Book picks similar to
Eat Drink Vote: An Illustrated Guide to Food Politics by Marion Nestle
food
non-fiction
politics
nonfiction
Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
Yuval Noah Harari - 2015
This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.
The Conscience of a Liberal
Paul Krugman - 2007
Seeking to understand both what happened to middle-class America and what it will take to achieve a "new New Deal," Krugman has created his finest book to date, a work that weaves together a nuanced account of three generations of history with sharp political, social, and economic analysis. This book, written with Krugman's trademark ability to explain complex issues simply, will transform the debate about American social policy in much the same way as did John Kenneth Galbraith's deeply influential book, The Affluent Society.
Eat Your Heart Out: Who Really Decides What Ends Up on Your Plate?
Felicity Lawrence - 2008
That almost all the processed foods we eat contain the same handful of ingredients?That these handful of ingredients are produced by only a handful of multi-nationals? That some cereals contain more salt per serving than a packet of crisps?That served with milk, sugar and raisins, some cardboard packets have been said to be more nutritious than the cereal they contain? That there are half the number of dairy farms in the UK than there were 10 years ago?That over the same period the turnover of the top 20 global dairy corporations has increased by 60%? That over 60% of all processed foods in Britain contain soya?That the UK government's Committee on the Toxicity of Food judged that eating soya could have hormone-disrupting effects? That in 1970, a hundred grams of an average chicken contained less than 9 grams of fat, but today it contains nearly 23 grams of fat?That the amount of protein in that chicken has fallen by more than 30%? That children aged 4-14 in the UK get 16-17% of their daily calories from processed sugars?That the World Health Organisation's recommended limit is 10%? That industrialised farming uses 50 times more energy than traditional farming?That livestock farming creates greater carbon emissions than all of global transport put together?That some salmon farmers dye their fish?That sugar could be as bad for you as tobacco?That you might have been better off eating butter rather than margarine all along?That industrial processing removes much of the nutritional value of the food it produces?That by changing our diets we could reduce cancers by a third?That corporations are shaping our bodies, our minds and the future of the planet? Eat Your Heat Out explains how big business took control of what we eat – and why so few of us even noticed. Crossing the globe in search of agribusiness's darkest secrets, Felicity Lawrence uncovers some startling facts and stomach-churning figures. Essential reading for anyone who cares about their health and our planet.
The Homemade Vegan Pantry: The Art of Making Your Own Staples
Miyoko Nishimoto Schinner - 2015
It's a fresher, healthier, more natural approach to eating and living. Now vegans who are sick of buying over-processed, over-packaged products can finally join the homemade revolution. Studded with full-color photos, The Homemade Vegan Pantry celebrates beautiful, handcrafted foods that don't take a ton of time, from ice cream and pizza dough, to granola and breakfast sausage. Miyoko Schinner guides readers through the techniques for making French-style buttercreams, roasted tomatoes, and pasta without special equipment. Her easy methods make "slow food" fast, and full of flavor. The Homemade Vegan Pantry raises the bar on plant-based cuisine, not only for vegans and vegetarians, but also for the growing number of Americans looking to eat lighter and healthier, and anyone interested in a handcrafted approach to food.
This Crazy Vegan Life: A Prescription for an Endangered Species
Christina Pirello - 2008
It means taking a whole new look at health, fitness, lifestyle choices, and the world. Christina Pirello not only advocates the development of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals, and the environment, but also promotes their impact on wellness. Beyond the value of eating whole, and organic foods, Pirello explores a host of subjects from nutrition and fitness to education and emotional well-being as she helps readers take control of their lives and achieve their personal goals, whether they want to lose weight, regain health and vitality, or simply look and feel better.Featuring a 28-day nutrition and fitness plan, This Crazy Vegan Life also includes sample menus and more than 100 delicious and easy-to-prepare low-glycemic, phyto-nutrient-rich, high-fiber, wellbalanced vegan recipes that emphasize good carbs and good fat.
Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, ADD/ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Depression, Schizophrenia
Natasha Campbell-McBride - 2004
Natasha Campbell-McBride set up The Cambridge Nutrition Clinic in 1998. As a parent of a child diagnosed with learning difficulties, she was acutely aware of the difficulties facing other parents like her, and she has devoted much of her time to helping these families. She realised that nutrition played a critical role in helping children and adults to overcome their disabilities, and has pioneered the use of probiotics in this field.Her willingness to share her knowledge has resulted in her contributing to many publications, as well as presenting at numerous seminars and conferences on the subjects of learning disabilities and digestive disorders. Her book "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" captures her experience and knowledge, incorporating her most recent work.She believes that the link between learning disabilities, the food and drink that we take, and the condition of our digestive system is absolute, and the results of her work have supported her position on this subject. In her clinic, parents discuss all aspects of their child's condition, confident in the knowledge that they are not only talking to a professional but to a parent who has lived their experience. Her deep understanding of the challenges they face, puts her advice in a class of it's own.
Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Todd Gilbert - 2006
Vividly bringing to life the latest scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. With penetrating insight and sparkling prose, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.
A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind
Harriet A. Washington - 2019
One-tenth of that amount will lower IQ.Nearly two out of every five African-American homes in Baltimore are plagued by lead-based paint. Almost all of the 37,500 Baltimore children who suffered lead poisoning from 2003 to 2015 were African-American.From injuries caused by lead poisoning to the devastating effects of atmospheric pollution, infectious disease, and industrial waste, Americans of color are harmed by environmental hazards in staggeringly disproportionate numbers. This systemic onslaught of toxic exposure and institutional negligence causes irreparable physical harm to millions of people across the country--cutting lives tragically short and needlessly burdening the health care system. But these deadly environments create another insidious and often overlooked consequence: robbing communities of color, and America as a whole, of intellectual power.The 1994 publication of The Bell Curve and its controversial thesis, catapulted the topic of genetic racial differences in IQ to the forefront of a renewed and heated debate. Now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste, award-winning science writer Harriet A. Washington adds her incisive analysis to the fray, arguing that IQ is a biased and flawed metric, but that it is useful for tracking cognitive damage. She tears apart the spurious notion of intelligence as an inherited trait, using copious data that instead point to a different cause of the reported African American-white IQ gap: environmental racism--a confluence of racism and other institutional factors that relegate marginalized communities to living and working near sites of toxic waste, pollution, and insufficient sanitation services. She investigates heavy metals, neuro-toxins, deficient prenatal care, bad nutrition, and even pathogens as chief agents influencing intelligence to explain why communities of color are disproportionately affected--and what can be done to remedy this devastating problem.Featuring extensive scientific research and Washington's sharp, lively reporting, A Terrible Thing to Waste is sure to outrage, transform the conversation, and inspire debate.
The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
David Brooks - 2011
Now, with the intellectual curiosity and emotional wisdom that make his columns among the most read in the nation, Brooks turns to the building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, profoundly illuminating work grounded in everyday life.This is the story of how success happens. It is told through the lives of one composite American couple, Harold and Erica—how they grow, push forward, are pulled back, fail, and succeed. Distilling a vast array of information into these two vividly realized characters, Brooks illustrates a fundamental new understanding of human nature. A scientific revolution has occurred—we have learned more about the human brain in the last thirty years than we had in the previous three thousand. The unconscious mind, it turns out, is most of the mind—not a dark, vestigial place but a creative and enchanted one, where most of the brain’s work gets done. This is the realm of emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, genetic predispositions, personality traits, and social norms: the realm where character is formed and where our most important life decisions are made. The natural habitat of The Social Animal. Drawing on a wealth of current research from numerous disciplines, Brooks takes Harold and Erica from infancy to school; from the “odyssey years” that have come to define young adulthood to the high walls of poverty; from the nature of attachment, love, and commitment, to the nature of effective leadership. He reveals the deeply social aspect of our very minds and exposes the bias in modern culture that overemphasizes rationalism, individualism, and IQ. Along the way, he demolishes conventional definitions of success while looking toward a culture based on trust and humility.The Social Animal is a moving and nuanced intellectual adventure, a story of achievement and a defense of progress. Impossible to put down, it is an essential book for our time, one that will have broad social impact and will change the way we see ourselves and the world.
