Customer Reviews

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Mark Bittman's Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating is a guidebook for the typical American eating the typical American diet--heavy laden with meat, animal products, and processed foods. This typical American diet, Bittman points out, is calorie-dense, harmful to the atmosphere, taxing on global resources, and unhealthy. Bittman easily mixes scientific research with his own personal account of needing to lose weight due to high cholesterol and sleep apnea and shows that shifting his diet by emphasizing vegetables, legumes, and beans over meats and processed food helped him reach his weight and health goals without resorting to rigid dieting and calorie-counting. Let me make it clear here that Bittman is not advocating vegetarianism. He allows himself a little meat during his dinner meal and incorporates some meat in the recipe section of his book.

A food journalist and cook book writer (his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian has been praised by icon Mario Batali) divides his book into two sections. The first section, Food Matters, lays down the reasons we need to shift from meat and processed foods to vegetables, fresh produce, legumes and beans. If you've already read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma or In Defense of Food, this information won't be new to you. But it is a good recap of the incremental way the typical American diet has become unhealthy, burdensome to the environment, and "insane."

I think one area Bittman differs from Pollan is that I see an undercurrent of horror and disgust Bittman feels for the way animals are treated in the farming industry. While not embracing vegetarianism, Bittman wants to lower the demand of animal products (sadly, he shows world statistics that show that developing countries are actually demanding MORE meat than ever).

The second section of Bittman's book, the recipe section, is excellent, not just for the 75 recipes and suggested menus, but for the basic foods he says you should always keep stocked in your kitchen and the secrets for adding bold flavors to your meals.

Bittman's call for sane eating has much in common with the aforementioned Michael Pollan and readers with an interest in intelligent, healthy eating without sacrificing pleasure will want to read Mark Bittman's Food Matters, Michael Pollan's food books, and Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating.

Did you know that global livestock production is responsible for about one-fifth of all greenhouse gasses -- MORE THAN TRANSPORTATION? In this concise, well-written book, statistics like that leap off the pages. Here's another one: "If we all ate the equivalent of three fewer cheeseburgers a week, we'd cancel out the effects of ALL THE SUV'S IN THE COUNTRY!"

Mr. Bittman knows how to get one's attention. But he follows these and other startling statistics with calm and rational thinking. Radical is OUT; common sense is IN. His recommendations for change are not based on deprivation. Neither are they faddist nor elitist. Stock your pantry with whole grains, beans, and your refrigerator with washed greens, vegetables and fruit. READ THOSE LABELS when you shop. Avoid hydrogenated anything, MSG, high fructose corn syrup or anything containing an ingredient you've never heard of. Most of us know this; Bittman just has a talent for presenting it concisely and entertainingly.

He knows we are not immune to unhealthy cravings and deals with it intelligently. For example, if you love bacon, "Keep a hunk in the freezer or fridge and use it for seasoning. An ounce goes a long way." And when the flavor of butter is indispensable in a certain dish, think of it as an occasional pleasure -- a little reward for following the essential principles presented in this book for the majority of the time.

The recipes are extremely easy -- familiar to most everyone. But he adds many creative touches; for example: seasoning blends that you can make and store, ready to add a little punch here and there. No insipid, bland, I-hate-this-but-it's-good-for-me nonsense for this gourmet author.

I've already started putting this book into practice. And I believe, if asked, he would give me permission to make (maybe only once a year and sliced very, very thinly) my favorite pāté, Mr. Bittman's own Country Pāté from the NY Times.

My advice: Buy it and READ it.

I've been a fan of Bittman's for a few years, reading his Times column and using his How to Cook Everything cookbook on a regular basis. So, I was pretty disappointed to read his new book, Food Matters, and find that there wasn't any new information included, except for his personal weight loss experience (which was a bit lightweight, if you pardon the pun).

The recipes are a bit of a let down as well, so let me say from the start, save your money and buy one of his cookbooks instead. If you are a reasonably well-informed eater, especially someone of the vegetarian or vegan variety, this book is a waste of time for you. However, if you are a big beef eater, you'll probably learn a lot.

I found that his criticisms of the meat industry could have well been backed up by the same of the poultry industry, but he steered quite clear of that.

Overall, the book was very repetitive. Bittman found endless ways to rephrase his point about eating less meat. While he did give a month's worth of meals, he didn't help with the calorie count. It was highly disappointing. It seemed to have been written and edited in a hurry, and just doesn't seem typical of Bittman's work.

Sorry, but I just can't recommend this one of his books.

