Status
Available
Genres
Collection
Publication
Warner Books (2005), Edition: 1st, 296 pages
Description
"An exploration of the global meaning of food and what all of us can do to exercise power over the food industry and, ultimately, our environment"--Provided by the publisher.
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User reviews
LibraryThing member eduscapes
Examining the implications of your decisions regarding food consumption, Goodall makes a passionate argument for making good choices about what you choose to eat. Exploring topics such as genetically modified foods, factory farms, obesity, and water consumption, she helped me understand why it's
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important to buy organic products and free-range meat. Although we'd already moved toward a more healthy diet, she changed our approach by noting that each purchase you make sends a message. I particularly liked her suggestion that paying more for organic foods is like making a charitable donation to an organization you believe is doing good work. Show Less
LibraryThing member whitneyskywalker
A must-read for vegetarians and all health-conscious eaters.
LibraryThing member greenotter
Amazing book -- another one that changed the way I look at food, eating, and nutrition. Makes me want to become a vegetarian.
LibraryThing member Nancylouu
This book motivated me no end!
LibraryThing member kukulaj
Goodall outlines here many of the problems of our current food production systems. Big businesses have taken over a huge fraction of the work and in their quest for profit they neglect both risks to the consumers of their food products and also the general damage to the environment. Many specific
Goodall's advice for dealing with these problems is mostly just to shop more sensitively and intelligently - to buy organic free range eggs etc. Growing your own food is also mentioned.
This book is not very reflective - it doesn't really discuss the challenges involved in figuring out how to be a better consumer or a better citizen. The book provides basic lists of do-s and don't-s. Goodall does also give some names of organization and other resources to allow the reader to extend those lists a bit.
I fear that this general territory is very turbulent and these basic lists are not very reliable or durable. I am sure that Goodall has done good research. But the ground is constantly shifting. On the one hand, the global ecology is chaotic and goes through great swings, e.g. which fish are scarce and which abundant can flip around in surprising ways. Then technology, too - food production systems - is also changing rapidly. On top of all that, there are powerful forces of distortion and disinformation. What sorts of conditions are legally allowed behind a label of "free range"?
No doubt, our individual consumer choices are key drivers in the global economy. But these choices are powerfully constrained by the greater cultures we live in. Look at the power of mass media. As long as folks subject themselves to such a barrage of highly tuned advertising, both explicit and that underlying almost all the idealized portrayals of how people live in our culture... one of the most powerful things a person can do is to turn off their TV - and then invite over a neighbor for conversation. Yes, it is good for a family to eat together and enjoy conversation, but essential too for that conversation to extend and circulate.
These are tough times. In an emergency, there is often no time for reflection. Sometimes a simple formula is what is needed for a large group of people to act in a coordinated way. Maybe we can turn our present crisis around by buying organic food. But look e.g. at the problems in finance. It sure seems like banking and investment practices are also serious underlying causes of the crisis in farming. Maybe if we made different choices there, e.g. moving savings to Credit Unions or other locally owned banks, maybe that could help keep small farmers afloat.
If you don't know about the problems with industrial agriculture, this is as good a place to learn about them as any. It has practical information for making wiser food purchasing choices. But this book just covers one facet of a nasty web of problems that is all tangled up and requires a multifaceted method for a real shift to occur.
Show More
problems are dealt with here in some detail, such as cattle and hog feed lots and salmon farming. Goodall's advice for dealing with these problems is mostly just to shop more sensitively and intelligently - to buy organic free range eggs etc. Growing your own food is also mentioned.
This book is not very reflective - it doesn't really discuss the challenges involved in figuring out how to be a better consumer or a better citizen. The book provides basic lists of do-s and don't-s. Goodall does also give some names of organization and other resources to allow the reader to extend those lists a bit.
I fear that this general territory is very turbulent and these basic lists are not very reliable or durable. I am sure that Goodall has done good research. But the ground is constantly shifting. On the one hand, the global ecology is chaotic and goes through great swings, e.g. which fish are scarce and which abundant can flip around in surprising ways. Then technology, too - food production systems - is also changing rapidly. On top of all that, there are powerful forces of distortion and disinformation. What sorts of conditions are legally allowed behind a label of "free range"?
No doubt, our individual consumer choices are key drivers in the global economy. But these choices are powerfully constrained by the greater cultures we live in. Look at the power of mass media. As long as folks subject themselves to such a barrage of highly tuned advertising, both explicit and that underlying almost all the idealized portrayals of how people live in our culture... one of the most powerful things a person can do is to turn off their TV - and then invite over a neighbor for conversation. Yes, it is good for a family to eat together and enjoy conversation, but essential too for that conversation to extend and circulate.
These are tough times. In an emergency, there is often no time for reflection. Sometimes a simple formula is what is needed for a large group of people to act in a coordinated way. Maybe we can turn our present crisis around by buying organic food. But look e.g. at the problems in finance. It sure seems like banking and investment practices are also serious underlying causes of the crisis in farming. Maybe if we made different choices there, e.g. moving savings to Credit Unions or other locally owned banks, maybe that could help keep small farmers afloat.
If you don't know about the problems with industrial agriculture, this is as good a place to learn about them as any. It has practical information for making wiser food purchasing choices. But this book just covers one facet of a nasty web of problems that is all tangled up and requires a multifaceted method for a real shift to occur.
Show Less
LibraryThing member dele2451
A thoughtful examination of the complex process whereby today's humans acquire the food and drink to sustain us, often to the significant detriment of our planet and other sentient beings. While a lot of the news is grim, Goodall manages to dispense her information with compassion and empowering
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practical suggestions. Expectedly, a significant portion of the text is dedicated to animal cruelty issues, especially in factory farming settings, however Goodall treats the carnivores in her readership with her customary respect and does not bludgeon steak lovers for their choice. Rather, she focuses on educating every food consumer to keep in mind that each meal is a vote for the type of planet we want to live on and changing one item on your plate (or the method used to grow it) can make a huge difference when multipled over time. I found the David vs. Goliath analogies a little overwrought at times (not ALL successful multinational corporations are bad, just as not ALL small, independent farms are good), but that was a minor annoyance in an otherwise powerful book. I appreciated the comprehensive approach she took to approaching the human nutrition chain as a whole: soil, water, seed, plant, protein & dairy, etc, as well as the populations who determine how those resources are foraged, cultivated, harvested and sold/traded. Monsanto executives probably won't find much to love in these pages and sensitive PETAites might not be able to stomach some of the barnyard atrocities, but I'd recommend it to just about everyone else. Show Less
LibraryThing member auntieknickers
Oh dear. This book was in a list of similarly-themed books that I found in the New York Times Magazine (I think). I'm afraid it's a stellar example of expert-gone-wrong, sort of like the Linus Pauling Vitamin C thing. Jane Goodall knows a lot about chimpanzees, and she obviously cares about our
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food choices and their impact on the planet. But the book is a total hodgepodge of everything from reminiscences about eating canned pineapple in the air raid shelter during the Blitz to an incredibly naive chapter telling us that my goodness! people in different countries eat different kinds of food! My resolute omnivorousness probably made me less sympathetic to her championing of a vegetarian diet, as well. Spend your time reading her books on chimpanzees if you want to read Jane Goodall. Show Less
LibraryThing member JoBass
An interesting discussion of GMOs, philosophy of food.
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0446533629 / 9780446533621