Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
In the United States, there are few things more American than ice cream. And few names more synonymous with it than Baskin-Robbins. The company’s pastel storefronts, pink spoons and 31 flavors became part of the cultural wallpaper. John Robbins could have had it all: the corner office, the yacht, the financial security to outlast a dozen lifetimes. But in 1969, aged 21, he walked away from the empire his father had built — from the money, prestige and his presumed inheritance — and never looked back.
What he chose instead was harder, lonelier and, ultimately, far more consequential. Robbins spent his life not selling sweetness, but questioning its cost. In Diet for a New America (1987), he indicted industrial food systems for harming not only the human body but also animals, ecosystems and the planet itself. At a time when vegetarianism was fringe and veganism rarer still, he made the case — calmly, clearly and persuasively — that what Americans ate was making them sick, and that a different way was possible.
The message gained traction. EarthSave, the nonprofit he founded in 1988, helped catalyze a growing awareness of food’s ethical and environmental dimensions. His son, Ocean, co-founded the Food Revolution Network with him in 2011. By then, the elder Robbins had become one of the most respected voices in the plant-based movement — a position earned not by bluster but by consistency, depth, and a deeply personal sense of moral clarity.
His convictions were never just abstract. At age 5, he had contracted polio, leaving one leg partially paralyzed. Doctors said he’d never walk normally. But through decades of disciplined movement and clean eating, he defied them — running marathons, scaling mountains, even gracing magazine covers for his fitness in his 60s. When post-polio syndrome returned in his 70s, robbing him of the ability to walk, he spoke of it not with bitterness, but grace.
Robbins didn’t just reject the trappings of inherited wealth; he dismantled the logic behind it. To him, joy wasn’t found in indulgence, but in service. He knew the world was unjust, but believed love — unflashy, disciplined, rooted — could push it toward something better.
He never reconciled with ice cream. But in the end, even his father came around. After decades of estrangement, Irv Robbins, suffering from diabetes and heart disease, read Diet for a New America at his cardiologist’s urging. He changed his diet, improved, and phoned his son to say, simply, “You were right.”
John Robbins lived quietly, but he moved millions. He taught that food could be medicine or poison, and that every meal is a moral act. His legacy lives on in empty feedlots, in children raised on kale instead of corn syrup, and in the conviction that it is never too late to change.
Banner image: John Robbins in his 70s. Image courtesy of the Food Revolution Network.
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