Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal Hardcover – Big Book, 4 March 2021

This interesting but sent two copies of this book I orded 1 but changed me for only one

This is a book that all government policy analysts should read. It details how we arrived at the mess we are in with our food supply. Mark Bittman not only details the effects that the industrialization of our food supply has had on our health as a population but also the racist policies which have gone along with it. As long as we allow corporate profits to control our food system (with its Ultra Processed Foods - UPFs) we are unlikely to survive as a species. We need to get back to small mixed farms feeding communities healthy, nutrient dense foods.This book covers a great deal of ground centered on food and in my reading of it comes to a similar conclusion that Chris Smaje came to in his book "A Small Farm Future." Taken together these two books offer us a direction which could, if adopted, save our species from self destruction.

I have great respect for Mark Bittman. He has devoted a good chunk of his working life to helping regular people make healthier food choices. Nearly everyone in my orbit has one or more of his cookbooks, and some of his recipes have been my go-tos for years. But this book is one long harangue, liberally laced and larded with opinion and an extreme surplus of adjectives. Reading it, I felt like I was being hit over the head over and over. Where were the editors?Bittman is outraged about the efforts made for more than a century now to control people’s dietary intake without appropriate regard for their health, but the uncountable expressions of that outrage made for tedious reading (for me). However, the many references cited are valuable for people who want to do further reading on this topic. Occasionally, a fact jumps out that prompts reflection. For example, reading that 300 gallons of water is required to process one pound of sugar has to make you think about how much sugar you’re consuming, even if you are at all skeptical about the sugar industry’s role in manipulating your consumption. All in all, I’m glad I read this book but I won’t be exhorting others to do so.

Animal, Vegetable, Junk ("AVJ") is not a quick read - and that is good. It's a book that gets you thinking. It challenges the assumptions we have always made about food and why food is what it is today. This book was carefully researched and Mr. Bittman's indictment of the modern food industry is persuasive.I teach Food Law at a major university and while AVJ is not a law book, it is a book I can see as required reading for my students. If I had known about it earlier, I would have assigned it. It asks the question that all law students and lawyers should try to answer: "Can the legal system do anything to fix the broken state of food today?"For many years Mark Bittman was known as the "Minimalist" as he dished out simple and healthy recipes as a food writer for the New York Times. There are no recipes in AVJ but it is certainly food for thought. This book establishes Bittman as a serious voice in food writing, right alongside MIchael Pollan, Michael Moss and Marion Nestle.

It took me a long time to plow through this poorly written book. Interesting topics but the author rehashed his themes over and over again with mostly his own opinions and conclusions.Most material was from other authors on similar Topics .We get some political stuff about his dislike of our recent President and about his dislikes of various government agencies. Big evil business seems to be the main culprit but his thesis is a tired old solution of distribution of land and wealth as per socialist dogma.Everything from over harvesting seafood to raping land by mega farms will all be solved by giving it back to the peasants.He offered no conclusive advice on how this will all be solved except to go back to small farms run by family and friends. He didn’t conclude how big corporations will stop selling junk food to kids.This big city author gives a boring, repetitive sermon that has been given by many better writers.Save a tree, do not buy another printed copy of this weak manifesto.