Man Eating Plants: How I Learned the Secrets of a Diet for a Healthy New World
Instead of taking the drugs, at the age of 37 I decided to adopt a plant-based diet.
I grew up in a small family of meat eaters. For breakfast my mother would make me a hamburger, usually served with apple sauce and instant white rice on the side. For lunch I would have some beef ribs, with similar side dishes. Dinner was the main meal of the day, so I got a sizeable steak and she would add a helping of canned peas because
a growing boy needs a few vegetables to go along with his meat,
she would tell me. It went without saying that I would have a glass of milk to go with the meal and ice cream for dessert if I cleaned my plate.
We weren’t the only ones who ate a similar diet in the Los Angeles suburbs of the 1950s. Television was still relatively new and there were ads for home freezers and sides of beef that were relatively inexpensive and would be delivered regularly. We were a little unusual in that we were a two-person family. My father had been hospitalized following “a nervous breakdown” when I was five years old. His journey in and out of the mental hospital is a story I tell in my memoir, My Distant Dad: Healing the Family…
