Currently browsing posts about: Books

I’m at the Emma Willard school in Troy, NY today and will miss the noon USDA conference call announcing new school nutrition standards.  I will post on them tomorrow.  In the meantime…

Sarah Wu (aka Mrs. Q), Fed Up With Lunch: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches–and How We Can Change Them!  Chronicle Books, 2011.

I did a blurb on this one:

Only someone who has actually eaten what our kids are fed in school—every day for an entire school year—could write so convincing an expose.  Mrs. Q did not set out to be an activist, but her book is a compelling case study of what’s wrong with our school food system and what all of us need to do to fix it.  Her account of what one person can do should inspire every parent to advocate for better food for kids in school as well as out.

Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal.  The Essential Urban Farmer.  Penguin, 2011. 

This book is a must for anyone interested in growing food plants in urban environments.  Carpenter wrote Farm City about her own inner city farm in Oakland, CA and teams up with the founder of City Slicker Farms, also in Oakland.  They cover everything you can think of, from dealing with contaminated soil to growing enough food to start your own business. 

They illustrate the how-to with photos, diagrams, and line drawings that make it all look easy.  Urban farming IS easy, at least in miniature (tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, and blueberries flourish on my Manhattan terrace).  It doesn’t have to be a big deal.  Go for it!

The New York Times reported a shocking statistic yesterday: about 42% of children under age 5 living in India suffer from malnutrition and are “wasted” (low weight for height). 

The figure comes from the Hungama survey of 73,000 Indian households conducted by the Naandi Foundation.  It reports an even more troubling statistic: nearly 59% of Indian children under age 5 are “stunted” (low height for age).

The Hangama report holds one hopeful note.  Rates of childhood malnutrition in India fell by 20% during the past 7 years.

But have they? 

According to a more detailed analysis in today’s New York Times, 

Despite the recent boom years of the 1990s and 2000s, there has been little improvement in overall nutrition in India, according to United Nations data. About 20 percent of India’s over 1 billion population remained “undernourished” during that time, meaning their “food intake regularly provides less than their minimum energy requirements.” The most recent”Global Hunger Index” shows that two-thirds of the 122 developing countries studied had reduced hunger levels in recent years, but that hunger levels in India have increased.

Ending malnutrition is a matter of political will.  If India wanted to address childhood malnutrition in any serious way, it could. 

How?  Feeding programs are emergency measures.  Long-term solutions require institution of social programs:

• Promote breastfeeding,
• Educate and empower women
• Build toilets
• Clean up water supplies
• Eradicate worms
• Reduce income inequality    

Two recent books summarize the research behind these ideas and explain what causes widespread hunger and what to do about it.  They make it clear that eradicating childhood malnutrition should be a first priority for any government:

• Olivier De Schutter and Kaitlin Cordes, editors: Accounting for Hunger: The Right to Food in the Era of Globalisation (Studies in International Law), Hart, 2011.
• Per Pinstrup-Anderson P and Derrill D. Watson II: Food Policy for Development Countries: The Role of Government in Global, National, and Local Food Systems, Cornell University Press, 2011.  

John Cawley, editor.  The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Obesity, Oxford University Press 2011.  The editor says this book is intended to be a “Rosetta Stone, …….that explains how different disciplines are approaching the same topic.”  Its 47 chapters come from contributors from different social science disciplines, each approaching obesity from their own perspectives: demography, anthropology, psychology, sociology, economics, and fat studies, for example.  Other sections of the book deal with the causes and consequences of obesity, available data for studying it, and policy approaches to prevention and treatment such as community intervention, drugs and bariatric surgery, food taxes, advertising, and behavioral techniques.   This book is a good entry point to the literature on a vast array of subjects related to obesity, but it does not get much into the biological basis for obesity or weight control or the biological reasons why maintaining a healthy body weight is so difficult.

Sasha Abramsky, Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It, PoliPoint Press, 2009.  Abramsky is a journalist who set out to report on hunger in America, its political and economic causes, and its tragic consequences.  The personal stories are heartbreaking and infuriating and should inspire readers to do something to address income inequities.

George Kent, Ending Hunger Worldwide, Paradigm, 2011.  I first heard of Kent’s work when I was researching articles and books about the right to food. Then a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, Kent has been writing about the right to food, nutrition, and hunger for many years.  This short book is his manifesto, clear and to the point:

People commonly ask how it will be possible to feed future generations.  The question is insulting.  Why ask how people are to be fed, as if this had to be done by an external agent?  Most people are motivated to provide for themselves, and only need decent opportunities to do that….Who, when not deprived of the means, would not feed themselves and their families?

