Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Sustainable Food
How to Buy Right and Spend Less
by Elise McDonough
Published by Chelsea Green Publishing, August 2009
Paperback, 4 3/4 x 6 1/2, 96 pages, with Color photos
ISBN: 9781603581417
Wondering whether it’s worth it to splurge on the locally raised beef? What about those organic carrots? New in the Chelsea Green Guides series, Sustainable Food: How to Buy Right and Spend Less helps the average shopper navigate the choices, whether strolling the aisles of a modern supermarket or foraging at a local farmers market.
This down-to-earth, casual guide—small enough to be slipped into your pocket—answers these and other questions for the shopper:
- What are the differences among organic, local, fair-trade, free-range, naturally raised, and biodynamic foods?
- How affordable is it to subscribe to a CSA farm—and what are the advantages?
- Is it better to choose wild Alaskan salmon at $18.99, or the Chilean farmed fish at $11.99?
- What cooking oils can be sustainably sourced?
- How can a food co-op increase access to, and affordability of, healthier, Earth-friendly foods?
- Where can you find sustainably produced sugar, and are there any local replacements for sweeteners from faraway lands?
- What do the distinctions between shade-grown and trellised coffee mean?
- Is shark okay to eat? How about mackerel?
- Why is the war on plastic bags so important?
Sustainable eating just got easier.
While I would never go as far as advocating a total vegetarian or vegan diet and neither does the author of this book the comments of the author as regards meat free three or four days a week makes sense.
This was the was we lived in the “olden days” and also, we must not forget, how our parents and grandparents, of those of us who are older then forty, used to live. Meat was, unless you could go out and hunt it, way too expensive and consigned to Sundays and Feats Days. Hunting too never permitted a daily supply of meat, really, not even poaching, so everyone, bar, probably the wealthy, made do with vegetables in many shapes and forms though often peas pudding, and bread.
Organic – vs – local
This is a subject well covered too by the author in the book and has never and will never make sense to me to bring into the UK, for instance, “organic” French beans from Kenya at the same time when such produce is available from British growers.
However, alas, the perception of the author that local fruit and vegetables in season are cheaper does not work out in Britain, for instance. While this may, possibly, be thus in the United States it certainly is not in Britain. Here in the UK prices are maintained artificially by means of government intervention.
Some years ago there was a real glut of apples in the orchards in Kent (a British county) and farmers were ordered to destroy apples – ordered by the what was then called Agricultural Intervention Board. They were not even allowed to give those perfectly good apples away to the needy.
This seems to be the way where Europe, but especially the UK, might differ from the USA.
Laws also prevent and prohibit nowadays greengrocers and market traders from giving away fruit and veggies with say a few blemishes to those that are not so well off, as they used to do when I was a child. Instead such produce must be destroyed. And then the governments moan about the waste of food.
The author also mentions hunting as a sustainable and socially responsible way to eat meat and I must say that this is the first author of this kind of a book that makes send in this department and it makes a real refreshing change from the usual twaddle one gets to hear as regards to hunting.
The description of feed lot raised animals for food, such as beef, is so true as I know what it looks like there and how animals are treated from family who have worked on the veterinary crews in such places. How this kind of practice can even be allowed to exist beats me and the author did not even go far enough to describe the horrors of such places.
This is, most probably, the best and precise small guide to sustainable food about at present.
The author, Elise McDonough, trained at New York City's Natural Gourmet Institute, but her informal training in counterculture cuisine began at the Cleveland Food Co-op, where she was initiated into the world of food politics, strange ingredients, and alternative diets. She lives in New York, where she volunteers at the Union Square Greenmarket, and is actively involved in many local farm and food issues.
This is a book that I would really like to recommend.
© 2009
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