Did you know that the leading killer in America, cardiovascular disease, is directly linked to meat consumption? Or that you save more water by not eating one pound of beef than you would by not showering for a whole year? Diet for a New America simply and eloquently documents these ecological concerns and more, as well as the little-known horrors that animals experience during factory farming. Few of us are aware that the act of eating can be a powerful statement of commitment to our own well-being, and at the same time to the creation of a healthier world. In Diet for a New America, you will learn how your food choices can provide ways to enjoy life to the fullest, while making it possible that life, itself, might continue. Heeding this message is without a doubt one of the most practical, economical, and potent things you can do today to heal not only your own life, but also the ecosystem on which all life depends. Reading this book will change your life.

'A must-read ... satisfying, rich ... loaded with flavour' Sunday Telegraph This book is a celebration of food. By food, Michael Pollan means real, proper, simple food - not the kind that comes in a packet, or has lists of unpronounceable ingredients, or that makes nutritional claims about how healthy it is. More like the kind of food your great-grandmother would recognize. In Defence of Food is a simple invitation to junk the science, ditch the diet and instead rediscover the joys of eating well. By following a few pieces of advice (Eat at a table - a desk doesn't count. Don't buy food where you'd buy your petrol!), you will enrich your life and your palate, and enlarge your sense of what it means to be healthy and happy. It's time to fall in love with food again. For the past twenty years, Michael Pollan has been writing about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: food, agriculture, gardens, drugs, and architecture. His most recent book, about the ethics and ecology of eating, is The Omnivore's Dilemma, named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire, A Place of My Own and Second Nature.

“Reading Richard Pillsbury’s remarkable No Foreign Food, like the grand opening of a new restaurant in one’s neighborhood, is an exciting and pleasurable event. He engagingly chronicles the amazing diversity of America’s food ways that are so central to our history and culture, but he also tells us why our eating habits are much more than mere gastronomic experiences.” Karl Raitz UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY “No Foreign Food is the only serious up-to-date treatment of American food habits that I know—a subject unaccountably neglected by most students of the American scene. In Pillsbury’s skillful hands, American food habits become more than just a set of cranky likes and dislikes, but instead a mirror to America’s larger culture. ... It is an indispensable book for any serious student of the American scene.” Pierce Lewis PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY No Foreign Food explores the evolution and transformation of the American diet from colonial times to the present. How and why did our bland colonial diet evolve into today’s restless melange of exotic foods? Why are Hoppin’ John, lutefisk, and scrapple, once so important, seldom eaten today? How has the restaurant shaped our daily menus? These and hundreds of other questions are addressed in this examination of the changing American diet.

American eating changed dramatically in the early twentieth century. As food production became more industrialized, nutritionists, home economists, and so-called racial scientists were all pointing Americans toward a newly scientific approach to diet. Food faddists were rewriting the most basic rules surrounding eating, while reformers were working to reshape the diets of immigrants and the poor. And by the time of World War I, the country's first international aid program was bringing moral advice about food conservation into kitchens around the country. In Modern Food, Moral Food, Helen Zoe Veit argues that the twentieth-century food revolution was fueled by a powerful conviction that Americans had a moral obligation to use self-discipline and reason, rather than taste and tradition, in choosing what to eat. Veit weaves together cultural history and the history of science to bring readers into the strange and complex world of the American Progressive Era. The era's emphasis on science and self-control left a profound mark on American eating, one that remains today in everything from the ubiquity of science-based dietary advice to the tenacious idealization of thinness.

In this wide-ranging and entertaining study Harvey Levenstein tells of the remarkable transformation in how Americans ate that took place from 1880 to 1930.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The former First Lady, author of Becoming, and producer and star of Waffles + Mochi tells the inspirational story of the White House Kitchen Garden and how gardens can transform our lives and the health of our communities. Early in her tenure as First Lady, despite being a novice gardener, Michelle Obama planted a kitchen garden on the White House’s South Lawn. To her delight, she watched as fresh vegetables, fruit, and herbs sprouted from the ground. Soon the White House Kitchen Garden inspired a new conversation all across the country about the food we feed our families and the impact it has on the nutrition and well-being of our children. In American Grown, Mrs. Obama invites you inside the White House Kitchen Garden, from the first planting to the satisfaction of the seasonal harvest. She reveals her early worries and struggles—would the new plants even grow?—and her joy as lettuce, corn, tomatoes, collards and kale, sweet potatoes and rhubarb flourished in the freshly tilled soil. She shares the stories of other gardens that have moved and inspired her on her journey across the nation. And she offers what she learned about planting your own backyard, school, or community garden. American Grown features: • a behind-the-scenes look at every season of the garden’s growth • unique recipes created by White House chefs • striking original photographs that bring the White House garden to life • a fascinating history of community gardens in the United States From a modern-day vegetable truck that brings fresh produce to underserved communities in Chicago, to Houston office workers who make the sidewalk bloom, to a New York City school that created a scented garden for the visually impaired, to a garden in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that devotes its entire harvest to those less fortunate, American Grown isn’t just the story of a single garden. It’s a celebration of the bounty of our nation and a reminder of what we can all grow together.