Decoding Plant-Based Messaging

Jayne Buxton is the author of "The Great Plant-Based Con: Why eating a plants-only diet won't improve your health or save the planet." It's replete with scientific references. Her exposé pushes back on the widely-popularized notion that drastic reduction of animal protein will improve human health while heading off planetary catastrophe—Buxton demonstrates the science behind it is weak and steeped in confirmation bias. She probes the forces aligned to propagate that message—a powerful alliance of Big Food, Big Medicine, Big Agriculture, Big Philanthropy, Big Media, Big Government, and Big Academia. The EAT-Lancet initiative, which proposes draconian restrictions on animal protein consumption, failed muster in a recent trial intended to demonstrate its effectiveness against heart disease and cancer. Meat and full-fat dairy are not the problem, but the excess carbs that are inevitable with many vegetarian diets are. Buxton contends the world’s population can be fed and the environment safeguarded by adoption of regenerative agriculture.