Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes
From Publishers Weekly
Cookbook author Bittman (How to Cook Everything) offers this no-nonsense volume loaded with compelling information about how the food we eat is doing damage to the environment, what changes to make and why. Authors have covered this topic before (Michael Pollan, for example, in The Omnivores Dilemma and In Defense of Food), but Bittman takes a practical turn by concluding with 77 recipes that make earth-friendly eating doable and appealing. His collection of r [Read More...]
Buy Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes at Amazon
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Mark Bittman’s Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating is a guidebook for the typical American eating the typical American diet–heavy laden with meat, animal products, and processed foods. This typical American diet, Bittman points out, is calorie-dense, harmful to the atmosphere, taxing on global resources, and unhealthy. Bittman easily mixes scientific research with his own personal account of needing to lose weight due to high cholesterol and sleep apnea and shows that shifting his diet by emphasizing vegetables, legumes, and beans over meats and processed food helped him reach his weight and health goals without resorting to rigid dieting and calorie-counting. Let me make it clear here that Bittman is not advocating vegetarianism. He allows himself a little meat during his dinner meal and incorporates some meat in the recipe section of his book.
A food journalist and cook book writer (his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian has been praised by icon Mario Batali) divides his book into two sections. The first section, Food Matters, lays down the reasons we need to shift from meat and processed foods to vegetables, fresh produce, legumes and beans. If you’ve already read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma or In Defense of Food, this information won’t be new to you. But it is a good recap of the incremental way the typical American diet has become unhealthy, burdensome to the environment, and “insane.”
I think one area Bittman differs from Pollan is that I see an undercurrent of horror and disgust Bittman feels for the way animals are treated in the farming industry. While not embracing vegetarianism, Bittman wants to lower the demand of animal products (sadly, he shows world statistics that show that developing countries are actually demanding MORE meat than ever).
The second section of Bittman’s book, the recipe section, is excellent, not just for the 75 recipes and suggested menus, but for the basic foods he says you should always keep stocked in your kitchen and the secrets for adding bold flavors to your meals.
Bittman’s call for sane eating has much in common with the aforementioned Michael Pollan and readers with an interest in intelligent, healthy eating without sacrificing pleasure will want to read Mark Bittman’s Food Matters, Michael Pollan’s food books, and Brian Wansink’s Mindless Eating.
I’ve been a fan of Bittman’s for a few years, reading his Times column and using his How to Cook Everything cookbook on a regular basis. So, I was pretty disappointed to read his new book, Food Matters, and find that there wasn’t any new information included, except for his personal weight loss experience (which was a bit lightweight, if you pardon the pun).
The recipes are a bit of a let down as well, so let me say from the start, save your money and buy one of his cookbooks instead. If you are a reasonably well-informed eater, especially someone of the vegetarian or vegan variety, this book is a waste of time for you. However, if you are a big beef eater, you’ll probably learn a lot.
I found that his criticisms of the meat industry could have well been backed up by the same of the poultry industry, but he steered quite clear of that.
Overall, the book was very repetitive. Bittman found endless ways to rephrase his point about eating less meat. While he did give a month’s worth of meals, he didn’t help with the calorie count. It was highly disappointing. It seemed to have been written and edited in a hurry, and just doesn’t seem typical of Bittman’s work.
Sorry, but I just can’t recommend this one of his books.
Did you know that global livestock production is responsible for about one-fifth of all greenhouse gasses — MORE THAN TRANSPORTATION? In this concise, well-written book, statistics like that leap off the pages. Here’s another one: “If we all ate the equivalent of three fewer cheeseburgers a week, we’d cancel out the effects of ALL THE SUV’S IN THE COUNTRY!”
Mr. Bittman knows how to get one’s attention. But he follows these and other startling statistics with calm and rational thinking. Radical is OUT; common sense is IN. His recommendations for change are not based on deprivation. Neither are they faddist nor elitist. Stock your pantry with whole grains, beans, and your refrigerator with washed greens, vegetables and fruit. READ THOSE LABELS when you shop. Avoid hydrogenated anything, MSG, high fructose corn syrup or anything containing an ingredient you’ve never heard of. Most of us know this; Bittman just has a talent for presenting it concisely and entertainingly.
He knows we are not immune to unhealthy cravings and deals with it intelligently. For example, if you love bacon, “Keep a hunk in the freezer or fridge and use it for seasoning. An ounce goes a long way.” And when the flavor of butter is indispensable in a certain dish, think of it as an occasional pleasure — a little reward for following the essential principles presented in this book for the majority of the time.
The recipes are extremely easy — familiar to most everyone. But he adds many creative touches; for example: seasoning blends that you can make and store, ready to add a little punch here and there. No insipid, bland, I-hate-this-but-it’s-good-for-me nonsense for this gourmet author.
I’ve already started putting this book into practice. And I believe, if asked, he would give me permission to make (maybe only once a year and sliced very, very thinly) my favorite pâté, Mr. Bittman’s own Country Pâté from the NY Times.
My advice: Buy it and READ it.