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Book
Review:
"Nature's First Law: The Raw Food
Diet" by Stephen Arlin, Fouad Dini, and David Wolfe. 218 pp. Large USA paperback.
Book Review by John Machin, UK
Nature's First Law is the noisiest book you'll ever read:
it's impossible to turn a page without hearing at least half a dozen gauntlets being
thrown down. Nevertheless, the authors' message can be heard loud and clear. Arlin, Dini,
and Wolfe are the militant tendency of the raw-food movement, and their uncompromising
goal is the conversion of the world to a 100% raw diet - by law, if necessary, with the
severest penalties for infringers.
Governments, MDs, food researchers, and manufactureres - each
comes in for the special Nature's First Law brand of vituperation, expressed with
virtually palable anger at the tragic waste cooked food has brought to a planet and its
people.
"Driven by forces seeded in our blood", the authors
challenge the establishment to abandon its alchemic experiments and test the efficacy of
its medicines, vitamin pills, and putatively nourishing cooked meals against a simple
regimen of suncooked plant food. Enlightened raw-foodists are beseeched to propagate news
of the miraculous health and spiritual benefits of raw food, with a zeal which surpasses
that of the most fervent evangelist: "We are," proclaim the authors,
"super-heroes, and our job is to save lives."
Attacking head-on such provocative concepts as HIV, cancer,
the "false body," and cooked-food addiction, Arlin, Dini, and Wolfe mince
neither their food nor their words, delivering their arguments with metaphoric eloquence
bordering on the poetic: "Today's youth has been weaned on the decadent nipple of
television." Science, statistics, and history meld with innovative theories and noble
philosophy in a coruscating swirl of fearlessly devastating prose.
Although the authors occasionally mistate inference as fact,
and offer scant practical help on starting a raw-food diet, their unashamed enthusiasm,
their unalloyed plain-speaking, their heady, soaring, glorious confidence make Nature's
First Law an inspiring read for anyone with the guts to glimpse behind the veil of
hypocrisy suffocating our so-called civilization. This is, in short, an awesome work: buy
it, read it - and thank God the authors are on our side. |
