Curated from hundreds of Mark Winne's articles, blog posts, and speeches, this book documents 20 years of progress against the rampages of the industrial food system.Beginning in the 1960s, the United States slowly awakened to an entirely new way of thinking about its most life-sustaining ingredient-food. Understanding the link between health and diet drove millions to a greater consciousness about their eating. Learning that the American food system had been captu...

This powerful call to arms offers a realistic vision for getting locally produced, healthy food onto everyone’s table, “[blending] a passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor” (Dr. Jane Goodall)In Closing the Food Gap, food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how t...

Look at any list of America’s top foodie cities and you probably won’t find Boise, Idaho or Sitka, Alaska. Yet they are the new face of the food movement. Healthy, sustainable fare is changing communities across this country, revitalizing towns that have been ravaged by disappearing industries and decades of inequity.What sparked this revolution? To find out, Mark Winne traveled to seven cities not usually considered revolutionary. He broke bread with brew masters and city council ...

The United States-one of the world's wealthiest and resource-richest nations-has multiple food-related problems: declining food quality due to industrialization of its production, obesity across all age groups, and a surprisingly large number of households suffering from food insecurity. These issues threaten to shorten the lives of many and significantly reduce the quality of life for millions of others. This book explores the root causes of food-related problems in the 20th and 21st cent...

In an age of uncertainty about how climate change may affect the global food supply, industrial agribusiness promises to keep the world fed. Through the use of factory “farms,” genetic engineering, and the widespread application of chemicals, they put their trust in technology and ask consumers to put our trust in them. However, a look behind the curtain reveals practices that put our soil, water, and health at risk. What are the alternatives? And can they too feed the world?The ra...

A "witty yet hard-hitting" look at the symptoms, causes, and cures for America's addiction to buying more stuff ( Library Journal).NEW EDITION, REVISED AND UPDATEDaffluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.We tried to warn you! The 2008 economic collapse proved how resilient and dangerous affluenza can be. Now in its third edition,...

FINALIST 2014 – Heritage Toronto AwardIt began as a food bank. It turned into a movement.In 1998, when Nick Saul became executive director of The Stop, the little urban food bank was like thousands of other cramped, dreary, makeshift spaces, a last-hope refuge where desperate people could stave off hunger for one more day with a hamper full of canned salt, sugar and fat. The produce was wilted and the packaged foods were food-industry castoffs—mislabelled p...

A myth-shattering investigation of the true cost of America's passion for finding a better bargainFrom the shuttered factories of the Rust Belt to the strip malls of the Sun Belt-and almost everywhere in between-America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little- examined obsession with bargains is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time, having fueled an excess of consumerism that blights our...

In EcoMind, Frances Moore Lapp' -- a giant of the environmental movement -- confronts accepted wisdom of environmentalism. Drawing on the latest research from anthropology to neuroscience and her own field experience, she argues that the biggest challenge to human survival isn't our fossil fuel dependency, melting glaciers, or other calamities. Rather, it's our faulty way of thinking about these environmental crises that robs us of power. Lapp' dismantles seven common "thought tra...

The New York Times Bestseller"Read it, please. Straight through to the end. Whatever else you were planning to do next, nothing could be more important." —Barbara KingsolverFrom the leading environmentalist comes a urgent call for new social practices amidst a climate crisis that has already arrived.Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about g...

The story of how the emerging food justice movement is seeking to transform the American food system from seed to table.In today's food system, farm workers face difficult and hazardous conditions, low-income neighborhoods lack supermarkets but abound in fast-food restaurants and liquor stores, food products emphasize convenience rather than wholesomeness, and the international reach of American fast-food franchises has been a major contributor to an epidemic of “g...

The global economy has witnessed important changes in recent years. In the United States, enterprising communities have transitioned from tobacco farming to growing organic produce, from extractive fishing to vertical farming, from nonrenewable energy consumption to the implementation of solar cooperatives—and have transformed from impoverished neighborhoods into green development zones. Yet these promising achievements remain a small part of the total economy and are largely ignored by po...