book also explores the way our food choices impact the environment and human health.

Many of us grew up believing the meat, eggs and milk we consumed came from a farm like Old MacDonald's; the idyllic place so many of us sang about as children. Some adults carry on this belief, giving little thought to how a seemingly endless supply of meat, eggs and milk fills grocery store shelves year after year.

Unlike the Old MacDonald song, the existence of ILOs (intensive livestock operations), or factory farms, is not something adults share with children or even acknowledge themselves. Instead, the unimaginable cruelty of factory farming is suppressed and hidden away from the general public --- and from our own conscience. To learn more about this kind of food production, type "factory farming" into the search box at Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com).

Does what we eat contribute to the violence in our world? Is there a link between the brutality and terror inflicted on factory farm animals and the brutality and terror human beings inflict on each other? Will Tuttle's book says yes to both these questions.