This guy’s onto something…
Mark Bittman knows food…and food writing. The writer of The New York Times “Bitten” blog, his niche is healthy eating without the heavy lifting, and his timing is impeccable.
What better time to urge people away from McNuggets or faux organic junk-food and in the direction of quinoa wheat bread and blueberry smoothies? Call me a glass-half-empty thinker, but given the shaky future of healthcare coverage in this country, I’m all for upping my fiber intake.
Bittman’s l
atest book, “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating” (Simon & Schuster) is an easy-going guide to becoming what the author calls a Lessmeatatarian. Cutting down our daily intake of cow (chicken and pig too) saves natural resources now used to produce meat, and Bittman spends much of the book explaining how this happens. Then he moves on to the benefits for humans, and throws in more than 75 good (or at least thought-provoking) recipes.
Food-safety nerds and Food & Drug Administration watchers will love Bittman’s history lesson about the so-called food pyramid. That food-group graphic is to health what IKEA furniture-assembly directions are to home decor. Related subject, yet not helpful to most mere mortals.
Bittman’s got a website (complete with an eat-less-meat challenge) and, one suspects, some more grabby ideas in the wings.
Uh, maybe wings isn’t the best word choice there. Whatever. Check out the book.
–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett
