Book Review: Food Matters by Mark Bittman

"Reading more" is on my new years resolutions list and the first one I picked up this year was this past weekend. I love food books and learning about how we eat and how we should eat!

You absolutely have to pick up Mark Bittman's Food Matters. He is a very unpreachy writer, proposing how we should change our diet. This book is not about being vegetarian, but he most certainly recommends eating much more plant based foods, and limiting animal product in our diets. This book is not about how we treat animals in factory farming (although he does acknowledge and frown upon it, but that's not what the book is about).

He's actually very clever (inadvertently) with the angle of his book. Most meat eaters are not too concerned about factory farming animal treatment (they sort of are but just choose to erase it from their attention) nor are they interested in vegetables and legumes. However, most people are concerned with a) weight loss and at least interested in 2) global warming and reducing carbon footprints when possible. These are two of the most of the influential themes in this text and Bittman proposes how you can help resolve both of these with a simple diet adjustment.

This is how Bittman, New York Times' well-known gourmand (or now known as a foodie, I learned), gets America's attention: You can eat more, not count calories, not even really exercise, reduce your carbon footprint, and save quite a bit of money in your pocket with a simple change in the way we eat.

This is no ordinary diet trend book or billboard literature.

And you might pick up the book but only 100 pages are his proposal (supported by substantial research). The rest of the book is a one-month menu and a wealth of recipes that support his plan.

I have one dilemma. Do I keep this book on the bookshelf or in my kitchen with the cookbooks?