Food Matters-Cara Caliendo

Since we have been looking at food systems and what we are really eating I thought of a book my roommate read this summer. This book had caused her to become a vegetarian and to be honest I kind of just thought it was silly. Really what could be in that book that could change someones eating habits so drastically. She had always been a healthy eater but being a vegetarian seemed extreme even for her. I naturally had no interest in reading the book at first. I just figured this was a phase she was going through to stay in better shape. However after looking at the clips from Food Inc and reading parts of "Fast Food Nation" I asked her if I could look at it. It seemed like it might go along with what we were discussing and I was kind of interested in learning more about all of this. The book is called "Food Matters" by Mark Bittman and it talks more about what our food really goes through. The book compares the fossil fuels that are used to produce food to the fossil fuels we use driving cars. One thing I found particularly interested was a statistic it gave that says the if every person in America were to cut back on the amount of meat equivalent to three cheeseburgers a week, we would cancel out all the carbon emissions that SUVs give off in a year (Bittman, 17). Along with the statistic he talks about how an average family of four eating a steak dinner is equivalent to driving around in an SUV for 3 hours. This is amazing to me! I never realized how much went into producing our food or what it was doing to the earth. For me food has always just been something I bought at the grocery store. I didn't put thought into buying organic or what I should eat to help the earth I just bought what I liked (or what was cheapest) and ate it. However the things that it says in this book really make me think twice about what I eat. The thought that just changing your diet to consume less meat can greatly help the amount of carbon emissions seems like a no brainer to me. Why wouldn't you?

Bittman doesn't suggest cutting meat out of diets all together, although does say that they are not essential to our bodies, but rather eating less of it and eating more things that are good for us. He suggests a higher grain diet and eating more organically. He says to cut back on processed foods which are processed so much they have virtually no nutritional value anymore (Bittman, 15). We consume so much energy from all the foods we eat where if we just switched to a simpler diet, we could reduce carbon emission. After reading this along with the things we looked at in class it has definitely made me rethink my food habits. I don't think I can radically change the way I eat but a few things, like eating less meat and eating more organically when I can, are things that are very manageable.

If you're ever in a mood to learn more I would suggest reading this book. It even offers meal plans and healthy recipes in the back of the book. It's a great way to learn more and try to eat smarter. If you're anything like me, it won't change how you eat completely but may help to give you more insight as to how to eat in order to do what you can to help reduce carbon emissions.

Bittman , Mark. Food Matters. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009.