Fair Food
Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A host of books and films in recent years have documented the dangers of our current food system, from chemical runoff to soaring rates of diet-related illness to inhumane treatment of workers and animals. But advice on what to do about it largely begins and ends with the admonition to "eat local or "eat organic."
Fair Food is an enlightening and inspiring guide to changing not only what we eat, but how food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed, and sold. Oran B. Hesterman shows how our system's dysfunctions are unintended consequences of our emphasis on efficiency, centralization, higher yields, profit, and convenience -- and defines the new principles, as well as the concrete steps, necessary to restructuring it. Along the way, he introduces people and organizations across the country who are already doing this work in a number of creative ways, from bringing fresh food to inner cities to fighting for farm workers' rights to putting cows back on the pastures where they belong. He provides a wealth of practical information for readers who want to get more involved.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Intended as a practical guide for community food activists who want to take the locavore movement across race, class, and city lines, this book illuminate ways in which consumers can become "engaged citizens." Especially important (and rare) is Hesterman's willingness to work constructively with corporate giants like Costco and the Kellogg Foundation. Given the current abundance of food writing that argues for a sustainable revolution, it's understandable that Hesterman (founder of the Fair Food Network) occasionally feels the need to justify his work. However, intermittent jabs he employs in order to distance himself from Michael Pollan read like sour grapes especially if the whole point is that we have to work together. Ultimately, though, each chapter provides methodical and thoughtful instructions for shifting how we eat along every step of every food chain from institutional kitchens (like college cafeterias) to public policy. The dedication to social justice is clear, genuine, and logically argued as a food issue. A helpful and hefty final chapter of "Resources" provides readers with a comprehensive national listing of organizations to join, support, or replicate.
