Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know

By Robert Paarlberg
Oxford University Press

As an ethically and environmentally aware feminist vegetarian, I view food and politics as ineluctably joined. Robert Paarlberg’s Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know challenged some of my basic ideas about hunger, famine, and the scope of issues contained by the term food politics, yet the book ignores some of the ways in which food is always simultaneously personal and political.

Food Politics covers a wide range of topics connected to the way we eat as well as to our food’s impact on the world around us at local and global levels. Paarlberg examines population growth, food costs, politics of chronic hunger and famine, farming technologies, food aid, obesity, environmentalism, agribusiness, fast food culture, organic and local food, GMOs, and the overarching structures that govern the world food system. At times Paarlberg oversimplifies complex problems, especially in his chapters “The Politics of Obesity” and “Agriculture, the Environment, and Farm Animals.” Moreover, although he supports his points with statistics and logical arguments, he frequently flattens alternative positions, sometimes inconsistently. For example, he suggests that vegetarianism has little global impact on the food supply in one context yet acknowledges the consumption of less red meat as a better way to reduce the environmental impact of food than eating local produce.

Paarlberg recognizes the significance of women’s labor in third-world farming systems. He addresses the political disenfranchisement of women in these economies when he depicts the problem of chronic undernutrition in “poor and hungry communities” where women are prevented from political action because they are, first, overextended by their duties as farmers and as caregivers for the children and elderly and, second, their socially marginalized status. Feminists doubtless know this and would like to see Paarlberg push his points further, as I wanted him to, but his attention to the gendered politics of undernutrition is significant.

Paarlberg considers the work of Rachel Carson and Frances Moore Lappé in dialogue with Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, but he dismisses Frances Moore Lappé’s as a “young countercultural food activist.” Although Lappé was young when she published Diet for a Small Planet, she has created The Small Planet Institute and established a rich, innovative series of books, videos, teaching aids, and other resources about the politics and environmental impact of food. Although he supports some of Lappé’s points, he does so in a way that shifts their focus—he implies that her actions are good, but not for the reasons upon which she bases them, which is a partial, uneven, and reductive way to treat an argument.

The greatest flaw of Food Politics is Paarlberg’s oversimplification of other groups’ and individual’s claims. He provides useful and even groundbreaking information but only by suspending these fundamental components of food politics in a way that does not allow for the inextricability of belief or ideology from the way we eat.

Review by Emily Bowles

Sandy's Incredible Shrinking Footprint

Written by Femida Handy and Carol Carpenter
Illustrated by Adrianna Steele-Card
Second Story Press

Struggling with the idea of how to teach your child about the concept of his or her environmental footprint? Who isn't! With young children being so literal, it's hard for them to think about how a footprint could be anything other than, well, a footprint. In steps (pun intended!) Sandy's Incredible Shrinking Footprint.

With interesting, creative fabric and wood sculpture art introducing us to Sandy, and her dog, we learn about her summers with her grandparents at the ocean. Her grandfather teaches her all about sea creatures, and Sandy loves to explore the beach. When she stumbles over some garbage, and begins to clean it up, she meets the "garbage monster" who is really not scary, but an older women who collects garbage. She shares some environmental words of wisdom with Sandy, and then Sandy is off to tell her family how they can reduce their footprint on the earth as well.

This book is simple, clear and not preachy. The illustrations give life to the story, and provide some clues for developing knowledge beyond the literal. For example, the pictures of the earth clearly illustrate what can happen to the earth if we don't take care of it, and what will happen if we do. Children can see and understand this.

I only wish there was a page filled with adult ideas for lessening our footprints and kid ideas for lessening their footprints. A resource page with these lists would be nice to review with a child. But, of course, you can generate those lists with your children, yourselves. We brainstormed some ideas after reading this book together with my three- and five-year-old girls. Perhaps doing this ourselves makes it more meaningful than if it was in the book in the first place.

Looking to teach environmentally responsible lessons and meaning through books? This is a great addition to your green book collection. And rest assured, this book wasn't created by using rainforest pulp, as I shared that many environmentally-themed books are. Sandy's Incredible Shrinking Footprint is printed on Forest Stewardship Council certified paper. A big thank you to Second Story Press for being a publisher that values the environment and minimizes its impact (or, shrinks its footprint! I couldn't resist). More publishers need to join you in this regard.

