Book Review: What Your Food Ate

David R. Montgomery and Anne Bikle, Norton, 2022
Review by Rebekah Rice

Subtitled How to Heal our Land and Reclaim our Health, this engaging and highly readable book takes a deep look at the available research on how the quality of food is affected by soil health, literally exploring how what your food (whether plant or animal) ate affects your health.

Excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass

“The Honorable Harvest” chapter in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass both asks the relevant questions and provides guidelines for us to use when making decisions about food (or anything else we consume):

If we are fully awake, a moral question arises as we extinguish the other lives around us on behalf of our own. Whether we are digging wild leeks or going to the mall, how do we consume in a way that does justice to the lives we take? [...]

The Unrealized Radicalness of a Home Garden

by Elizabeth Keokosky
Ithaca Meeting

Abridged from a larger article available at www.tompkinsweekly.com/category/opinions-columns/sustainable-tompkins/