• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2020 December #1
  *Starred Review* Food maven Bittman (How to Cook Everything, 2019; How to Eat, 2020) turns his wide-ranging attention to how foods arrive on the nation's home and restaurant tables. What he discovers is not appetizing. Surveying anthropological evidence, Bittman believes humans' omnivorous diet gave them an initial advantage over less adaptable species. But in the modern era, the intersection of agriculture and industry no longer works to people's benefit. Little in the present food world escapes his critical eye, but Bittman cautions against deterministic analysis, noting that food is inextricably interwoven with cultural, economic, geographic, and political issues. Monoculture, maximizing profit by focusing on raising one crop or animal, has distorted the ability of soils and water supplies to replenish themselves, resulting in foods that are less nutritious. Agriculture has become as unsustainably extractive and exploitative as mining. Both climate change and pandemic have revealed dangerous flaws in the world's food distribution systems. Moreover, liabilities from this broken system fall more severely on minority communities, and deceptive food marketing techniques prove as unhealthy as political propaganda. To ameliorate this situation, Bittman advocates for agroecology, attentiveness to nature's interlocking components by producers and consumers alike. Bittman's work is certain to increase controversy over the future of food. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Mark Bittman is the author of thirty acclaimed books, including How to Cook Everything. He was a New York Times columnist for more than two decades and has hosted four TV series, including the Emmy-winning Years of Living Dangerously. He is currently on faculty at Columbia University and editor-in-chief of Heated. He lives in Philipstown, New York.