Review by Katy Farber

Cross-posted from Non-Toxic Kids

Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment (Second Edition)

By Sandra Steingraber
Da Capo

In the original 1997 edition of Living Downstream, Sandra Steingraber was the first to compare data on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries. In the last ten years since this edition was published, there has been rapid growth in the understanding of environmental links to human cancer and new published findings that corroborate the evidence Steingraber compiled in 1997. With a Ph.D. in biology and a Master's degree in creative writing, Steingraber has been the recipient of many awards, including Chatham College's Rachel Carson Leadership Award in 2001 and a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund in 2006. Living Downstream is both a personal story of Steingraber's battle with cancer and her investigation into the potential sources of carcinogens released into the air, land, and water in and around her hometown of Normandale in West-Central Illinois, as well as in other areas of the United States.

Thirty years ago, when Steingraber was a 20-year-old college student, she learned that she had bladder cancer and was surprised when her urologist asked her whether she had ever been exposed to textile dyes or worked in a tire factory or the aluminum industry. The author later learned that bladder cancer was considered a quintessential environmental cancer. In other words, there was more evidence linking it to toxic chemical exposure than to any other type of cancer. However, although bladder carcinogens had been identified, they continue to be used by industry even today. The obvious question, of course, is why have these chemicals not been banned. The reader quickly discovers that cancer causation is complex, as is proving the source responsible for this disease.

The author reminds her readers that of the 80,000 synthetic chemicals currently in use in the U.S., only about two percent have been tested for carcinogenicity and only five have been banned under the U.S. Toxics Substances Control Act since 1976. We also learn that the U.S. environmental regulatory system does not require exhaustive toxicological testing of chemicals before they are marketed. Legal limits are set on chemical releases, but, as we recently learned with bisphenol A (BPA), trace amounts can be more harmful to humans than higher doses. Moreover, we are often exposed to many contaminants simultaneously in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we ingest, and the land where we live and work.

Often compared with Rachel Carson, Steingraber makes some compelling arguments in favor of the precautionary principle, or the better-safe-than-sorry approach to chemicals. She also advocates the principle of reverse onus, which holds producers responsible for proving that their products will not harm the public, as is the case for pharmaceutical companies.

Sandra Steingraber has the expertise in science to give her the necessary authority to present an investigation of this scope and the impeccable writing to make it accessible to a wide audience. Although some environmental texts can be dry, Steingraber's writing and personal story make for a compelling read. Her drive and commitment to finding the missing pieces of the cancer jigsaw puzzle are humbling. I only wish that she had included a map of Tazewell County, Illinois, which we repeatedly visit throughout the book. A few diagrams of some the atoms she describes would have also been nice.

In short, if you have ever thought that the environment may have played a role in the death of a loved one and would like to know more, this is the book for you.

Review by Heather Leighton

Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez

Directed by Robert Cornellier
Macumba International



In light of the recent devastating oil spills along the southern U.S. coast, it seems unfortunate but appropriate to revisit the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. Black Wave is a documentary that looks at both the environmental and personal economic impact of the disaster on the small fishing village of Cordova, Alaska, twenty years after the spill.

The story of the Exxon Valdez is as convoluted as you want it to be. Some maintain that the vessel’s captains were drunk and/or overworked when they ran the tanker aground in Prince William Sound. Others say that a faulty sonar system was to blame. In any event, the crude oil spill is cited as the most ruinous human-caused environmental disaster to ever occur.

Black Wave features interviews from the people who have lived to tell the tale. While the O’Toole family—whose personal story is highlighted through several conversations with the filmmakers—have suffered markedly less than some families, their willingness to speak on-camera was largely due to their relative pain. Sam O’Toole had invested his savings in expensive fishing permits less than two months before the spill, effectively leaving the family bankrupt when the local fishing industry subsequently collapsed. In the aftermath of the disaster, his wife Linden was able to shoulder the economic burden by working as a real estate agent, keeping the family afloat. The O’Tooles explained that because they lost less than many Cordova residents—many of whom find it too painful to discuss how their lives were ruined by the spill—they were willing to once again dredge up their memories to share in the hopes of educating a wider audience.

