When I previously posted about Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food, several of you suggested Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. After begging the librarian to let me renew the book for the 3rd time I've finally gotten through it. Pollan takes a more straight-forward approach, just giving you the facts about food manufacturing. Kingsolver's approach is more personal. She outlines her family's pledge to eat only things they've produced or purchased locally for a year. Interesting, but the lengthy descriptions of the challenges they faced with turkey mating and the hours spent canning tomatoes were a bit of a snooze. The one message that struck me is you can't forget the grocery store if you're pledging to go green. Our food is shipped from all over the world making the food industry one of the biggest oil consumers. Kingsolver's family doesn't eat bananas anymore because they are all produced out of the country. Bananas seem like such a staple fruit I couldn't imagine going without. But as I picked up my bananas on Sunday I noticed they were a product of Guatemala. Interesting, but I still bought 3.
3 comments:
Very interesting and definitely something to think about while grocery shopping...I don't think I could give up bananas though, I have 1 a day!
I didn't give up bananas, either. My son would have a conniption without his "nanas." I choose local when I can, but I'm too spoiled to give up blueberries in December.
You might try Marion Nestle's "What to Eat," for a more down to earth non judgemental guide on making food choices.
I hear ya. We read it for our book club and although I liked it I think it could have been about 100 pages shorter. :-)
Took me a lot of skimming to get through the end...
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