According to Dave Rosen of Ink Blot, America Eats Its Young was radical in that it "devours" African-American music whole "and regurgitates it back as a virtual catalog of styles and sounds.

Containing no hit singles and precious few catchy tunes, America Eats Its Young is primarily an experimental record that doubles as a lesson in the history of black music.

"[4] Dave Swanson of Ultimate Classic Rock said that Funkadelic stripped away the "sounds of rock, funk, soul and psychedelia" that had defined their previous albums, instead delivering a "hard funk offering"[2] Biographer Kris Needs described the album as Clinton's "grand statement" on the Vietnam War and "other elements that were afflicting his country", and further added that it featured Clinton's "most ambitiously epic production yet to befit the socially-conscious themes bristling among the love ditties and reworks.

"[5] Vernon Gibbs of Soul Sounds wrote in 1973 that most fans of Funkadelic were "universal in their condemnation of certain parts of America Eats Its Young," while conceding it himself to have a "dearth of top notch material" for a double album, and said that the consensus highlights "could not offset the badly thought out stuff".

[8] Among retrospective reviews, Andrew Perry of Select panned the album as an unappealing, "cluttered jazz-rock fusion" that was alone in the Parliament-Funkadelic discography and which "seldom [earned] the accolade of true funkadelia."

[15] More positive was Ned Raggett of AllMusic, who described America Eats Its Young as a double album that was "worth every minute of it" and a departure from the "endless slabs of double-album dreck that came around the same time" as Funkadelic brought "life, soul and much more to the party".