13.7 Billion Years: Eat Healthy and Save the World, Simultaneously

Friday, January 23, 2009

Eat Healthy and Save the World, Simultaneously

Mark Bittman is a New York Times food columnist known for his popular column "The Minimalist," in which he shows the over-scheduled and cash-strapped how to spend less time and money eating well by cooking at home smartly.

The Huffington Post said that he is "the most commonsensical of food writers, though it's clear that he loves to eat and that his palate has high standards."

In his new book, Food Matters, he argues that eating healthy also happens to be much better for the planet.

Salon.com called the book "an unusual blend of manifesto, self-help manual and cookbook designed to convince people that they can drastically improve their diets with relatively little discomfort." (They also called Bittman "the anti-foodie's foodie.")

In a radio interview with WNYC's Brian Lehrer, Bittman asserts that Americans get 80-90% of all their calories from animal products and highly-processed foods. The remaining 10-20% comes from plants.

And this, he argues, is a major problem not just for individual health, but for health of the Earth, pointing out that the livestock industry creates 18% of all greenhouse gases -- second only to our energy consumption.

The way humans currently consume food, Bittman says, "is counter to everything that's good for people's bodies [or] for the planet."

He also notes the one single "food" that provides the most calories to Americans: soda.

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