New Book: Recipe for America

posted by brooklynfoodconference, on August 7, 2009

Our food is making us sick, and it’s killing the environment and hurting the people who produce it. At the Food Conference, LaDonna Redmond challenged us to change this. We’ve never had a food system that wasn’t based on exploitation, she said. We may think how we eat is our personal choice, but that’s bull, that’s what the big food businesses want us to think. Really what we have is “food apartheid.” We have to get into recovery and create a resilient, life-affirming food system. How? Don’t think a new President can fix it, said Redmond. The solution is ours. We have to tell him what we want.

So how do we transform this mess into something that actually promotes well being? (Imagine!) Redmond had minutes at a podium in a high school auditorium, so it’s a good thing Jill Richardson has given us a guidebook with clear-headed research and actions that look remarkably easy. You may know Richardson from her posts on Daily Kos or her own blog, La Vida Locavore. Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It is Richardson’s first book, and you can meet her at a party in Park Slope on Sunday, August 9 (She’s from California, but her book tour brings her to Brooklyn for a day. See Events. Not a Brooklynite?  Complete tour schedule).

Recipe for America grabbed me the minute I opened it up, and when I finished page 184, I was left with hope and enthusiasm about how I could help make the change I’d love to see. A veggie myself since 1970, maybe I’m ready to go more public. It’s been years since someone’s looked at my lunch and said, “Ewwwww, what’s that?” or “I knew someone who used to be a vegetarian but then he tried meat again and is much healthier.” Come to think of it, it was a book, Diet for a Small Planet, that helped make me a veggie in the first place.

Okay, I’m not a hard sell. Richardson is talking about a topic that means a lot to me, but she does it well. She knows how to grab readers and hold them; her blog readers have taught her that. Do we need more information and opinion on the food system? Maybe not, but I will always appreciate someone who can pull together a lot of research and make a good story of it. Like how chemicals got in our food in the first place. Or why we keep having e coli outbreaks. “The solution favored by industry is irradiation,” she writes. “In other words, nuke the food until the microbes are dead and it no longer matters if there’s ‘shit in the meat.’” Except it does. She tackles the Farm Bill, school food, exploited farm workers, etc. But it’s not really about the issues or individuals. It’s about understanding it as a system. That’s when change happens. It’s like waking up and seeing the bigger picture in one of your personal experiences. Aha, so it wasn’t just me…if only I had realized that then. Richardson is giving you that insight now.

I am always drawn in by people willing to share their personal food journeys. Some highlights of Jill Richardson’s life with food:

• She’s had firsthand experience living in a food desert and it didn’t bring out the best in her. Fresh out of college, she was working in Washington and living in the burbs. “How could an intelligent person like myself, who knew her way around a kitchen well enough to cook healthy dishes like chickpea curry, choose a diet of ice cream and beer?” It wasn’t lack of money, she says, but lack of access to a good grocery store.
• The chapter on school food begins “I have a confession to make. Back when I was in junior high school, I took the lunch money that my parents gave me each week, and instead of spending it on lunch like I was supposed to, I bought junk food. My favorite were Nutty Bars…” She can still see it from the kids’ side. (She’s in her twenties.)
• She takes us behind the scenes at Whole Foods, where she once worked. That was fun. Having worked for a big corporation myself, I got a chuckle at how delicately she lets us peek in.

She tributes those who have helped her along the way and wants to pass that generosity along to us. There’s a feel of gratitude, transparency and sharing in this book, which enhances the you-can-do-it attitude. But most important, this book is a recipe. When she gives us a problem (like the manure lagoons found on factory farms), she usually presents sustainable alternatives (the Hoops system). Then there’s a tool kit at the end to get you started as an activist: alerts to subscribe to, blogs to follow, how to track legislation, etc.

— Paige Churchman