Fans pick 100 books like Unsavory Truth

Professionally, I am a Professor of Toxicology (Emeritus) at the Johns Hopkins University. I devoted my professional career to improving the science of toxicology by developing a program that evaluated risk using non-animal methods. As such, I founded The JHU Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT). In addition, I spent the latter part of my career on Food Ethics. In short, my life work was devoted to animals and better foods. In 2022, the American Visionary Art Museum of Baltimore awarded me an Ambassador of Compassion. 

Professionally, I am a Professor of Toxicology (Emeritus) at the Johns Hopkins University. I devoted my professional career to improving the science of toxicology by developing a program that evaluated risk using non-animal methods. As such, I founded The JHU Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT). In addition, I spent the latter part of my career on Food Ethics. In short, my life work was devoted to animals and better foods. In 2022, the American Visionary Art Museum of Baltimore awarded me an Ambassador of Compassion. 

Professionally, I am a Professor of Toxicology (Emeritus) at the Johns Hopkins University. I devoted my professional career to improving the science of toxicology by developing a program that evaluated risk using non-animal methods. As such, I founded The JHU Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT). In addition, I spent the latter part of my career on Food Ethics. In short, my life work was devoted to animals and better foods. In 2022, the American Visionary Art Museum of Baltimore awarded me an Ambassador of Compassion. 

I’ve always thought of myself as someone who “cares about animals,” but I came to see that I was thinking mainly about mammals and birds and overlooking the vast majority of animal life: fishes and invertebrates. I’m a philosophy professor at the London School of Economics, and for almost 10 years now, I’ve also been part of an emerging international community of “animal sentience” researchers—researchers dedicated to investigating the feelings of animals scientifically. In 2021, a team led by me advised the UK government to protect octopuses, crabs, and lobsters—and the government changed the law in response. But there is a lot more we need to change.

A former Catholic, raised in the restaurant business, becoming a Franciscan, and with a passionate love of art, they collectively integrated and came to define my life. I was sent to culinary school. Suffering from a chronic lung condition and obesity, I learned that an animal-based diet was the primary cause and became a vegan in October 1976, regaining my health. Vegan culinary art, as my life’s passion, led me to compete in the International Culinary Olympics five times in Germany, winning Seven medals, including gold, writing for magazines, authoring four books, and working with the United Nations to help humanity improve its health with a plant-based vegan diet.

I have always been fascinated with plants. Their shapes, their colors, their beauty, even the plants that are known to be harmful to humans (poison ivy, puncture vine) had appeal to me. Plants are, by far, the most prolific, the biggest, the oldest, the most complex of organisms. And yet, as a pre-med student, classes on botany were never recommended. Sad. These books delve into the complexity, the wonder of plants, and how they interact with humans. From the sheer poetic pronouncements of Michael Pollan to the straightforward prose of Richard Manning, here is a chance to see the breadth and depth; our rewards and struggles with the plant kingdom.  

I’ve always been surrounded by food culture. I grew up in a diner family. My parents started Lakey’s Cafe just before I was born. My first jobs as a kid were in that restaurant. After that, I worked in restaurants as a server for more than 10 years of my life. When the opportunity presented itself to throw in the napkin and become a writer, I did. My writing now as a professional writer centers around the food and beverage industry. One topic that I don’t see discussed enough is the role that food plays in science fiction and fantasy novels. Food in novels has a way of showing us something about ourselves.

Having studied diet and behavior for forty years, I realized that I had ignored obesity. However, after eventually considering the topic, I found that the actions of both politicians and the food industry had been spectacularly unhelpful. Why are so many people allowed to suffer? If politicians and the food industry are ineffective, there is a third group that could engineer change: the general public. It is scandalous that so many have been condemned to an early death following decades of ill-health. Something needs to change.

I’ve been interested in diets ever since I watched my mom diet while I was growing up. For decades, I enthusiastically jumped on the diet roller coaster myself, and thus began my quest to find the “perfect” way to eat. Not one of these “diets” ever worked for me for long-term weight loss, however, and I became more and more confused about what I “should” be eating. Finally, I was able to lose over 80 pounds thanks to intermittent fasting, but I was still confused about what I should be eating. Once I figured out the when (intermittent fasting), the what followed, thanks to the work of these authors.

I was lucky enough to be introduced to medieval Welsh literature when I was an undergraduate, and the Welsh language mesmerised me. It is so unlike any other language that I had come across and translating texts from Welsh into English was as absorbing as code-cracking. My apprenticeship as a scholar was long and hard and I soon realised that my particular contribution was to make Welsh literature accessible to non-Welsh speakers, not simply through translations, but by aligning the Welsh tradition with the wider literary cultures of Europe. I want Wales and its two literatures to take their place as two of the great literatures of Europe.