I highly recommend the book. I plan on reading it again, maybe a year later. I'm positive I'll take home different messages with a re-read. For now, I've switched over to organic milk and beef and chicken. I buy cage free eggs. I try to eat out less, especially fast food. I buy more organic vegetables. I added a few new stores to my regular shopping trips. I'm working on finding a farmer's market close by that is open on a night I don't work. If I have to drive 12 miles to my favorite one, aren't I missing the point?
Basically, I try to make better choices. One day at a time.
Below, I'm sharing some excerpts from the book that really spoke to me. Hope you enjoy.
“If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.”
“CAFOs house them as tightly as possible where they never see grass or sunlight. If you can envision one thousand chickens in your bathroom, in cages stacked to the ceiling, you're honestly getting the picture. (Actually a six-foot by eight room could house 1,152).”
“Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.”
“We're a nation with an eating disorder, and we know it. The multiple maladies caused by bad eating are taking a dire toll on our health--most tragically for our kids, who are predicted to be this country's first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. That alone is a stunning enough fact to give us pause. So is a government policy that advises us to eat more fruits and vegetables, while doling out subsidies not to fruit and vegetable farmers, but to commodity crops destined to become soda pop and cheap burgers. The Farm Bill, as of this writing, could aptly be called the Farm Kill, both for its effects on small farmers and for what it does to us, the consumers who are financing it.”
“We can´t know what we haven´t been taught”
Oh, and in case you're wondering what my kids think of this? They are not loving it. They hate that we make pizza in the kitchen on a weekly basis, but get Pizza Hut on the rare occasion. They hate that we don't have as many frozen prepared foods in our freezer. They miss chicken nuggets. And they really hated the day I brought brussel sprouts home and made them take one bite. But I understand. I'm the one that taught them to like the foods they like. It's what I've been feeding them all their lives. And when they hang out at the mall with their friends, they still get to eat at McDonald's.
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