I’m traveling this week so it’s a good time to catch up on hoarded posts.  Books about food politics pour in.  Here are some good ones:

Susan George, Whose Crisis, Whose Future: Towards a Greener, Fairer, Richer World.  Polity 2010.  Susan George has been writing about food crises for decades.  I read her Food for Beginners when I first became interested in food politics.  She now works for the Transnational Institute. http://www.tni.org/ an “international network of activist  researchers (“scholar  activists”) committed to critical analyses of the global problems of today and tomorrow. It aims to provide intellectual support to movements struggling for a more democratic, equitable and environmentally sustainable world.”  George’s book argues that “every aspect of this crisis can be traced to a transnational neoliberal elite that has steadily eroded our rights and stripped us of power.”  Worth a read.

Brian McDonald, Food Security. Polity 2010.  This one is about globalization and its effects on food safety and security.  It ends with a section on how to think about creating sustainable food safety and security systems.  McDonald is a professor of science, technology, and society at Penn State.

Psyche Williams-Forson and Carole Counihan, editors, Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World.  Routledge, 2012.  This is a multi-authored compendium of articles on the politics of food and culture, with particular emphasis on inequalities in income, gender, food availability, food consumption, and food justice.  The editors explain that “this anthology capitalizes on this particular cultural moment to bring to the fore recent scholarship that focuses on innovative ways people are recasting food in public spaces to challenge hegemonic practices and meanings.”

Paul L. Knechtges, Food Safety: Theory and Practice, Jones and Bartlett, 2012.  This is a brand new textbook for people who want to become food safety professionals.  It covers all the basics along with explanations of risk analysis and laws and regulations, methods of laboratory analysis, the role of safety inspectors, and other such matters.  It is written clearly and is well illustrated and you just know you will be tested on every chapter.

I get sent a lot of manuscripts to review for possible endorsements (“blurbs”).  I read them and happily agree to blurb the ones I think worth special attention.  These were recently released:

Jennifer Clapp’s Food (Polity Press, 2012).  “The global food economy may seem remote from daily experience, but it affects every aspect of what we eat and, therefore, our health and welfare.  Jennifer Clapp explains what happens when food is no longer considered a mere source of nourishment or cultural element but is transformed into a fungible commodity.  Clapp unpacks and clarifies the mind-numbing complexities of transnational corporations, international trade, and financial markets.  Best of all, the book provides precisely the information and tools advocates need to redesign the global food economy to promote fair trade, food justice, and local sovereignity.”

Tanya Denckla Cobb’s Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Food Movement is Changing the Way We Eat (Storey, 2011).  I blurbed this one: “People constantly ask me what kinds of things they can do to get involved in the food movement and where to start.  Now I can just hand them this.  The projects it describes should inspire readers to get busy doing similar projects in their own communities.”

Didi Emmons’ Wild Flavors: One Chef’s Transformative Year Cooking from Eva’s Farm (Chelsea Green, 2011).  My blurb: If you are a city person, like me, with a secret yen to forage for wild greens Wild Flavors is an inspiration.  Read it, and you will want to harvest, share, and eat everything you find…Emmon’s recipes are lovely and easy to follow.

Joel Salatin’s Folks,This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People and a Better World (Center Street, 2011).  I blurbed this one too.  “Joel Salatin says it’s high time we stopped taking our industrialized food system as a given and instead consider local, sustainable food production as the norm.  Good plan.  Whether or not you agree with this contention that we would be better off if the government got out of food regulation, his ideas are compellingly written, fun to read, and well worth pondering.”

I wasn’t asked to do a blurb for this one, but it’s well worth a mention:

Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, illustrated by Maira Kalman (Penguin, 2011).  This is an updated version of Pollan’s best seller of a couple of years ago with some new rules and delightful paintings by the creator of the famous New Yorker newyorkistan cover.  The book is a quick read and the rules are short and to the point: “Compost!”  “Eat slowly!”  “Cook!”

It’s the fall book season and the food books are pouring in.  Here are five good ones, so recent that some have 2012 publication dates.

Michael Carolan, The Real Cost of Cheap Food, Earthscan 2011: The chapter titles, all of which start with Cheap Food, tell the story:  Globalization and Development, Conflict, Hunger and Obesity, Meat, The Environment, But at What Price, Community and Culture, and Who Wins.  The conclusion is Making Food Affordable.  How?  Eat less meat, don’t grow food for fuel, support urban agriculture, and other such excellent ideas.

Colin Sage, Environment and Food, Routledge, 2012: A beautifully designed and well written examination of every possible way in which food interacts with the environment.  It focuses on global food systems and their challenges and what we need to do to make the systems more sustainable.

Per Pinstrup-Anderson P and Derrill D. Watson II, Food Policy for Development Countries: The Role of Government in Global, National, and Local Food Systems, Cornell University Press, 2011: A serious look at how global food policies affect nutrition and health, poverty and food insecurity, and domestic markets, and the effects of all this on managing natural resources and climate change.  The book ends with a chapter on ethical aspects of food systems: “Investments in national and international public goods, particularly infrastructure and agricultural research developed for smallholders, are critical elements in supporting pro-poor economic growth and achieving their human rights.”

