Farmbrarian

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The US Farm Bill is a major point of contention among those concerned with human and environmental health. Most notably, the Farm Bill is responsible for subsidies paid to farmers for growing commodity grains on a large scale in order to provide a lot of cheap (and processed) food. As author Daniel Imhoff points out in his book Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to a Food and Farm Bill (2007), however, this legislation is much more than just corn subsidies.

In the foreword, Michael Pollan sums it up nicely by explaining that the legislation determines “what happens on a couple hundred million acres of private property in America, what sort of food Americans eat (and how much it costs), and as a result, the health of our population.” With such enormous implications, it is amazing the extent to which the Farm Bill flies under the radar.

Food Fight appears to be the only recent book attempting to explain the Farm Bill to the lay person. Imhoff succeeds in that the book is informative, readable, and thorough, without getting caught up in the minutia of an enormous piece of legislation.

Every 5 or so years, this legislation is changed, and I suspect (and hope) major changes will continue to come. The more educated John Q. Public is on what is really happening here, the better chance that we can improve this bill. Making positive steps is important, because as Michael Pollan points out, our health depends on it.

You might also like: The Organic Manifesto by Maria Rodale

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Michael Pollan, author of the wildly successful The Omnivore’s Dilemma, presents readers with simple rules of eating healthfully in his new book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. The mantra of his last book In Defense of Food (“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”) forms the backbone of the new book, which features a collection of sentence-long personal eating rules. For example, “If it came from a plant eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t,” and “the whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”

The book can be read in its entirety in less than an hour, which is certainly worth doing. Fans of Pollan’s work will not encounter new ideas, but rather a greatly abbreviated and cleverly presented reiteration of his work. The rules were either created by Pollan, submitted to him by those who read his request for food rules via a New York Times blog, or are long-standing, cultural ideas about eating.

This “eater’s manual” is an enjoyable read for all, but especially for those unfamiliar with Pollan’s work.