Books: Our Food, Our World
The Green Foodprint: Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet by Linda Riebel
A guide to citizens’ power to heal the earth, The Green Foodprint distills a wealth of information into five earth-friendly guidelines that can be tailored to one’s lifestyle. The author explains the controversies and highlights inspiring stories of individuals and groups that are remaking our food world. A practical handbook for the conscious consumer and a good book to give to people who are just awakening to the nightmare of industrial food and the inspiration of the food revolution.
Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating by Jane Goodall with Gary McAvoy and Gail Hudson
The great chimpanzee expert and conservationist adds her voice to the food revolution in this wide-ranging account of global food problems and what we can do about them. Ably assisted by her co-authors, Jane Goodall explains an amazing diversity of issues, with special attention given to the ways modern food systems harm animals and ecosystems. True to its title, the book highlights creative solutions and ways readers can make a difference.
Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet,
by Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé
Traveling to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, meeting visionaries and the transformations they are making in farms, fisheries, and kitchens, the authors tackled the need to rein in consumerism and global capitalism to heal ourselves and the planet. This is a detailed, thoughtful account of injustices and solutions, and an analysis of the key widespread beliefs that hinder the transformation. Includes recipes from Alice Waters, Mollie Katzen, Laurel Robertson, and Anna Thomas, and more.
The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health, by Randall Fitzgerald
Investigative journalist Randall Fitzgerald warns how thousands of man-made chemicals in our food, water, medicine, and environment are making humans the most polluted species on the planet. Fitzgerald provides overwhelming evidence to shatter the myths perpetrated by the chemical, pharmaceutical, and processed foods industries. In the face of this national health crisis, Fitzgerald also presents informed and practical suggestions for what we can do to turn the tide and live healthier lives.
Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket, by Brain Halweil
Worldwatch Institute senior fellow Brain Halweil lays out the many reasons for choosing more locally grown foods: reducing environmental harm, empowering the people who grow our food, retrieving freshness and taste, tackling food deserts, restoring a sense of community, and enhancing food quality. Each chapter ends with a detailed account of a person or a group (in the U.S., Kenya, Norway, and elsewhere) helping to rebuild the customs and culture of local foodsheds.
The War on Bugs, by Will Allen
Fascinating story of American industrial pesticides, advertising, spin doctoring, and the rationalizations people used after the chemicals’ dangers became obvious. Illustrated advertisements from farm journals, dating from 1867 onward, show how scientists, farm journal editors, advertisers, and universities collaborated with industry to promote and defend these chemicals, which now poison our air, water, soil, and bodies.
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, by Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben shows that we’re living on a fundamentally altered planet — and opens our eyes to the kind of change we’ll need in order to make our civilization endure. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We’ve created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth. Our hope depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back — on building the kind of societies and economies that can hunker down, concentrate on essentials, and create the type of community (in the neighborhood, but also on the Internet) that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change — fundamental change — is our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.
Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis, by Dr. Vandana Shiva
With Soil Not Oil, Dr. Vandana Shiva connects the dots between industrial agriculture and climate change. Shiva shows that a world beyond dependence on fossil fuels and globalization is both possible and necessary. Condemning industrial agriculture as a recipe for ecological and economic disaster, Shiva’s champion is the small, independent farm: their greater productivity, their greater potential for social justice as they put more resources into the hands of the poor, and the biodiversity that is inherent to the traditional farming practiced in small-scale agriculture. What we need most in a time of changing climates and millions hungry, she argues, is sustainable, biologically diverse farms that are more resistant to disease, drought, and flood. In her trademark style, she draws solutions to our world’s most pressing problems on the head of a pin: “The solution to climate change,” she observes, “and the solution to poverty are the same.”
Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers, by Ronnie Cummins and Ben Lilliston
This second, completely revised edition of Genetically Engineered Food is an all-in-one guide written to help consumers educate themselves about the risks posed by genetically engineered foods. Ronnie Cummins and Ben Lilliston, both leading consumer advocates, provide comprehensive, up-to-the-minute, action-inspiring information, including how to identify GE foods, products to avoid, brands that are GE-free, and how to shop and act with a purpose. They discuss the ethical, environmental, and health arguments against GE food, how these foods are being regulated in the United States and abroad, and why consumers are right to oppose them. Genetically Engineered Foods is the first and still one of the few consumer-oriented guides addressing this important subject.
Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating, by Jeffrey M. Smith
This explosive exposé reveals what the biotech industry doesn’t want you to know—how industry manipulation and political collusion, not sound science, allow dangerous genetically engineered food into your daily diet. Company research is rigged, alarming evidence of health dangers is covered up, and intense political pressure applied. Read the actual internal memos by FDA scientists, warning of toxins, allergies, and new diseases—all ignored by their superiors, including a former attorney for Monsanto. Learn why the FDA withheld information from Congress after a genetically modified supplement killed nearly a hundred people and disabled thousands. Eating such experimental food is gambling with your health. Find out how you can protect yourself and your family.
Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food, by Gene Baur
Baur, co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, describes the cruelty of factory farming, where cows, chickens, and turkeys are confined, mistreated, and neglected in order to maximize profits. This thorough account also covers agribusiness practices, weak or poorly enforced laws, and exploitation of human workers. Profiles of individual rescued animals showcase the humane alternative Baur helped pioneer. The appendix of organizations and websites that support compassionate food and animal advocacy gives readers ways to take action and participate in the humane movement.
Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry, by Gail Eisnitz
Slaughterhouse is the first book of its kind to explore the impact that unprecedented changes in the meatpacking industry over the last twenty-five years — particularly industry consolidation, increased line speeds, and deregulation — have had on workers, animals, and consumers. It is also the first time ever that workers have spoken publicly about what’s really taking place behind the closed doors of America’s slaughterhouses.
Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource, edited by Tara Lohan
Water Matters is a call to action and a solution-focused guide to solving our global water crisis. Authors take on both the good and the bad—the impact of climate change on water resources, the threat of privatization, and the challenge of thirsty agriculture, as well as a growing grassroots water justice movement, tools for watershed literacy, and success stories in conservation and efficiency. Water Matters is a book that will make you pause for a moment to remember the life-sustaining value of water in our daily lives, and then inspire you to do everything you can to preserve and protect our threatened water resources.
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