Reviews

The Eco-Foods Guide: What’s Good for the Earth is Good for You!

The Eco-Foods Guide:  
What’s Good for the Earth is Good for You!  
by Cynthia Barstow
New Society, Gabriola Island, 2002

 

A generation ago, grocery shopping was easy. You went to the meat counter at your local market and watched the butcher grind your beef. You picked up iceberg lettuce and Red Delicious apples in the produce department, a loaf of Wonder Bread, and a jar of spaghetti sauce completed your list. You didn’t buy milk and eggs; the milkman delivered those to your front door. Mango? Radicchio? What were those?

Fast forward forty years: The produce department of your local supermarket is larger than an entire grocery store of the previous generation. You can still find iceberg lettuce and Red Delicious apples. But now you can also add a plethora of exotic fruits and vegetables.

But the availability of such a wide variety of foods comes at a heavy price, and the savvy consumer of the twenty-first century practically needs a college degree to understand the words printed on food labels.

In The Eco-Foods Guide, sustainable agriculture and consumer advocate Cynthia Barstow takes you joyfully by the hand and explains it all. Knowing that what’s good for the Earth is likely to be good for you, she examines the downside of today’s food choices, and then takes you on a fascinating tour among the alternatives, helping you decide the best food solutions for your family.

There are no easy solutions to eating in an Earth-friendly way short of growing all our own food — something few human societies have done since the dawn of the agricultural age. Yet with Barstow’s book as a guide, we can learn to make the wisest choices for our health and our pocketbooks that have the least impact on the Earth. The Eco-Foods Guide is an essential tool for consumers everywhere who want to protect both people and our planet. Smokey Trudeau.


» Originally appeared in PanGaia #43

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