Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes: Amazon.ca: Mark Bittman: Books

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About the Author

Mark Bittman is the author of Food Matters, How to Cook Everything and other cookbooks, and of the weekly New York Times column, The Minimalist. His work has appeared in countless newspapers and magazines, and he is a regular on the Today show. Mr. Bittman has hosted two public television series and has appeared in a third.

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index

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16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Food Writer and Cookbook Author Describes How to Eat Healthier and Reduce Your Carbon Footprint, Mar 18 2009

By

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER) (#1 HALL OF FAME)

This review is from: Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes (Hardcover)

Food Matters is a lightweight (pun intended) look at how your eating choices affect the environment, your health, and your weight. Mark Bittman provides familiar arguments in favor of enjoying food choices that don't use as many resources that are also good for you to eat. To underscore the point, he describes how he lost weight by changing to more environmentally friendly choices (fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, and relatively little eggs, dairy, fish, chicken, and beef). The book ends with some recipes to help you switch from animal-protein-centered dishes to ones that either have little protein or none. He also teaches you how to prepare and keep masses of vegetable- and fruit-based ingredients ready to go for tasty eating.

As far as this book goes, it's well done . . . but it's just not enough for many people to buy and use the book. Here are some examples of problems with the book:

1. He argues that you shouldn't buy out-of-season fruits and vegetables from halfway around the world because of all energy expended. In many developing countries, out-of-season fruits and vegetables are the way that poor farmers are trying to get out of poverty and use less environmentally damaging methods. Mr. Bittman doesn't differentiate between who is producing the out-of-season fruits and vegetables and how they are produced. In some cases at least, doing the opposite of his advice can be an environmentally friendly decision.

2. He focuses on food-related ways to reduce the carbon footprint without considering how you cook and store the food and that impact on carbon footprint.

3. He talks about the wonders of various fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain alternatives without usually giving you the details about what each one offers in the way of nutrition and digestion characteristics, depending on how they are prepared.

4. He expounds upon all of the problems of feed-lot produced beef, likes the idea of grass-fed beef, but never tells you in detail the benefits of grass-fed cattle.

5. The list of recipes is a good one, but it's hardly enough to provide all of your eating needs. Why not provide a full cookbook to support his concept?

6. I went to the store to check out those dastardly food manufacturers to see if they were in fact pulling all of the tricks that he described. Some were and some weren't. It made me realize that I need to develop a list of items that I've researched and why I chose them so that I can then compare them to new offerings when those are provided.

7. When all was said and done, I was struck that what he was telling me to do was pretty similar to what I do already. So what did I gain from the book that I didn't know already? Mainly that seltzer bottles use a lot of energy in their production. I'll skip seltzer in the future and go back to tap water exclusively. If I had bought a vegetarian cookbook, I think I would have been better off.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for a beginner to real food, April 30 2011

By

jill - See all my reviews

This review is from: Food Matters: Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes (Paperback)

This book is great for anyone who has just woken up to the world of Big Food, and to the toxic chemicals that are stuffed in everyday prepared food. It gives a great breakdown of why things have become this way, what can be done to help (on a mass scale and within the daily food choices you make), and how to start eating real food. The recipes are creative, thoughtful and totally unique - I've been a full-time cook for almost 7 years and the recipes really blew me away! They're simple and easy to follow, and very customizable to your own tastes/pantry shelves.
I would also recommend In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan; read it after this one, as it goes a bit more in depth about the issues behind the Western diet. I've also heard The Omnivore Dilemma by the same author is also a good read.
However I think if you have already gotten yourself onto whole foods and off the junk, you might find the recipes interesting but the rest of the book you will probably already know. I would highly recommend, in this case, purchasing one of Bittman's recipe books. I just got How To Cook Everything Vegetarian in the mail and find myself sitting in one spot for hours, completely enthralled as I flip page after page, occasionally darting through the book to his many references and recommendations, all with recipes within the massive 1000 page book, with a block of post-it notes and a pen handy. Amazing chef and author.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Good starter for eating healthy, Sep 6 2010

By

K. Harrison (BC Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes (Hardcover)

This is a great book for someone new to the topic, who wants to start eating more mindfully in terms of the environmental and health impacts of what we put in our mouths. I agree with many of Prof Mitchell's points, but the introduction offered here is a non-intimidating source to get people going in the right direction. The recipes are simple and adaptable and provide a guideline to get started on healthy eating. For more in depth exploration of the topic, I recommend the Omnivore's Dilemma as an entertaining and enlightening read.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Great information!
Everyone should read this book to get a grip on what we are doing to ourselves, animals, and the effect of it all on our planet. Read more

Published on April 21 2009 by Backstreets