Madeleine Pullman and Zhaohui Wu, Food Supply Chain Management: Economic, Social and Environmental Perspectives, Routledge, 2012: A textbook for an undergraduate course but well worth a look for its analyses of how commodity food chains work, trends toward vertical integration, and the way supply chains are or are not regulated: “Many agree that the current system and trends have created a formidable force against the emergence of alternative food systems—particularly one that considers economic, environmental and social attributes simultaneously.”  Desirable foods supply chains would do better for consumers, farm workers, and the environment, and would be a whole lot more sustainable.

Alan Bjerga, Endless Appetities: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest, Bloomberg Press, 2011:  Food prices are rising to the point of international crisis.  Based on the author’s personal visits to farmers around the world, Bjerga explains how the crisis happened (short answer: greed), its tragic effects, and what now has to be done to reverse them.

Here are some of the books that have drifted my way.  These in particular are about food and cooking.

Jean-Claude Kaufmann, The Meaning of Cooking, Polity 2010.  Kaufmann is professor of sociology at the Sorbonne.  Here, he argues that the ordinary acts of creating and consuming food are how we create our most meaningful relationships with lovers, spouses, and offspring. 

Alice D. Kamps.  What’s Cooking Uncle Sam?  The Government’s Effect on the American Diet.  Records from the National Archives.  This is the terrific catalog of the terrific exhibit now playing at the National Archives in Washington DC until January 3, 2012.  The catalog contains most (not all, alas) of the illustrations from the exhibit.  These deal with the government’s role in farming, food products, dietary advice, meals for the military and other such matters.  For example:

Janet M. Cramer et al, editors.  Food as Communication; Communication as Food, Peter Lang 2011.  This is a collection of essays on scholarly food discourses, ranging from media coverage of school lunches to local, organic foods.  I blurbed this one: “Food as Communiction is a wonderful introduction to the field of food studies research.  These authors watched movies and television, examined package labels, visited exotic places, delved in wonderful libraries, and ate great food.”

If you want to work on improving the meals at your kids’ schools, much help is available.  Just in, for example:

From the Center for Ecoliteracy: Rethinking School Lunch: Cooking with California Food in K-12 Schools: a Cookbook and Professional Development Guide. You don’t have to be in California to take advantage of this resource.  It’s full of recipes and good ideas, as are other resources from the Center.

From Amy Kalafa: Lunch Wars: How to Start a School Food Revolution and Win the Battle for Our Children’s Health, Tarcher/Penguin 2011. Kalafa is the writer and producer of the film about school food—Two Angry Moms.  This is her how-to guide to getting involved in and doing something useful about your kids’ school food programs.

From Sarah A. Robert and Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower: School Food Politics: The Complex Ecology of Hunger and Feeding in Schools Around the World.  Peter Lang, 2011.  This is a collection of essays (one of them mine) from writers and thinkers about school feeding programs, domestic and international.  It ends with a long list of groups working on school food issues.

And on my bookshelf from the last couple of years:

Janet Poppendieck’s Free for All: Fixing School Food in America.  University of California Press, 2010.  My blurb says “Extraordinarily well thought out, beautifully written, sympathetic, and compelling.  Anyone who reads this book will find the present school lunch situation beyond unacceptable.  Free for All is a call for action on behalf of America’s school kids, one that we all need to join.”  Poppendieck is a strong advocate for universal school meals. Me too.

Institute of Medicine.  School Meals: Building Blocks for Health Children.  National Academies Press, 2010. This influential committee report says what needs to be done to establish food-based (rather than nutrient-based) standards for school meals.

Kevin Morgan and Roberta Sonnino.  The School Food Revolution: Public Food and the Challenge of Sustainable Development.  Earthscan (UK), 2008.  The UK has its own problems with school meals and so do other countries.  This book presents international case studies focused on sustainability and social justice.

Susan Levine.  School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program.  Princeton, 2008.  If you want to understand the history of how school lunches came to be in America, here’s the source.

Ann Cooper and Lisa M. Holmes.  Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children.  Collins, 2006.  Cooper was one of the first chefs to get into schools and get fixing.  This is a how-to from one who did it.

Robert W. Surles.  Chef Bobo’s Good Food Cookbook.  Meridith 2004.  I have a soft spot for this one because I’ve been keeping an eye on Chef Bobo’s program at the Calhoun School in Manhattan for years now.   He revolutionized school meals at one school and this book explains what he had to do to do that.  He’s still there and still cooking!

You would like to do something about school meals but don’t know how?  No excuses!