“Epic and engrossing.” —The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author and pioneering journalist, an expansive look at how history has been shaped by humanity’s appetite for food, farmland, and the money behind it all—and how a better future is within reach. The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads … technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads and atomic bombs, settlers and stock markets. But behind it all, there is an even more fundamental driver: Food.
In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, trusted food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments, from slavery and colonialism to famine and genocide—and to our current moment, wherein Big Food exacerbates climate change, plunders our planet, and sickens its people. Even still, Bittman refuses to concede that the battle is lost, pointing to activists, workers, and governments around the world who are choosing well-being over corporate greed and gluttony, and fighting to free society from Big Food’s grip.
Sweeping, impassioned, and ultimately full of hope, Animal, Vegetable, Junk reveals not only how food has shaped our past, but also how we can transform it to reclaim our future.
more
There is a saying: ‘Humans are what they eat.’ Yes, what isn’t our food connected to? Food is crucial for our survival, our health, our welfare, our land, our laws, our energy supplies, our water, and almost everything else. Mark Bittman’s thought-provoking, wide-ranging new book will open your eyes to the crisis facing our food system, and to the world impact of every bite that you eat.
The climate crisis, COVID-19, and the recent reckoning with systemic and institutional racism have all revealed the many cracks in our global food system. In this thorough and revealing book, Mark Bittman discusses how we got to this point when reform is so essential, and presents the solutions to improve how we grow, distribute, and consume our food. A must read for policymakers, activists, and concerned citizens looking to better understand our food system, and how we can fix it.
Eating well, as Mark Bittman has taught so many of us over the years, is as much about collective health as it is about elegant recipes. In his most radical and profound book to date, Bittman brings his trademark wit, precision, and user-friendliness to a sweeping history of sustenance. The result is a joyful and transformational read.
A brilliant and insightful explanation of the food system. Bittman’s writing is succinct and entertaining, and his recommendations are spot on.
This is the perfect book for this moment in time, and Mark is the perfect person to write it.
I think anyone who wants to be just a little bit healthier should understand how we arrived in today’s mostly-messed-up food culture. Bittman tells a no-nonsense story revealing how some foods have become more easily choosable than others. You’ll get just how impossibly complicated the business of food is, and hear his suggestions for possible-but-difficult solutions. Bittman’s not-so-subtle ire about it all makes it a history lesson on U.S. food production and consumption that’s totally relatable, and enjoyably readable, without compromising his journalistic style.
If you read only one food book this year, please make it this one.
Processed food versus actual real food. Mark Bittman’s timely book on the history of food humans have eaten since long before written history and right up to twenty-first century, is an alarming, eye-opening look at the modern food industry.
Animal, Vegetable, Junk, is a well-researched book on how today’s food became a non-nutritious scramble to part people from their money while crippling the health of nations and enforcing inappropriate farming methods on countries around the globe. It’s not just about the simplistic story of fat, sugar and salt in food products in our supermarkets, it’s also about the way foods have been grown and the unavoidable pesticides present in our food and how they are utilised to grow so-called “healthy” crops
It’s also about the cynical exploitation through junk food advertising, especially to children, setting young people on a journey to obesity, diabetes and chronic ill health.
Ultimately, in his final chapters, Bittman offers a way forward for our food. Around the world there are incremental changes taking place – demand for organic food is increasing, individuals and small groups vote with their money to choose healthy products, some countries provide nutritious school lunches for children, small farms implement biodiversity and soil fertility techniques, France, at government level, is pushing for lower meat intake, Britain is encouraging “meatless Mondays”. Every pushback to big agriculture and its monoculture obsession becomes a challenge humanity needs to take up.
As individuals we can challenge big agriculture’s attempts to control our dietary intake by choosing not to buy junk food, by choosing nutritious options, by not lining the pockets of those whose only motive is greed, not the health of humanity. This book is not a quick read, but it’s well worth reading.
Mostly Junk, Barely Any Meat. This anti-capitalist, anti-European, anti-agriculture screed is little more than a run down of a leftist view of world history (with concentrations in the post-Industrial Revolution world) as it relates to food . It often points to old and out-dated research in support of its claims, and its bibliography is both scant – barely 1/3 the size of similar nonfiction titles – and not cited in the text at all. (Instead, it uses a system of referring to a particular phrase on a particular page number inside the bibliography itself, rather than having a notation in the text of the narrative. Which is obfuscation intended to hide the text’s lack of scholarly merit, clearly.) For those who know no better, it perhaps offers an argument that will at least confirm their own biases. But for anyone who has studied any of the several areas it touches in any depth at all, its analysis is flawed due to the very premises it originates from. All of this to say, this is a very sad thing. Based on the description of the book, I genuinely had high hopes for it, as food and its history and future is something that truly fascinates me and this could have been a remarkable text. Instead, it is remarkable only for how laughable it is. Not recommended.