Book picks similar to
Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food by Joel Salatin
food
non-fiction
farming
health
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Eric Schlosser - 2001
That's a lengthy list of charges, but here Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate. (back cover)
Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms
Nicolette Hahn Niman - 2009
The book also brims with hope and charts a practical (and even beautiful) path out of the jungle.”—Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food “[A] necessary book—part memoir, part exposé…its reasoned case for healthy and humane farming practices has the sweet savor of truth.”—O The Oprah Magazine A crusading environmental activist, vegetarian, and lawyer who has worked with Robert Kennedy, Jr. on environment issues, Nicolette Hahn Niman blows the lid off the shocking practices in the pork, meat, and poultry industries in Righteous Porkchop, a Fast Food Nation for the hog trade. Subtitled, “Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond the Factory Farm,” Righteous Porkchop is at once an eye-opening grand tour of Hahn Niman’s battles with the industrial farming conglomerates, a guide to avoiding unhealthy meats, and a very personal story of one woman’s reawakening.
Water Storage: Tanks, Cisterns, Aquifers, and Ponds for Domestic Supply, Fire and Emergency Use--Includes How to Make Ferrocement Water Tanks
Art Ludwig - 2005
It will help you with your independent water system, fire protection, and disaster preparedness, at low cost and using principles of ecological design. Includes building instructions for several styles of ferro cement water tanks.
Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America
Wenonah Hauter - 2012
Yet, as one of the nation's leading healthy–food advocates, Hauter believes that the local food movement is not enough to solve America's food crisis and the public health debacle it has created. In Foodopoly, she takes aim at the real culprit: the control of food production by a handful of large corporations—backed by political clout—that prevents farmers from raising healthy crops and limits the choices that people can make in the grocery store.Blending history, reporting, and a deep understanding of American faming and food production, Foodopoly is the shocking and revealing account of the business behind the meat, vegetables, grains, and milk that most Americans eat every day, including some of our favorite and most respected organic and health–conscious brands. Hauter also pulls the curtain back from the little–understood but vital realm of agricultural policy, showing how it has been hijacked by lobbyists, driving out independent farmers and food processors in favor of the likes of Cargill, Tyson, Kraft, and ConAgra. Foodopoly demonstrates how the impacts ripple far and wide, from economic stagnation in rural communities at home to famines overseas. In the end, Hauter argues that solving this crisis will require a complete structural shift—a change that is about politics, not just personal choice.Written with deep insight from one of America's most respected food activists, Foodopoly is today's essential guide for anyone who wants to reform our food system, from seed to table.
Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly
James McWilliams - 2009
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.
The Gorgeously Green Diet: How to Live Lean and Green
Sophie Uliano - 2009
And now, with The Gorgeously Green Diet, Sophie shows how to love food, live healthily, lose weight, and save money and the planet. Uliano offers three different lean and green eating plans-Light Green, Bright Green, and Deep Green. Each offers a cornucopia of the healthiest and most gorgeous food you've ever eaten as well as the secret to being healthy and staying that way. You'll learn how to reduce your impact on the environment by following the plan and how the Gorgeously Green Diet will improve your overall health. There are money- saving tips, including how to cook a healthy organic meal for five on less than it would cost to eat at Burger King, as well as nearly one hundred recipes and a gentle exercise plan. Readers can take the pledge to become green and lean, ask questions, and get support. This is the celebration of food, the planet, and healthy bodies that Sophie's many fans have been waiting for.
Becoming Vegan: The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-Based Diet
Brenda Davis - 2000
In addition they explain why more and more people are being motivated to become vegans and discuss the consequences of their choice.
Backyard Foraging: 65 Familiar Plants You Didn't Know You Could Eat
Ellen Zachos - 2013
Ideal for first-time foragers, this book features 70 edible weeds, flowers, mushrooms, and ornamental plants typically found in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Full-color photographs make identification easy, while tips on common plant locations, pesticides, pollution, and dangerous flora make foraging as safe and simple as stepping into your own backyard.
Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food
Paul Greenberg - 2010
He visits Norwegian megafarms that use genetic techniques once pioneered on sheep to grow millions of pounds of salmon a year. He travels to the ancestral river of the Yupik Eskimos to see the only Fair Trade–certified fishing company in the world. He makes clear how PCBs and mercury find their way into seafood; discovers how Mediterranean sea bass went global; challenges the author of Cod to taste the difference between a farmed and a wild cod; and almost sinks to the bottom of the South Pacific while searching for an alternative to endangered bluefin tuna.Fish, Greenberg reveals, are the last truly wild food — for now. By examining the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, he shows how we can start to heal the oceans and fight for a world where healthy and sustainable seafood is the rule rather than the exception.
Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It
Larry Olmsted - 2016
Lobster rolls containing no lobster at all. Extra-virgin olive oil that isn’t. Fake foods are in our supermarkets, our restaurants, and our kitchen cabinets. Award-winning food journalist and travel writer Larry Olmsted exposes this pervasive and dangerous fraud perpetrated on unsuspecting Americans. Real Food/Fake Food brings readers into the unregulated food industry, revealing that this shocking deception extends from high-end foods like olive oil, wine, and Kobe beef to everyday staples such as coffee, honey, juice, and cheese. It’s a massive bait and switch where counterfeiting is rampant and where the consumer ultimately pays the price. But Olmsted does more than show us what foods to avoid. A bona fide gourmand, he travels to the sources of the real stuff, to help us recognize what to look for, eat, and savor: genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano from Italy, fresh-caught grouper from Florida, authentic port from Portugal. Real foods that are grown, raised, produced, and prepared with care by masters of their craft. Part cautionary tale, part culinary crusade, Real Food/Fake Food is addictively readable, mouth-wateringly enjoyable, and utterly relevant. Larry Olmsted convinces us why real food matters.
The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Secrets Behind What You Eat
Richie Chevat - 2009
"What's for dinner?" seemed like a simple question - until journalist and supermarket detective Michael Pollan delved behind the scenes. From fast food and big organic to small farms and old-fashioned hunting and gathering, this young readers' adaptation of Pollan's famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global health implications of their food choices.In a smart, compelling format with updated facts, plenty of photos, graphs, and visuals, as well as a new afterword and backmatter, The Omnivore's Dilemma serves up a bold message to the generation that needs it most: It's time to take charge of our national eating habits - and it starts with you.
City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing
Lorraine Johnson - 2010
Not only are backyard vegetable plots popping up in places long reserved for lawns, but some renegades are even planting their front yards with food. People in apartments are filling their balconies with pots of tomatoes, beans, and basil, while others are gazing skyward and "greening" their rooftops with food plants. Still others are colonizing public spaces, staking out territory in parks for community gardens and orchards, or convincing school boards to turn asphalt school grounds into "growing" grounds.Woven through the book are the stories of guerrilla urban farmers in various cities of North America who are tapping city trees for syrup, gleaning fruit from parks, foraging for greens in abandoned lots, planting heritage vegetables on the boulevard, and otherwise placing food production at the centre of the urban community. Additional stories describe the history of urban food production in North America, revealing the roots of our current hunger for more connection with our food, and the visionaries who have directed that hunger into action.Throughout the book, sidebars offer practical tips for how to compost, how to convert a lawn into a vegetable bed, and what edible plants are easy to grow with children, among other topics.
The Seasons on Henry's Farm: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm
Terra Brockman - 2009
There, Henry Brockman and his family — five generations of farmers, including sister Terra — farm in a way that produces healthy, nutritious food without despoiling the land. Terra Brockman tells their story in the form of a yearlong diary/memoir — with recipes — that takes readers through each season of life on the farm. Studded with vignettes, photographs, family stories, and illustrations of the farm's vivid plant life, the book is a one-of-a-kind treasure that will appeal to readers of Michael Pollan, E. B. White, Gretel Ehrlich, and Sandra Steingraber. The book opens a window into what sustainable farming really entails and why it is vital and relevant to everyone who eats. Though rooted in the rolling oak-hickory hills and fertile fields and flood plains of the Mackinaw River Valley, the book ranges widely, incorporating literary, scientific, and culinary reflections occasioned by the week-by-week events of farm life.
Compact Farms: 15 Proven Plans for Market Farms on 5 Acres or Less; Includes Detailed Farm Layouts for Productivity and Efficiency
Josh Volk - 2017
Compact Farms is an illustrated guide for anyone dreaming of starting, expanding, or perfecting a profitable farming enterprise on five acres or less. The farm plans explain how to harness an area’s water supply, orientation, and geography in order to maximize efficiency and productivity while minimizing effort. Profiles of well-known farmers such as Eliot Coleman and Jean-Martin Fortier show that farming on a small scale in any region, in both urban and rural settings, can provide enough income to turn the endeavor from hobby to career. These real-life plans and down-and-dirty advice will equip you with everything you need to actually realize your farm dreams.
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2: Water-Harvesting Earthworks
Brad Lancaster - 2008
The plants then pump the water back out in the form of beauty, food, shelter, wildlife habitat, timber and forage, while controlling erosion, reducing down-stream flooding, dropping utility costs, increasing soil fertility, enhancing the soil carbon sponge, and improving water and air quality.This dramatically revised and expanded full-color second edition builds on the information in Volume 1 by showing you how to turn your yard, school, business, park, ranch, and neighborhood into lively, regenerative producers of resources. Conditions at home will improve as you simultaneously enrich the ecosystem and inspire the surrounding community.Learn to select, place, size, construct, and plant your chosen earthworks. All is made easier and more effective by the illustrations of natural patterns of water and sediment flow with which you can collaborate or mimic. Detailed step-by-step instructions with over 550 images show you how to do it, and plentiful stories of success motivate you so you will do it!