An idiosyncratic and often engaging look at how meat isn’t cutting it.
Data scientist Sekar imagines a meatless future in this debut work on food technology.
When most people think of technology, they probably don’t think of animals. However, like the wheel, the plow, or the sail, the cultivation of animals for their valuable resources has been one of humankind’s key technological advances. Today, domesticated animals provide people with food, various materials, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals—though not without a cost, and animals happen to be incredibly inefficient tech that doesn’t offer progress: “All indications suggest that the future of food will ultimately be tastier, healthier, cheaper, kinder, and better for the environment,” the author says. “This will happen because we won’t use animal products.” Rather than making an argument based primarily on ethical or health concerns, Sekar walks readers through all the ways that raising animals on an industrial scale is technologically outdated. Advances in biochemical technology, he notes, mean that people can make anything that animals can by using organic compounds found in plants, fungi, and microbes. What’s more, he adds, it can be done in a way that helps to alleviate global problems, such as water and food insecurity, poverty, and climate change. Along the way, Sekar locates this coming “alternative food revolution” within the larger sweep of history, from humanity’s evolution as a species to the beginnings of agricultural society, industrialization, and the current climate crisis. In addition to predicting the many ways that humans will phase out meat in the near future, he offers advice for readers who are looking to become meat-free right now.
Sekar’s book is not a traditional treatise on the evils of meat. His writing style is arrestingly matter-of-fact, as in this passage, in which he asserts how his own views are quite different from those of some other anti-meat thinkers: “Vegans and vegetarians are…more likely to buy something only if it’s organic or all-natural. I dislike this. I’m unfairly lumped in with these groups when I wholly disagree with many of these ideas,” which he then discusses in detail. The author has a background in biochemical engineering and systems biology, and his prose can be fairly technical, though not so much that the layperson won’t be able to follow along. He’s certainly done his research; the endnotes take up 70 pages alone. However, Sekar takes the book in unexpected directions, devoting entire chapters to such ideas as morality and the very nature of knowledge. This is sometimes to the detriment of his overall message, as when he ends with an extended digression on the concept of the multiverse. Even so, the book’s left-brained approach to its subject means that even longtime meat skeptics will learn something new to bolster their argument. The book’s greatest strength is that it places meat consumption not only in an economic and nutritional context, but also in the larger context of human life, presenting a no-meat future as just the latest in a long line of tech upgrades.
An idiosyncratic and often engaging look at how meat isn’t cutting it.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-97737-9
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
