Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly |  | Author: James E. McWilliams
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: $25.99
Buy New: $9.68
as of 7/31/2010 04:52 CDT details
You Save: $16.31 (63%)
New (33) Used (25) from $6.28
Seller: abookarama
Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 289514
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 031603374X
Dewey Decimal Number: 394.12
EAN: 9780316033749
ASIN: 031603374X
Publication Date: August 15, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780316033749 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
We suffer today from food anxiety, bombarded as we are with confusing messages about how to eat an ethical diet. Should we eat locally? Is organic really better for the environment? Can genetically modified foods be good for you?
JUST FOOD does for fresh food what Fast Food Nation (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) did for fast food, challenging conventional views, and cutting through layers of myth and misinformation. For instance, an imported tomato is more energy-efficient than a local greenhouse-grown tomato. And farm-raised freshwater fish may soon be the most sustainable source of protein.
Informative and surprising, JUST FOOD tells us how to decide what to eat, and how our choices can help save the planet and feed the world.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 Great book if you're interested in food or the environment July 15, 2010
RunnerGirl87
This book was not entirely what I expected, but I loved it! The author talks about various popular food movements, such as eating local or organic, and how these fads impact the environment. Before reading this book I had some pretty strong opinions of my own, and this book opened my eyes to a different perspective. If you're interested in food and environmental sustainability, this book is the way to go!
Thought-provoking and thoughtful October 6, 2009
Soo Young Kim (Greebrae, CA)
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
It seems to me a lot of the criticisms leveled at this book are regarding McWilliams' assertion that a reduction in meat-eating would provide the most substantial way to reduce carbon emissions and bring food to a population that indeed will ultimately overrun its range. This is like telling the obese that they must eat less; i.e., a highly unpalatable truth that is nonetheless simple and to the point. The U.S. leads - and the rest of the world is indeed following - in meat consumption and this catching up could very well overtax an already burdened system to the point of collapse. I do not read McWilliams' calling for an instant cessation of meat-eating. Nor even a conversion to organic farming methods. What he does suggest is that even a small change in meat-eating patterns could have a significant impact, and I point to a parallel in the gradual conversion of incandescent bulbs to fluorescents... and LEDs. These come about as processes, not instant changes, but nevertheless substantive changes. Just Food is an extremely well-considered, well-told account, and one that does not aver from the fact that many issues are intertwined in complex relationships. Unfortunately, habits die hard, as even the author will attest in the account of his own dietary changes and this is perhaps the point on which most of the "offended" will meet impasse: a reduction in meat-eating is a choice to be made by each person and not one to simply be legislated or delegated. What? Us change our behavior and actually take personal responsibility (falls out of giant SUV) ?? Very compelling reading; I could not put it down until the end.
Green reality January 7, 2010
Stewart Brand (Sausalito, CA USA)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Beautifully researched, argued, and written, this is a realistic comprehensive Green strategy for world food. It changed my mind (away from meat, among other things).
A key discussion point in any library concerned with green movements in general and food consumption habits in particular October 13, 2009
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
JUST FOOD: WHERE LOCAVORES GET IT WRONG AND HOW WE CAN TRULY EAT RESPONSIBLY counters the myths of the locavore movement and use facts to tell the truth about fresh food, challenging myth and misinformation to reveal that the 'greenest' food choices may not be as presented. Transporting fruits and vegetables from thousands of miles away, for example, may be more energy efficient than growing locally. This and other truths are provided in a title sure to be controversial - and a key discussion point in any library concerned with green movements in general and food consumption habits in particular.
 Elephants in the Garden August 17, 2009
Susan Wittig Albert (Texas)
127 out of 133 found this review helpful
Just Foods is an important book in the continuing (and continually escalating) debate over how we should grow our food and what we should eat. Environmental historian and reformed locavore James McWilliams, invites us to think logically and dispassionately about some of the most important food issues of our time--and of the future. Having read two of McWilliams' previous books, I expected a controversial, detailed, and well-documented discussion. I wasn't disappointed.
In summary, McWilliams argues
1) that global food production is more fuel-efficient and more economically necessary (for developing countries that need export markets) than is local food production/consumption ("locovorism");
2) that organic farming is no more healthy for people and for the land than is "wisely practiced" conventional agriculture;
3) that genetically-modified crops, in the right hands, are not to be feared and are in fact necessary to feed the ten billions of people who will live on this planet by 2050;
4) that we must drastically reduce our production and consumption of meat animals and non-farmed fish;
5) and that we must get rid of "perverse" subsidies that undercut fair trade.
