Customer Reviews

Diet For A Dead Planet: How The Food Industry Is Killing Us

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Whether he is taking on the exploitation of farm workers and poultry-plant employees; the take-over of large-scale agribusiness; farm subsidies, or an America swimming in pesticides and animal waste, Mr. Cook has clearly done his research. Extremely well documented, the book contains a number of startling statistics. Did you know that in California's Central Valley, the 1,600 dairies there generate more waste than a city of 21 million people? Did you know that in 1997, growers applied more than 985 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides to crops? Can you conceive of a farm subsidy system that has people like Scottie Pippin and Sam Donaldson receiving farm program monies?

There is a lot to ponder in this book and some excellent ideas and suggestions as to what we as consumers can do to make changes in our lives and our communities to help bring farming back to the people and out of the hands of the giant corporations.

This is a well-written and well-researched description of the economic problems ailing contemporary American agriculture, and of the deleterious effects mammoth-scale corporate farming is having on the environment. The author is an experienced investigative reporter and an unashamed proponent of sustainable agriculture and the ever-dwindling "family" farmer representative of traditional crop cultivation in the United States. As such, Diet For A Dead Planet is a bit of a polemic and firmly in the camp of other books critical of the relationship between agricultural economics and modern food production, such as Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Needless to say, Cargill and Archer-Daniels Midland executives are not going to be enamored of Diet, but any citizen concerned about the state of farming in the US, and its effects on public health and environmental well-being, would do well to read this book.

Cook organizes his topic into three sections, dealing with food quality and safety; the business and economic aspects of modern agriculture; and environmental consequences of profligate pesticide use and "factory" farm effluents. Each section contains several chapters with extensive footnotes. The chapters are obviously targeted for a general audience, and as a consequence are very readable without overwhelming the reader with statistics and technical jargon. In particular, I found the chapters on the evolving history of American agriculture offered a concise but informative account of a complex and often tumultuous subject. Other chapters on such diverse subjects as the "mad cow" crisis, the continuous deposition of toxic pesticides in water supplies, and the travails of workers in high-throughput slaughterhouse operations, are all eye-opening to one degree or another.

Cook ends the book with a admonition to the public: unless we actively choose to support organic / sustainable farm operations, our health and the welfare of the environment we live in are not going to improve. Rather than simple hectoring, however, in the last segment of the book he provides an extensive listing of whole-food organizations and advocacy groups dedicated to helping us change the way we eat and consume natural resources. There is of course an element of "better to light one candle" rhetoric here; even Cook is not so naïve as to think that tomorrow will see the US converted to any kind of enormous vegan commune. But his hope is that after reading Diet some of us will devote a bit of thought to the hows and whys of our eating habits, and in this, I think he is as realistic as any "muckraker" can be.

Hey people, the situation with how we get our food is not OK. I love steak and all the good eats but I am a new parent, I don't want to poison my kid. Reading this book pissed me off. Our food is full of toxins and the big companies that produce most of it are a bunch of welfare grubbing polluters. I am telling you, it's socialism for the big companies when you read the fine print of the agro bills as Cook, the author of this book, did. Sadly the little farmers have been mostly put out of business. Agro biz is not only poisoning us but are raping the American environment as well. Mr. Cook (yes, it's a funny name for a guy who writes about food) reveals some really freaky bad stuff from the heartland. How do lagoons of hog doo doo spoiling rivers strike you? Cows eating cows? Yummy. It's really crazy that the topics covered in the very well written and intensely researched book are not more of an issue. It'd be easy to get really down when looking too closely at where our vitals come from but Cook also takes a realistic look at some remedies; all of which involve producing and then eating good food. If you care about your health and about the planet read this book.

I thought I knew a lot about how dangerous our food is, but this book put all the pieces together in a way that gives me a whole new understanding of the nature and gravity of the problem. Anyone who thinks buying organic food will solve the problem needs to read this book--the whole system of subsidies, price supports and food retailing necessarily means more huge corporate farms and slaughterhouses, more pesticides, more food contamination. By humanizing and sympathizing with the players (and by writing with consummate skill), Cook manages to make agricultural history and policy highly readable, and his portrayal of the conditions in the meatpacking industry is downright gruesome. Cook shows how the interests of consumers in healthy, fresh food and the interests of small family farmers and meatpacking workers coincide. Now it's up to the rest of us to see that the nation's agricultural and food safety policies are rewritten from the bottom up.

Christopher D. Cook's latest book Diet for a Dead Planet offers the American public with a wake up call view of the food industry today. As an investigative journalist, he gives a complete overview of the socioeconomic and political ills facing food production. He begins the supermarkets and ends with the global agricultural market.

