Diet for a Dead Planet: How the Food Industry Is Killing Us

Rating:
Summary: Diet for a Dead Planet -- Read this book!
Review: Diet for a Dead Planet totally opened up my eyes about the the mess of our food system. Read this book!

I knew about fast food from Fast Food Nation, but Christopher Cook really digs in to the entire food system -- from corporate business strategies to the impacts of pesticides on the land and on our health.

It's a very broad book, so i think it's great as a primer on a bunch of related issues. For people like me, who know about this stuff in a general way, Cook's book is a great way to absorb really good detailed research on food system problems. He talks about mad cow, agribusiness, obesity, pesticides, the insane things workers go through to get us our meats (losing fingers, and a lot worse), and does it in a really engaging way.

Also, he ends on a positive note, with ideas about political organizing and ways people can make change, which i really appreciated. His writing style is very rich and layered, and packed with information. This book is an essential contribution to the literature on food politics.

Rating:
Summary: HELP WANTED
Review: FIGHT FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Professor Ignacio Chapela courageously spoke out against the UC $25 million research agreement with the biotechnology giant Novartis. He published an article demonstrating that native corn in Mexico had been contaminated by genetically engineered corn. Being a prominent critic of the university's ties to the biotech industry, Dr. Chapela had his tenure denied despite overwhelming support by his peers at UC Berkeley and experts around the world.

The implications that these actions have on academic freedom are frightening. They threaten scientists in the future from working to seek truth in different forums without undue influence. Scientists will no longer be able to ask questions that might seem uncomfortable even for the university to pose, such as those in pursuit of precautionary science or in opposition to corporate control over the university research agenda.

You can get involved:
1. Call, email or write the UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau and the Academic Senate.
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Snail Mail: Office of the Chancellor, 200 California Hall # 1500, Berkeley, California, 94720-1500
(Academic Senate = PHONE: [phone]; FAX: [phone]; E-MAIL: [e-mail]

2. Visit www.tenurejustice.org or write [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Pigout Nation -- Wake Up!!!
Review: Hey people, the situation with how we get our food is not OK. I love steak and all the good eats but I am a new parent, I don't want to poison my kid. Reading this book pissed me off. Our food is full of toxins and the big companies that produce most of it are a bunch of welfare grubbing polluters. I am telling you, it's socialism for the big companies when you read the fine print of the agro bills as Cook, the author of this book, did. Sadly the little farmers have been mostly put out of business. Agro biz is not only poisoning us but are raping the American environment as well. Mr. Cook (yes, it's a funny name for a guy who writes about food) reveals some really freaky bad stuff from the heartland. How do lagoons of hog doo doo spoiling rivers strike you? Cows eating cows? Yummy. It's really crazy that the topics covered in the very well written and intensely researched book are not more of an issue. It'd be easy to get really down when looking too closely at where our vitals come from but Cook also takes a realistic look at some remedies; all of which involve producing and then eating good food. If you care about your health and about the planet read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Cogent Analysis Supported by Meticulous Research
Review: I thought I knew a lot about how dangerous our food is, but this book put all the pieces together in a way that gives me a whole new understanding of the nature and gravity of the problem. Anyone who thinks buying organic food will solve the problem needs to read this book--the whole system of subsidies, price supports and food retailing necessarily means more huge corporate farms and slaughterhouses, more pesticides, more food contamination. By humanizing and sympathizing with the players (and by writing with consummate skill), Cook manages to make agricultural history and policy highly readable, and his portrayal of the conditions in the meatpacking industry is downright gruesome. Cook shows how the interests of consumers in healthy, fresh food and the interests of small family farmers and meatpacking workers coincide. Now it's up to the rest of us to see that the nation's agricultural and food safety policies are rewritten from the bottom up.

Rating:
Summary: The BIG Food Industry
Review: The current world has a large number of diet problems. Obesity and other diet related medical problems are becoming among the biggest health problems facing the world today.

In this book Chris Cook discusses not only the dietary problems associated with obesity but with the entire food system. He talks of the corporate control of farms and supermarkets, unsustainable forces that demand ever higher production levels of productivity and profits, mistaken subsidies for exports, and corporate friendly regulations.

Food has become a political issue while at the same time, the growth of organic farming has surprised the corporations and is growing faster than anyone ever expected.


Rating:
Summary: A no-nonsense book
Review: Whether he is taking on the exploitation of farm workers and poultry-plant employees; the take-over of large-scale agribusiness; farm subsidies, or an America swimming in pesticides and animal waste, Mr. Cook has clearly done his research. Extremely well documented, the book contains a number of startling statistics. Did you know that in California's Central Valley, the 1,600 dairies there generate more waste than a city of 21 million people? Did you know that in 1997, growers applied more than 985 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides to crops? Can you conceive of a farm subsidy system that has people like Scottie Pippin and Sam Donaldson receiving farm program monies?

There is a lot to ponder in this book and some excellent ideas and suggestions as to what we as consumers can do to make changes in our lives and our communities to help bring farming back to the people and out of the hands of the giant corporations.