Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Some facts:

• Each item served in an American meal has traveled an average of 1500 miles before it reaches the dinner table
• After automobiles food production ranks at the second-biggest consumer of fossil fuels. Americans consume about 400 gallons of oil per citizen per year directly related to eating.
• Almost 75% of all antibiotics used in the United States today are used by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations – 1152 chickens can fit into a 6 X 8 foot room
• If all the products with corn and soy included in them were removed from your grocery store the shelves would be next to empty – even packaging is now made from corn starch
• Over 70% of the Midwestern United States farmland now only produces commercial soybean and corn

When author Barbara Kingsolver and her family made the decision to try to survive for a year only on produce they either grew themselves or were able to buy locally they were committing an act of near food heresy in North America. Government policy dictates that tax dollars in the United States subsidize the system of food production that results in the facts listed above.

Attempting to swim against that stream of government-endorsed eating habits is as difficult as salmon trying to swim upstream to reach the spawning grounds. The advertising dollars of multimillion-dollar corporations have inundated us for years with messages that quicker and more convenient is better, until we've almost reached a point of no return.

But it comes at a price; increases in type two diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and malnutrition. Still, could you give up your chocolate bars, your potato chips, your out of season fruit, and microwave dinners? Would you even want to? Why should you?

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Barbara Kingsolver and family not only describe their year doing just that, but spell out the whys, wherefores, and the rewards for and from doing it. At the beginning of the book they clamber into their car and leave the American South West desert where they've relied on food from all over the continental United States to begin a journey that will take them further then just the miles they travel across the country.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and The Unofficial Heroes Of Olympus Companion, both published by Ulysses Press. He has had his work published in print and online all over the world including the German edition of Rolling Stone Magazine and www.Qantara.de. …

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