10 Book Recommendations for Conscientious Eaters

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from Civil Eats:


10 Book Recommendations for Conscientious Eaters
By Barry Estabrook on December 19, 2014


It’s Sustainable Santa, writing. Wee Barry Estabrook is preoccupied with putting together a new book proposal, so Santa thought it was a good idea to help him out (and lighten Santa’s sleigh) by stepping into this space to dash off a few words about Santa’s favorite books of food journalism for 2014—dandy gifts for the food lovers on your list.

Santa’s image consultants insist that Santa maintains the physique of a fat, jolly, old elf, so it should come as no surprise that he takes food ve-r-r-r-r-r-y seriously. And because Santa expects to be embarking on his annual sleigh ride for many more millennia, it should also come as no surprise that he has a vested interest in the long-term sustainability of our food system.

.....(snip).....

In Search of the Perfect Loafperfect_loaf
by Samuel Fromartz

Santa freely admits to having a sweet tooth. He’s always delighted to find a few cookies left out on hearths. But each Christmas Eve after sliding down Sam Fromartz’s chimney, Santa head directly to the kitchen, where inevitably Sam has left a few fresh loaves of his just-baked bread.

Sam happens to be a journalist, and a very good one at that. But he is also one of the very best bread bakers in the land. His baguettes beat out those of all the professionals in a bake-off in his home town, Washington, DC, and when Alice Waters hosted a benefit in the capitol, she insisted that Sam make the bread.

.....(snip).....

The Meat Racket
by Christopher Leonard

By the powers vested in me as the one and only Santa, I hereby declare 2014 to have been the year of sustainable meat books. Christopher Leonard set the pace early in the year with the publication of The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business.

Like Ted Genoways in The Chain, Christopher looks at meat production through the lens on a single company, in this case Tyson, which grew from a one-man, one-truck operation in tiny Springdale, Ark., in the early 1930s, to a vertically integrated chicken, pork, and beef colossus, one of a handful of corporations that control most of the meat Americans eat today. Collectively, these corporations damage the environment and destroy the economic and social fabric of rural communities, all in the name of cheap food—which isn’t all that cheap anymore. The most abused victims group are the folks who raise corporate animals despite the ever-present prospect of bankruptcy. They are called “contract farmers.” Back in Santa’s younger days, people who toiled under the conditions Christopher describes were simply called serfs.

The Meat Racket is a great gift for meat lovers with a taste for business books or anyone curious about how livestock production in America became controlled by a heartless oligarchy. ..............(more)

- See more at: http://civileats.com/2014/12/19/sustainable-santa-has-2014s-10-top-book-gifts-for-conscientious-eaters/#sthash.UDKUNw4F.dpuf