Tovar Cerulli

A vegan-turned-hunter reignites the connection between humans and their food sources and continues the dialogue begun by Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver

As a boy, Tovar Cerulli spent his summers fishing for trout and hunting bullfrogs. While still in high school, he began to experiment with vegetarianism. By the age of twenty he was a vegan. A decade later, in the face of declining health, he returned to omnivory and within a few years found himself headed into the woods, rifle in hand.

Through his personal quest, Cerulli bridges disparate worldviews and questions moral certainties. Are fishing and hunting barbaric, murderous anachronisms? Or can they be respectful ways for humans to connect with nature and food? How harmless is vegetarianism? Can hunters and vegetarians be motivated by similar values and instincts?

In this time of intensifying concern over ecological degradation and animal welfare, how do we make peace with the fact that, even in growing organic vegetables, life is sustained by death? Drawing on personal experience, philosophy, history, and religion, Cerulli shows how America’s overly sanitized habits of consumption have disconnected us from food and nature, resulting in many of the spiritual and environmental crises we now face.

At once compassionate and probing, The Mindful Carnivore invites us to reconsider what it means to eat.

• Publishers Weekly

  "A touching and thought-provoking exploration of not only what we eat but how we eat it."

• Kirkus Reviews

  "Entertaining and erudite. Cerulli’s refreshingly evenhanded tone allows readers to judge the author’s argument on the merits of his literary and personal evidence." 

• Novella Carpenter

  "Both a personal tale of how one man comes to terms with the meat on his plate and a historical look at humanity’s connection to animals, The Mindful Carnivore delivers new insight in the too often simplistic vegetarian-versus-carnivore argument." 

• Nicolette Hahn Niman

  "Elegantly written, thoughtful, intensely personal yet universal, Tovar Cerulli’s The Mindful Carnivore is destined to become a classic."

• Hank Shaw

  "Cerulli offers penetrating insights into not only where our food comes from, but what our daily dietary choices say about who we are as human beings."