The film also prominently features Riki Ott, a renowned marine biologist and toxicologist, activist, and author of several books about the disaster including Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. At the time of the spill, Ott—like many others in her community—had been working in commercial fishing. Skeptical of the oil ships all along, she had long predicted a spill by saying “not if; when.”

Following the spill, it was apparent that the oil industry was completely caught off guard. Containment and cleanup crews were promised within six hours; but they simply did not materialize. The film includes old footage from locals, who began cleaning up oil faster than the corporation could dispatch emergency teams, which didn’t arrive until days later. To complicate matters further, a storm four days later moved nearly half of the sludge 1,200 miles west of impact, trapping the glistening goo in the sound.

The immediate effects were disastrous. Three hundred thousand sea birds were killed; over 3,500 otters died, as did 300 harbor seals, 250 eagles, and up to twenty-two killer whales. Two hundred thirteen salmon streams were contaminated, and billions of eggs were destroyed.

The human cost is also shown to be immeasurable. While local Cordova fisherman like the O’Toole family suffered losses, cleanup crew workers continue to live with myriad chronic problems such as bronchitis. One cleanup worker in the film, Merle Savage, originally believed he had the flu after he worked to contain the mess. Today, he’s been diagnosed with chronic bronchitis and takes a daily cocktail of medication for pain. He’s one of many affected by the “poisoning epidemic.”

The spill can also be blamed for the city’s unusually high stress levels among residents and resulting problems such as high rates of domestic violence, substance abuse, and a higher-than-normal suicide rate. Ross Mullins, a fisherman interviewed for the film, lost his marriage to divorce after the spill, and his sons, once thought to take over the family business, moved far away. At least twelve suicides since the spill have been attributed to Exxon litigation and the related legal matters, including a former Cordova mayor who killed himself due to the immense pressure of the situation and hopelessness that plagued the community.

Alaska’s vastness is difficult to capture on film, as is the vast impact of this horrific disaster; but the documentary effectively showcases the gorgeous wilderness and its inhabitants. Mixed with archive footage of old town meetings and spill cleanup efforts, Black Wave comes at just the right time: to remind us why oil drilling won’t solve any of our problems, and to incite anger and action in response to the impending devastation along the Gulf Coast.

Review by Brittany Shoot

Grow Your Own Tree Hugger: 101 Activities to Teach Your Child How to Live Green

By Wendy Rosenoff
Krause Publications

As a woman with young siblings, I have a vested interest in all materials that help me to have a positive influence on the adults they will grow up to become. I was very excited to see this new title by Wendy Rosenoff, an environmentalist who works with children through the Girl and Boy Scouts. Grow Your Own Tree Hugger contains, as noted, 101 activities that you can work through with your kids to help them better understand the planet and how to take care of it.

I often find it challenging (though necessary) to discuss lofty concepts with kids, and Rosenoff’s book helps because the activities serve as examples or analogies to larger, more complicated issues. For example, it might be difficult to get a child to understand the impact of pesticides and chemicals on our food, especially when these foods look the same as organic ones. Rosenoff suggests that you take two pieces of fruit—one organic and the other non-organic—and put them in the refrigerator. After several days, the organic fruit will be green and withered while the chemically enhanced one will still look new. This is a great, visual way to illustrate how pesticides prevent the natural decomposition process for kids.

Some activities do not actually involve activism, but offer a fun game as a way to encourage open conversation. Rosenoff suggests you make and fly a kite with your child and then use the opportunity to talk about wind power. She also encourages parents to take their kids out to experience nature, something the modern child often lacks exposure to.

In this day and age of the internet, video game devices, and television, some kids don’t spend much time outdoors at all. Rosenoff believes you should take them to examine tree stumps and determine the tree’s age, or get outside and plant something. She even includes recipes that parents and kids can make together with organic ingredients.

In working through Grow Your Own Tree Hugger, you not only inform your kids about the environment and the ways in which they can have an impact, but you get to spend time with them doing hands-on activities that are actually a lot of fun. You will probably both benefit from the time you spend growing your own tree hugger.

Review by April D. Boland