Informed readers will likely find themselves in near-total agreement with McWilliams' last two points. Factory-farmed beef consumes 33 calories of fossil fuel for every single calorie of meat produced, as well as creating huge amounts of air, soil, and water pollution and--on the other end--causing serious health problems in those who over-consume. Other animals, including range-farmed animals, may be less damaging to the environment and to their consumers, but still require (by a 3-to-1 ratio) more energy to produce than they offer in return. Wild fish stocks have been harvested to the brink of extinction, and ecologically-sensitive fish-farming may be our only alternative, short of giving up fish altogether. Many readers may agree with McWilliams that "conscientious eaters must radically reduce current rates of consumption" of meat and wild fish if the world's ecosystems are to be saved. Many will also agree that an end must be put to wasteful government incentives such as corn subsidies.
But those same informed readers will find much to argue with in this book, for McWilliams overlooks several hugely important problems--elephants in the garden. As I see them, here they are.
The first elephant: fossil-fuel depletion. While I am sympathetic to McWilliams' arguments that we need to be sensible about "food miles" and make more effort to save energy in food selection and preparation, I feel that he has overlooked one of the most important argument against continuing and/or increasing our dependency on global food markets and conventional fossil-fueled agriculture: that over the next decade or two, oil will become so expensive that food will no longer be shipped halfway around the world. Conventional farming, with its reliance on fossil-fueled equipment, fertilizers, and insecticide, is not viable in the long term. Even the conservative International Energy Agency (IEA) now says that "peak oil" is likely to arrive by 2020 and bring with it skyrocketing fuel costs. Whether we like it or not, when the price of a gallon of gasoline hits double-digits, shortening the food miles from farm to fork may be a necessity. Indeed, many of us may be eating out of our front-yard gardens, raising chickens in the back, and purchasing shares in a neighborhood milk goat. Don't laugh. It's possible.
A second elephant. I would like to accept McWilliams' argument that we must make a kind of peace with biotechnology, and that genetically-modified crops may be important when it comes to feeding fast-growing human populations across the globe--populations that (he says) are on track to exceed the carrying-capacity of the planet. We need the promise of higher yields, drought tolerance, and pest-resistance. But McWilliams brushes aside too easily the huge issues of gene contamination; the failure of GM crops to reduce (as promised) pesticide use; and their failure to produce the promised higher yields. And since GM crops are conventionally-farmed, the challenge of energy depletion must be faced here, too.
Still, it is not the flawed promise of GM crops that will most concern readers. It is the question of private ownership of the world's seeds. McWilliams himself acknowledges that the only place for biotechnology is "the public domain," and that as long as the genes of the world's most important foods are owned and controlled by a "handful of corporations intent on monopolizing patents in the interest of profit," none of its benefits will be achieved.
But that is the elephant. These technologies do not belong to the commons. They are held by monopolistic private corporations. And short of a revolution, corporations will continue to hold them. And as long as this is true, biotechnology is a much greater threat than a promise to the food security of peoples around the world.
A third elephant. Any book that presumes to point definitive directions for global agriculture absolutely must take into account the enormous cloud that looms on all horizons: global warming and climate change. McWilliams addresses this far too briefly. Under changing climate conditions, what kinds of foods will we be able to produce and where? How are these changes likely to affect pests and crop-destroying viruses? Global warming, fossil-fuel depletion, and privately owned crops are the huge elephants in the garden. That these issues are not front-and-center in this book is a substantial disappointment.
As always, I am grateful to James McWilliams for requiring me to read carefully and think about his arguments. While I read, I scribbled in the margin, made notes on the flyleaf, and ticked off the sources I intend to investigate. Just Food engaged me fully and completely--not always comfortably, but always productively.
The bottom line. Just read Just Food. Give yourself time to read (this is not skim-reading stuff) and equip yourself with pencil and paper or your laptop. Bring your own arguments to the table, and measure them against the author's, point by point. And do plan to spend more than a few hours reading and thinking and arguing with this book. You will find that it is time well spent.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
|
|
|
