No More Bull! The Mad Cowboy Targets America’s Worst Enemy—Our Diet
No More Bull! By: Howard F. Lyman with Glen Merzer & Joanna Samorow-Merzer
No More Bull! is a sequel of sorts to Howard F. Lyman’s first book, Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattlerancher Who Won’t Eat Meat. No More Bull! opens with a forward by world-renowned, Cleveland-based heart surgeon Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who wastes no time saying, “As only Howard Lyman can portray it, we are updated on the egregious, self-serving, and dangerous practices of the meat, dairy and poultry industries.” Just as quickly, Lyman jumps into what is wrong with Big Agriculture today, giving his insider perspective of an industry increasingly out of control and the government agencies in charge of policing it in denial—or at least in the pockets of the industry.
In Mad Cowboy, Lyman was candid about his transformation from factory farmer to vegetarian environmental activist. Temporarily paralyzed by a spinal cord tumor and awaiting surgery, Lyman resolved to change his life in 1979. With heartfelt sincerity, he wrote, “I made up my mind right then and there that no matter what the outcome of my operation, I’d dedicate the rest of my life to restoring the land to what it had been when I’d had the good fortune to be born with it.”
Lyman illuminated the startling connection between factory farming and environmental degradation. “Think of the environmental threats facing our planet: air pollution, water pollution, land contamination, soil erosion, wildlife loss, desertification (the turning of verdant land into a condition resembling natural desert), rain forest destruction and global warming. Humankind’s profligate consumption of animal products has made a significant contribution to all of these ills, and it stands as the leading cause of many of them. Certainly these [environmental] problems wouldn’t disappear overnight if the world suddenly became vegetarian,” Lyman explained. “But no other lifestyle change could produce as positive an impact on these profound threats to our collective survival as the adoption of a plant-based diet.”
Since his first book and infamous appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, mad cow disease has been discovered in America—just as Lyman predicted. Commenting on Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman’s reaction to the first positive case of mad cow in the U.S., Lyman writes, “It was the kind of performance one would expect from a Department of Agriculture whose leading players, like Ms. Veneman herself, used to work as lobbyists for the cattle industry.”
While the book’s hard-hitting opening chapter is an update on the deadly mad cow disease, Lyman effectively writes on many other topics. In “Revenge of the Animals,” he juxtaposes how humans kill animals to eat, and they, in return, land us in the emergency room and on operating tables. Lyman writes that his book is “Dedicated to the millions of Americans suffering from maladies caused by the animal-based diet. May this book help you regain your health.”
Other chapters offer perspectives on whether humans are actually carnivores, the current known health benefits of plant-based foods, and “Alzheifer’s Disease,” in which
Lyman cogently speculates that the hundredfold increase in Alzheimer’s over the last 25 years just might be related to eating meat. “How can it be that a disease…once so rare is now so common?”
No More Bull! concludes with a two-week vegan meal plan and more than 130 pages of recipes submitted by friends of the author, making this user-friendly book perfect for sharing with the soon-to-be vegetarians in your life.
For more information about Howard Lyman visit www.madcowboy.com.
This article is reprinted with permission from VegNews Magazine.
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