Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating With More Than 75 Recipes
by Mark Bittman
Simon & Schuster; $24.95
Mark Bittman has been many things in the world of food: chef, traveler, writer and, now, advocate. With Food Matters, Bittman has come around to the sustainable food movement and offers a book with a mixture of the stick and the carrot.
By describing the environmental devastation that factory farming is creating—polluting waterways with chemical fertilizers, eroding land with monocultures and other things Grid readers are probably familiar with—he creates an urgency to change the way you eat. Bittman, who has written cookbooks before, doesn’t just leave you there, though; he goes on to provide recipes that lean towards healthy and sustainable foods.
Bittman is an engaging writer, and offers his own past as an overeater as a way of showing he’s not perfect either. He describes how switching to a more sustainable diet, which included cutting down on meat, helped him become healthier. The most important thing the book does, though, is offer a practical approach to eating better (for you and the environment) that is both empowering and doable. Recipes, like a delicious and light frittata, make both your belly and conscience feel better.