The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty
Nina Munk - 2013
Jeffrey Sachs—celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential bestseller The End of Poverty—disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto "the ladder of development." In 2006, Sachs launched the Millennium Villages Project, a daring five-year experiment designed to test his theories in Africa. The first Millennium village was in Sauri, a remote cluster of farming communities in western Kenya. The initial results were encouraging. With his first taste of success, and backed by one hundred twenty million dollars from George Soros and other likeminded donors, Sachs rolled out a dozen model villages in ten sub-Saharan countries. Once his approach was validated it would be scaled up across the entire continent. At least that was the idea. For the past six years, Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Millennium Villages Project, accompanying Sachs on his official trips to Africa and listening in on conversations with heads-of-state, humanitarian organizations, rival economists, and development experts. She has immersed herself in the lives of people in two Millennium villages: Ruhiira, in southwest Uganda, and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting the hospitality of camel herders and small-hold farmers, and witnessing their struggle to survive, Munk came to understand the real-life issues that challenge Sachs's formula for ending global poverty. The Idealist is the profound and moving story of what happens when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man meet the reality of human life.
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
Adam Alter - 2017
We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans. In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today's products are irresistible. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist. By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good—to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play—and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children.
Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival
T.S. Wiley - 2000
Wiley and Bent Formby deliver staggering findings: Americans really are sick from being tired. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and depression are rising in our population. We’re literally dying for a good night’s sleep. Our lifestyle wasn’t always this way. It began with the invention of the lightbulb. When we don’t get enough sleep in sync with seasonal light exposure, we fundamentally alter a balance of nature that has been programmed into our physiology since day one. This delicate biological rhythm rules the hormones and neurotransmitters that determine appetite, fertility, and mental and physical health. When we rely on artificial light to extend our day until 11 p.m., midnight, and beyond, we fool our bodies into living in a perpetual state of summer. Anticipating the scarce food supply and forced inactivity of winter, our bodies begin storing fat and slowing metabolism to sustain us through the months of hibernation and hunger that never arrive. Our own survival instinct, honed over millennia, is now killing us. Wiley and Formby also reveal: -That studies from our own government research prove the role of sleeplessness in diabetes, heart disease, cancer, infertility, mental illness, and premature aging -Why the carbohydrate-rich diets recommended by many health professionals are not only ridiculously ineffective but deadly -Why the lifesaving information that can turn things around is one of the best-kept secrets of our day. Lights Out is one wake-up call none of us can afford to miss.
The Moosewood Cookbook: Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant, Ithaca, New York
Mollie Katzen - 1977
But times have changed, and knowledge about the foods we eat and their nutritional value has increased. So, after many inquiries and requests, the author has revised many of her recipes to be lighter and healthier. Illustrated.
Rich Food Poor Food: Your Grocery Purchasing System
Jayson Calton - 2013
In their first book, Naked Calories, the Caltons revealed the importance of choosing the most micronutrient RICH foods. Now they make these foods even easier to identify, making sure you leave the checkout wiht a cart full of essential vitamins and minerals. This indispensable grocery store guide takes you aisle by aisle, from the produce section to the pasta aisle, visiting every department in between, teaching you how to identify potentially problematic ingredients and sharing tips on how to lock in a food's nutritional value during preservation and preparation.
Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story
Angela Saini - 2017
But this is not the whole story.Shedding light on controversial research and investigating the ferocious gender wars in biology, psychology and anthropology, Angela Saini takes readers on an eye-opening journey to uncover how women are being rediscovered. She explores what these revelations mean for us as individuals and as a society, revealing an alternative view of science in which women are included, rather than excluded.