Four Books that Will CHange the Way You Look at Food

Turn on your television, the internet, or pick up a magazine or a news paper and you are sure to find something about either nutrition, health, obesity, or the environment. You can't miss these topics because they are in your face everywhere yet our society is fast killing itself with low quality food and bad nutritional practices, not to mention the impact our bad agriculture practices are having on our planet. If you are a person who is interested in learning more about the impact of our diets and agriculture are having on all of us I would like to suggest four books that will forever change the way you look at food. These books come from four very different points of view and all have things in common as well as being very different. These books have one common thread; people who have thought about our health, our food, and our environment and have been impacted greatly by what they learned write them. You will learn from them too, I promise.

The first book that will change the way you look at food is a mainstream best seller. The book is Morgan Spurlock's Don't Eat This Book-Fast Food and the Supersizing of America. You may have seen Spurlock's movie on the shelves at your local video store; Super Size Me that is the inspiration for Don't Eat this Book. The book chronicles in detail the adventure of Mr. Spurlock's thirty-day diet of nothing but Mc Donald's food. Not only will you learn the toll this diet took on Morgan but you will also hear many scary and alarming facts about the bad agricultural practices used in growing some of the foods served at Mc Donald's. One of the scariest foods I found out about was a breed of Genetically modified potatoes that contain pesticides in their genetic make up. I personally would not want to sit down and feed my family a meal of pesticide but it happens all the time when we choose to eat the mystery foods that fast food companies serve up. You will also look into many other companies and even into the dangers of the school cafeteria. This book is entertaining, educational and interesting for those who eat the mainstream American diet of convenience and fast foods.

From fast food we move on to a look at all food in general through the eyes of renowned naturalist Jane Goodall. Goodall's book is titled Harvest for Hope- A Guide to Mindful Eating and this book will really open your eyes further to the terrible practices used in growing and raising food not only in the United States but also around the world. You will learn what a monoculture farm is and why it is endangering our land. You will learn the frightening things some seed companies are doing to our food supply and how to fight back. Animal loving Jane Goodall will of course educate you about the cruel way the animals who provide your meat are raised as well as the environmental impact factory farming is having on the Earth and our bodies. Ms. Goodall lays out the facts about the foods we eat and gives readers simple ideas on how we can all make a difference in our health, the health of our planet, and the health of the plants and animals we eat. You cannot walk away from this book unchanged. After reading this book I cannot look at pork, milk, or processed foods in the same way as I did before.

If you have read Harvest For Hope you have probably learned about the virtues of eating locally grown whole foods and you are probably curious about what that means and how to put that plan into action. Even if you have not read the book you have probably run into a story in the media about the surge of people choosing to eat locally produced foods for health, the environment and the economy. This trend has really taken off and there are groups and individuals who devote entire weeks, months, and even years to eating nothing but foods grown local to their area. If you think it cannot be done because of the climate you live in or for other reasons I have the perfect book for you, Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon's book Plenty or as it is known in Canada The Hundred Mile Diet. This book written by a couple in British Columbia is an interesting, and often times humorous recount of the couples one year challenge of eating only foods grown, raised or foraged from a one hundred mile radius. Stories of trying desperately to find locally grown wheat to make bread and at first only finding some rat and weevil ingested leftovers will make you laugh and gag a little too. Stories about sumptuous fresh foods and the fun and adventure of finding the food makes all the hard work seem worthwhile. While the book was more entertainment than education for me there is plenty to learn, Smith and Mackinnon throw in plenty of information to round out the book. If nothing else this book will show you that no matter what your climate you can eat local foods year around. This book is fairly new and quite often very hard to find in stores, your best bet is to call ahead or buy online. WWW.100milediet.ORG can point you in the direction of reputable online sellers of their book.

Lastly I bring to you a controversial work called Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. This book is part cookbook and part nutrition guide. The nutrition advice in this book flies against our current views on food and nutrition and instead points us in the direction of the kind of whole food diets that our ancestors lived on. Nourishing Traditions points out the flaws in our modern food research such as big food companies funding and most likely flawing scientific data on food safety and nutrition. You will learn what nutrients different foods contribute to our bodies and ways to prepare them to maximize the intake of nutrition four our bodies. Be forewarned this book is huge and jammed packed with information that you may at first find crazy and unconventional but if you continue to read on it will make more sense and you will find your self changing the way you prepare your food. Although some folks will argue with the contents of this book and reject it's ideas anyone can walk away from this book having learned something new and useful to their own personal views on food. I have personally tried this way of eating and have found that it does indeed make one feel healthier and more alive.

So there you have it, my must read list of books that will change your views about food. Many of these books can be found at your local library and all of them are available for purchase online through Amazon.