Verdantic book review: Food Matters, by Mark Bittman

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes
Mark Bittman (2009)
✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ 1/2 out of ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

In his new book, Mark Bittman, The New York Times' Minimalist, creates a two part guide to better food consumption. Food Matters, begins by examining the flaws and myths of the modern American diet. In this part of the book, Bittman explores sustainability and environmental issues of our food production, as well as the strategic communications and deception deployed by Big Food--oftentimes in cahoots with government agencies. Bittman spares us from reviewing the obvious problems surrounding animal cruelty or fast foods. Instead, Bittman builds on the confusion from the barrage of ambiguous food pyramids, nutrition facts, food studies, health claims and messages. He provides us with an excellent case of an unclear message from the FDA: reduce saturated fats and keep total fat consumption to less than 30% of your total calories. Rather, he makes it much easier to digest: eat fewer animal products and nutrition-poor (junk) food; and eat more plants.
Unlike authors like Michael Pollan--that refers to himself as a vegetarian in one chapter then eats cheeseburgers at McDonalds in another, then shoots and eats a wild boar at the end of the book--by no means is Bittman promoting or demanding a call to action for vegetarianism. But given the current health and environmental situation, Bittman delivers part 2 of Food Matters: a how-to guide for conscious eating. He proposes a better way to plan for meals--not just for dinner but for each meal over an entire month. What's more, Bittman includes more than 75 delicious recipes. Visit his column, The Minimalist, on the New York Times site, where Bittman has video tutorials on cooking recipes.