How to Eat Right & Save the Planet: A?Plant-Based Survival Guide for You & Your Family
224How to Eat Right & Save the Planet: A?Plant-Based Survival Guide for You & Your Family
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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780757004865 |
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Publisher: | Square One Publishers |
Publication date: | 01/03/2020 |
Pages: | 224 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments v
Foreword vii
Preface xi
Introduction 1
Part 1 How Did We Get Here?
1 Who's in the Kitchen? 9
2 Searching for the Silver Bullet 27
3 Bad Medicine 49
4 Questioning Authority 65
5 The Healing Kitchen 81
Part 2 A Natural Perspective
6 Food for Thought 101
7 Ancient Wisdom 116
8 Diet and Human Ecology 136
Part 3 Cause and Effect
9 The Living Earth 155
10 Collateral Damage 176
11 Reaping What You Sow 191
Part 4 The Road Ahead
12 The Human Ecology Diet-What We Need 215
13 Human Ecology Diet-Where We Get What We Need 230
14 Creating a Food Ethic 257
Conclusion 274
References 277
About the Author 295
Index 296
Preface
The very real crisis created by our food choices needs resolution and needs it quickly. The research has been done and the positive steps to a healthy diet identified and yet the powerful machine that governs the food system grinds on with little sign of significant change. One fact is stunningly apparent, the modern diet is killing us and we are not acting to make the changes necessary Part of the problem is that nutrition is not simply an issue of the chemical features of our foods. Cultural and emotional factors often seem to outweigh logic and ethics. A modern vision of nutrition needs to take into account the social and environmental costs of what we eat as well as the price we pay at the market. Vested interests are so deeply embedded in the political, medical, agricultural and food manufacturing sectors that powerful forces can be called into play when challenges are made to the status quo. The internet has provided a perfect growing medium for fanciful nutritional theories, magical supplements and direct attacks on any ideas that challenge cultural dietary traditions. There is no greater battlefield in the nutrition wars than the entrenched ideas we have about the use of animal sourced foods. It is time for a new understanding of our historical relationship to what we eat. From our ancient origins, human life has migrated to almost every location on the planet. We have settled in deep jungles, arctic tundra, deserts, and forests. Our primary concern has always been to find food. It is a matter of life or death. We did not have to concern ourselves with eating locally or in season; that was a given. We ate what was available. The forces of nature were in charge. If there was an abundance of nutritious plants, that was where we focused; if not, we used animals. We discovered over time that out of the 391,000 species of plants there are a fairly small number that are safe for us to eat and we focused on those. These were not decisions we made in a conference hall. Decisions were made through human experience. They were pragmatic actions aimed at staying alive and creating homeostasis, that life-producing relationship with nature that governs all life. That was then, this is now. Nature is still in control. It is nature that supplies our air, water, and food—a simple truth we seem to have forgotten. When we look at the modern food chain, we see that we have made every attempt to break down that relationship. This is a futile and childish struggle to dominate rather than adapt and it has produced chaos. This struggle between humankind and nature lies at the root of much of the confusion and endless arguments about nutrition as well as ecology. The modern diet produces disease and death, not only for humans but non-humans as well. Our food choices are the main cause of death from degenerative disease, creates environmental chaos, the senseless slaughter of billions of sentient creatures and supports an economic system that makes regional self-sufficiency and food security impossible. Yet we march on. We fixate on fantasy stories about magical properties of the newest “super-food,” the power of reducing the sugar content in soft drinks or avoiding meat one day a week. None of these stop-gap measures are effective or timely. There is still time for us to make the easiest and most important contribution we can to creating a healthy world for all life on planet earth. It is important that a new conversation about the food we eat is engaged in and that action is taken. We can change what we eat, right now, today and then move to more complicated issues