Dead Meat
Heir to Baskin-Robbins empire rejects legacy,
espouses benefits of vegetarianism
By Linda Hardesty
The Metropolitan
He was called ãthe prophet of non-profitä by one television show host. Indeed, he rejected his birthright as CEO of a major corporation and went on to become the guru of alternative eating.
ãI was born into the Baskin-Robbins family,ä said John Robbins, 49. ãI was the only son. I was destined to run the company. But meanwhile, inside me there was this whole other life.ä
As a teenager, Robbins was brimming with questions: Why are some people poor and
others so rich? Is making money the whole purpose of life? What about the millions of people in the world who go to bed hungry?
ãThese kinds of questions were not the basic dinner-table conversation,ä he said.
Robbinsâ family couldnât relate to his anxiety. He should be happy. He was lucky to live in America. His father was extraordinarily successful. He had an ice-cream-cone-shaped swimming pool in the backyard for heavenâs sake.
ãWe had a commercial freezer in our kitchen where we kept all the flavors under development. But I began to have other questions besides ÎWhat flavor do I want?â ä Robbins said.
Robbins, who is the author of the widely-acclaimed book Diet for a New America, spoke about his life and his work Oct. 7 at the Tivoli.
At 17, Robbins went away to college at the University of California at Berkeley and was overjoyed to find others who had the same questions he had. He was profoundly moved by the messages of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
He and others like him were devastated by the assassinations of King and the Kennedys. It seemed that if you bravely stepped up and questioned the dominant paradigm, you would be killed, he said.
After Berkeley, Robbins had a falling-out with his father.
In light of all the suffering in the world, ãinventing a 32nd flavor would just not be an adequate response,ä he said.
Robbins swore off the family fortune and moved to an island in British Columbia with his wife, Deo. They lived in a log cabin and grew their own food, living on $500 a year for the first five years.
Eventually, Robbins wrote Diet for a New America, which is best known as an exposé of the factory farming industry in the United States. In brutal detail, it describes the sad lives of animals raised for food and profit.
Besides advocating animal rights, the book makes a compelling case for vegetarianism based on environmental and health concerns. It argues that cattle grazing is the primary cause of world deforestation and that a vegetarian diet is much more healthy than the meat and dairy diets of most Americans.
When Robbinsâ uncle, Bert Baskin, who weighed 240 pounds, died of a heart attack in 1969, Robbins suggested to his dad that maybe all the ice cream Baskin consumed had something to do with it. ãAbsolutely not,ä his dad said. ãHis ticker just got tired and stopped working.ä
His father would not allow any discussion about the connection between diet and health, Robbins said. He did not want to entertain the idea that his companyâs product might be unhealthy.
After Diet for a New America was published, his mother asked, ãWhy did you write this book ÷ just to hurt us?ä
Ironically, it was the book that helped reunite Robbins with his parents. His fatherâs health was declining rapidly due to diabetes, sky-high cholesterol and obesity. One day at the doctorâs office, his father was lamenting all the pills and medical procedures, and his doctor told him there was only so much medicine could do.
The doctor suggested that the senior Robbins read his sonâs book for advice to save his life.
His dad read the book and changed his diet because of it. Robbins said his fatherâs health has greatly improved.
Recently, his father told him, ãThank God you had the courage to follow your own star.ä
Robbins said the fact that his parents have been able to change is evidence of something Gandhi called ãtruth-force.ä He said that his father used to epitomize the American capitalistic system.
ãMy dad was a close friend of Nixon. He and his contemporaries thought that the environment was for them to exploit ÷ that cows were for ice cream. Now he is receptive to the notion that animals are our fellow beings and ought to be respected.ä
Doing the research for Diet for a New America , Robbins had to think up ways to persuade the owners of factory farms and slaughterhouses to let him visit their businesses.
He tried to be as vague as possible, saying that he was working on an agricultural piece.
Robbins said his visits to huge factory farms ÷ where millions of chickens, pigs and veal calves live out their entire lives indoors in miserable conditions was very draining emotionally, but imagine how much worse it is for the animals. He said it probably would be impossible for him to do research about factory farming now since his book has been so successful.
Robbins doesnât quite know why, with all the recent talk about E. coli and mad-cow disease, there hasnât been more mention of vegetarianism.
ãItâs such an obvious solution,ä he said.
He said an outbreak of mad-cow disease is inevitable in this country, and will be worse here than it was in England.
Robbins is never judgmental of peopleâs eating habits. People who get defensive just prove they donât have senses of humor, he said.
And yet he asks, ãWhy do we call some animals pets and love them, and other animals we call dinner?ä
Itâs been a while since Robbins lived the life of privilege and luxury, and yet, he still has questions.
