Just Food

We suffer today from food anxiety, bombarded as we are with confusing messages about how to eat an ethical diet. Should we eat locally? Is organic really better for the environment? Can genetically modified foods be good for you? JUST FOOD does for fresh food what Fast Food Nation (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) did for fast food, challenging conventional views, and cutting through layers of myth and misinformation. For instance, an imported tomato is more energy-efficient than a local greenhouse-grown tomato. And farm-raised freshwater fish may soon be the most sustainable source of protein. Informative and surprising, JUST FOOD tells us how to decide what to eat, and how our choices can help save the planet and feed the world.

The industrial food system has created a crisis in the United States that is characterized by abundant food for privileged citizens and “food deserts” for the historically marginalized. In response, food justice activists based in low-income communities of color have developed community-based solutions, arguing that activities like urban agriculture, nutrition education, and food-related social enterprises can drive systemic social change. Focusing on the work of several food justice groups—including Community Services Unlimited, a South Los Angeles organization founded as the nonprofit arm of the Southern California Black Panther Party—More Than Just Food explores the possibilities and limitations of the community-based approach, offering a networked examination of the food justice movement in the age of the nonprofit industrial complex.

This is a collection of thirteen new philosophical essays exploring the inequities in our contemporary food system. The book addresses topics including food and property, food insecurity, food deserts, food sovereignty, the gendered aspects of food injustice, food and race, and locavorism.

"Raising concerns about health, the environment, and economic inequality, critics of the industrial food system insist that we are in crisis. In response, food justice activists based in marginalized, low-income communities of color across the United States have developed community-based solutions to the nation's food system problems, arguing that activities like urban agriculture, cultural nutrition education, and food-related social enterprises can be an integral part of systemic social change. Highlighting the work of Community Services Unlimited, a South Los Angeles food justice group founded by the Black Panther Party, More Than Just Food explores the possibilities and limitations of the community-based approach, offering a networked examination of the food justice movement in the age of the 'nonprofit industrial complex'"--Provided by publisher.

An account of the shift in focus to access and fairness among San Francisco Bay Area alternative food activists and advocates. Can a celebrity chef find common ground with an urban community organizer? Can a maker of organic cheese and a farm worker share an agenda for improving America's food? In the San Francisco Bay area, unexpected alliances signal the widening concerns of diverse alternative food proponents. What began as niche preoccupations with parks, the environment, food aesthetics, and taste has become a broader and more integrated effort to achieve food democracy: agricultural sustainability, access for all to good food, fairness for workers and producers, and public health. This book maps that evolution in northern California. The authors show that progress toward food democracy in the Bay area has been significant: innovators have built on familiar yet quite radical understandings of regional cuisine to generate new, broadly shared expectations about food quality, and activists have targeted the problems that the conventional food system creates. But, they caution despite the Bay Area's favorable climate, progressive politics, and food culture many challenges remain.

No Faff, No Fuss, Just Food is a cookery book for people who have better things to do than slave over a hot stove. Filled with suggestions as well as recipes and thoughtfully peppered with pages for your own ideas, this book takes the lid off the simmering worries which many people have when cooking for themselves, family and friends – cooking should be fun, not scary, and reading this romp through possibly the most relaxed kitchen in the world will have you laughing as well as, very soon, cooking like you mean it! Recipes in No Fuss, No Faff, Just Food include main meals, snacks, basic techniques and – of course – chocolate cake! There’s no point in a recipe book with no chocolate cake in it and as a bonus, it is gluten and dairy free! Safety in the kitchen, from sharp knives to anaphylactic shock, avoidance of, is covered as well as some yummy recipes. If you only ever have one cookery book, make it this one.

"Just Take a Bite" takes parents and professionals step by step through he myths about eating to the complexity of eating itself, which leads to an understanding of physical, neurological and/or psychological reason why children may not be eating as they should.

Policy-related challenges to building community-based agriculture and food systems that are ecologically sustainable and socially just are also highlighted.