Cook inspects the multifaceted complexities which have arisen due to cheap labor, often exploited and without healthcare. He also depicts the plight of migrant workers, processed food, and pesticides manipulatively spread over crops with the able assistance of government subsidies. The findings are thorough, compelling, and difficult to ingest at times. However, they are warranted as he introduces authorities to backup his claims.

The statistics Cook presents are real, yet harsh. Yearly, 75 million Americans are sickened by the food they eat, while an estimated 67 million birds are killed by the millions of pounds of toxic agricultural pesticides sprayed on crops. Meanwhile, farmers that remain take home only about 19 cents per food dollar spent by the average consumer (this is in comparison to 37 cents in 1980 and 47 cents in 1952) according to Cook.

Cook closely examines every branch of the food industry. In doing so, he reaches a necessary reason for change. The socioeconomic, environmental, and political injustices currently practiced weigh heavily on America's well being. Within each chapter, he goes into great detail explaining, expanding, and scoping the historical difficulties and how they adversely impact today's food industry. Beyond that conclusion, Cook explains that unless a new solution, specifically changing how food is "made", Americans will continue to spiral downward.

Cook clearly maps out the issues beleaguering and tormenting many workers in the food industry from farmers, supermarket employees to higher up executives. All problems such as exploited migrant workers, sickened Americans, corporate control, and government subsidies carry negative consequences for the future if nothing is done soon. In Cook's last chapter, he outlines a solution which focuses on changing the role of the food industry in the future. This book is powerful in its own right. However, more pages need to be devoted to envisioning that solution than one final chapter. I hope to see more works from Christopher Cook. I recommend this book as a read for anyone who eats. This is also a book for anyone who wants to learn the truth about a topic in urgent need of active change and tired of complacency.

This book will open your eyes to the American food industry...from poor quality to bad business practices, Cook covers it all. I knew that quality and mega-chain stores were a concern, but I never considered the demise of our communities and food culture as a by-product of these issues. This book won't help you to sleep easier at night, but it will make you think before you purchase your next carton of milk or loaf of bread.

Diet for a Dead Planet totally opened up my eyes about the the mess of our food system. Read this book!

I knew about fast food from Fast Food Nation, but Christopher Cook really digs in to the entire food system -- from corporate business strategies to the impacts of pesticides on the land and on our health.

It's a very broad book, so i think it's great as a primer on a bunch of related issues. For people like me, who know about this stuff in a general way, Cook's book is a great way to absorb really good detailed research on food system problems. He talks about mad cow, agribusiness, obesity, pesticides, the insane things workers go through to get us our meats (losing fingers, and a lot worse), and does it in a really engaging way.

Also, he ends on a positive note, with ideas about political organizing and ways people can make change, which i really appreciated. His writing style is very rich and layered, and packed with information. This book is an essential contribution to the literature on food politics.

The current world has a large number of diet problems. Obesity and other diet related medical problems are becoming among the biggest health problems facing the world today.

In this book Chris Cook discusses not only the dietary problems associated with obesity but with the entire food system. He talks of the corporate control of farms and supermarkets, unsustainable forces that demand ever higher production levels of productivity and profits, mistaken subsidies for exports, and corporate friendly regulations.

Food has become a political issue while at the same time, the growth of organic farming has surprised the corporations and is growing faster than anyone ever expected.

The author does such a good job of showing what utter rats agribusiness/chain grocery stores/pesticide companies are I have to give this a five star rating. Environmental damage, exploitive labor practices, factory farms, unhealthy and at times out and out toxic food supply, destruction of the family farms, the FDA/USDA being there more to see to it that big food gets what they want instead of protecting the public. All of this is covered in Diet for a Dead Planet. Even the farm subsidies, which the average American probably thinks goes to prop up family farms is more a welfare program for the super wealthy who get paid for land they own that they don't farm. David Rockefeller and Ted Turner, along with corporations like Chevron and Dupont rake in the dough from these programs, not to mention big agribusiness firms.

Probably the only annoyance in this book is he treads politically correct waters when talking about the exploitive labor practices used on illegal (and legal) immigrants by agribusiness. Its also very Americentric. I am really grateful to live in a country that while it is far from perfect, has higher food standards and doesn't allow all this toxic stuff into the food supply like America does and about a third of the fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products on the shelves in Denmark are organic.

Millions of Americans are sickening from the food they eat, last year 5,000 died, and obesity and diet-related diseases are on the rise: so Christopher Cook's examination of the food industry in America in Diet For A Dead Planet: How The Food Industry Is Killing Us provides much food for thought. Cook is an investigative journalist whose probe of the food industry's perils is backed with facts and well-honed research. Food lies at the root of many epidemics and poor social and economic conditions. Cook not only pinpoints the problems, but argues for a new way of looking at what and how we eat which places sustainably produced foods within reach of the public. Diet For A Dead Planet is informed and informative reading.