While searching for videos of John Robbins, author of Healthy at 100 and the 1987 book, Diet for a New America (I suspect that there will be a lot of posts on this blog that refer to Robbins; he has contributed a lot to veganism and has an interesting biography being the former heir to Baskin-Robbins ice cream), I ran into a taping of a Donahue show from 1990, which I admittedly played because I saw that it had River Phoenix in it. But it turned out to be much more than that. After Donahue introduces his celebrity panel, I was transfixed by Lisa Bonet. She calmly and yet passionately answers Donahue’s questions about not eating dairy or meat and states the theory that regular dairy and meat-eating leads to a slew of preventable diseases, namely cancers. She talks about not vaccinating her daughter and mentions that she breastfeeds her at 16 months of age — still, of course, issues that interest us as families.
The show had a feeling of immediacy to it, and yet here I am, almost 20 years later, two of the celebrity guests long-dead (and only 4 years after the taping), intellectually invested in all the content of the show, feeling the need for the same kind of activism now. John Robbins, himself, joins the panel discussion about halfway through the show, which is posted as 5 segments on YouTube. I’ve posted two of the 5 segments, but they’re all available on YouTube. John Robbins appears on the 2nd video I posted around the 1:30 mark.
I could say a lot more, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. This is 20-year old daytime television that’s worth watching.
Videos after the jump.
No related posts.
Did you enjoy: What’s Changed in 20 Years?? Then subscribe to The Casual Vegan by Email or you should follow me on twitter here.
The Next Post: Cats as Casual Vegans
The Previous Post: Everyone’s talking about Red Meat
Comments Down Here
// Share your thoughts, and get a link.
You can follow any responses to this entry via its RSS comments feed. You may also leave a trackback by clicking this link.