Harvest for Hope: A guide to mindful eating

A delightful book written by Jane Goodall, aka the "chimpanzee lady", most famous for having made the groundbreaking discovery that our next of kin not only use tools but also make them. Her kind, wizened face framed by tied-back long grey hair is easily recognizable from the numerous animal documentaries/ shows on TV that she has been in. I did not realize until I read this book that she was a student of Louis Leaky, the famous evolutionary anthropologist. Since the late 1980s, Goodall has focused her activities on conservation/animal rights, and has been awarded numerous accolades for her efforts.

For someone who has been buying organic food for more than 10 years (starting with buying some vegetables in the late 1990s to becoming more rigorous since 2002, gradually shifting to almost 100% organic in the past two years), some new things in this book convinced me that what I've been doing is right: that eating locally-grown organic food is not only good for our bodies (no toxic chemical pesticides & fertilizers, antibiotics, GMOs, sewerage sludge going into our bodies), but also for the environment (less strain on our planet's environment, biodiversity and water resources, fewer resources spent on packaging the food then fossil fuels used to ship food long distances) and such food tastes better as well!

When friends and family hear me say this, they inevitably say: aah but you are lucky that you can afford to buy organic food. But, as Goodall demonstrates in her book, non-organic vegetables or meat from factory-farmed animals are cheaper than organic vegetables and pasture-raised animals only because the true costs of conventional vegetables/animals are hidden from us. After all the costs are taken into account--taxpayer's money going into government subsidies for agribusinesses; clean-up of environmental pollution caused by factory farming (estimated to be 9 billion USD a year in the U.S. alone!); treatment of illnesses, weakened immune systems, and food poisoning caused by eating animal meat saturated with antibiotics and hormones--the true cost of organic meat or vegetables is comparatively less.

Some of the horrifying details of "conventional food" described in Harvest for Hope are quite shocking:

• liquid manure from pig factory farms is "the number one pollution threat to the rivers and waterways of the U.S.", and that these farms are intentionally located in poor and minority communities;
• a study on local salmon caught off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, showed that some had lumpy spleens, orange-stained livers, or vital organs that melded together, and that swabs taken from salmon covered with sores were crawling with bacteria;
• behavioural problems such as violence and verbal abusiveness are strongly linked with increased consumption of fatty foods (fast foods) and processed sugars (soft drinks).
  

The parts of the book that I enjoyed the most are her little stories and anecdotes; the fascinating tale of sacrifice at the "giveaway buffalo" on Grande Ronde Indian reservation in the U.S.; the heartening story of a 20-year-old cow Trippel, in the Netherlands; zoo animals choosing organic vegetables when given a choice, or peeling the skin off non-organic fruit (while not for organic fruit).

A book that was instrumental in changing the way I view food was investigative journalist Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: What the all-american meal is doing to the world, which I picked up at a bookstore in Japan 6 years ago (the film loosely based on the book that came out in 2006 sadly does not do justice to the details documented in the book and is not worth seeing). The book gives an excellent account of the evolution of the fast food industry in the U.S., its relationship with the increasing use of automobiles, growth in industrial farming, exploitation of teenage/migrant labour and increased robbery of fast-food restaurants, proliferation of food poisoning, and upsurge in obesity in children. Although I must confess, I spent one summer working at a fast-food joint as a college graduate in the U.S., I haven't stepped into a fast food restaurant in over 5 years.

Harvest for Hope may be a bit wanting for those of us used to reading scientific material, as it has virtually no references (there is a small section in the end where one can find more information, but virtually no claim made in the book is backed by a scientific article/book). A book mentioned often in Goodall's book and recommended to those interested in reading a more thoroughly-researched material is Eat Here: Reclaiming homegrown pleasures in a global supermarket. Written by a researcher working for the Worldwatch Institute, the book tells us "why eating local food is one of the most significant choices you can make for the planet and for yourself". For more interesting information on eating sustainably, read his blog. Virtues of eating local are also well-documented in Barbara Kigsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, which I reviewed last year.

Jane Goodall's preachy tone used in the book does not offend but rather drives the points made in Harvest for Hope deeper: we need to vote with our mouths to change the world, and that it is possible for each and every one of us to make a difference by making the right choices every time we shop for food and everytime we eat in a restaurant.