This is a great book for those who are new to the subject. For us who have already read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, it adds little new. For Bittman fans, what's more disappointing is that it seems to have been ghostwritten. I don't hear any of Bittman's voice in the first half describing the issues. It's written in that prescriptive, snake-oil tone of many diet books, e.g., "I assure you that the logic behind Food Matters is solid.")

The recipes are appealing but contain too many editing errors, like asking for butter in the instructions when there is only oil in the ingredients. This leads me to believe they were converted from previous cookbooks, and hastily so.

Altogether, it's not his best work.

I love this book! I was already familiar with the principle that an individual can have a greater impact on reducing global warming by eating less meat and dairy products than by switching to a hybrid vehicle. Well, I've already got the hybrid. And I had started cutting back on my meat consumption. But this book combines the logic behind the change with some different approaches to eating. I like it that the recipes are "flexitarian" -- they can be made without meat, or with a small amount of fish, chicken, or other meat. Vegetarian purity is not the goal; changing the burden of your diet on the environment of the planet is. My family will be happier with a gradual reduction in meat-eating. We don't have to go Cold Tofurkey!

I used to be a vegetarian. I have read most of this information before. However, Mark takes a fresh approach by offering a solution that doesn't idealistically scream for all the world to convert to vegetarianism. Lets get real, it's not going to happen any time soon. When I used to read books by Vegetarian Times and various authors such as Francis Moore Lappe, I thoughts, "It's a great concept, but how are you going to implement it?" Mark does that. He does an impressive job of presenting the facts without preaching. The information would be compelling even to someone who wasn't already on his side. He is non-judgemental and uses plain common-sense in his approach. He gives simple guidelines rather than a "diet" and states in less than 2 pages exactly how it worked for him, practically. I have already started to implement his suggestions. They are ideas that you can run with right now. They don't require weeks of planning and researching recipes or setting up a "diet plan". I haven't tried the recipes yet, but am certain that they will be as delectable as those in his previous publications. Mark has always been good at simple, unpretentious food. Nothing's changed here. I highly recommend this book and its ideas for world change and health change. Good job, Mark!

I have heard of Mrk Bittman before, both from his How to Cook Everything books and from his no-kneading bread recipe that has been popularized on the Internet. When I heard of this book, subtitled, "A Guide to Conscious Eating" I was intrigued. Knowing his interest in food and cooking I figured this would be a good book, respectful of foods and flavors, with good recipes.

The first part of the book discussed the environmental cost of eating meats and highly-processed foods. Did you know the average steak dinner for a family of four is roughly the equivalent of driving around for 3 hours in a SUV while leaving all the lights on at home? I didn't know that.

He has a table listing the top foods contributing calories to the US population. The first item, at 7%, is soft drinks and the second is sweets like cake, at 3.6%. Fruits and vegetables (other than potato chips) don't even make the top five. Number 6 is rice, seven rolls, eight cheese, nine is beer and 10 is french fries and other fried potatoes. That is really scary, IMHO.

In the next section he talks about farming in 1900, when 41% of Americans were in employed in agricultural vs. how agriculture is now. Today the main crops are corn and soybean and they are used to feed to animals. Others are wheat rice and corn. America doesn't even grow enough other fruits and vegetables for everyone to eat the government's recommended 5 servings of fruits and vegetables anymore.

He also talks about the cruelty in the way animals are raised and discusses a move to more humane husbandry. As it is 70% of farmland is devoted to animals, either directly or for feed, increasing the land enough to raise animals humanely would mean destroying almost all existing forests and farmland.

He talks more about the food pyramid, so-called healthy ingredients and suchlike. I'm sure you've heard about that before. I found the next section most interesting.

He talks about the health costs of the American diet and how his eating has caused weight gain, pre-diabetes and sleep apnea for him and what he has done for himself to lose weight, lower blood cholesterol and blood sugar. Simply put he eats fruits, vegetables and whole grains during the day and confines meats and items like white bread to dinner. He tries to eat good quality ingredients and eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible.

It is an interesting way to eat and it has been very successful for him. Most of his health problems have disappeared.

The last section of the book has recipes, including Tabbouleh, Caesar Salad, Layered Salad, Carrot Soup, Lentil Soup, Fried Rice, Stir Fries, Paella, Pilaf, Chili, and Cassoulet.

It is an interesting book and a way of eating that seems logical and practical. I've already begun to implement this way of eating into my life.

I have to say I expected more. I'm a fan of Mark Bittman's unfussy cookbooks. I'm a huge fan of Michael Pollan's food holism. This book feels like a quick, shallow wade into deep water, maybe even a mildly cynical attempt to catch the new wave of understanding about food. Somehow, the text is dry and insipid, the recipes look like what you'd find ina dieting magazine, the discussion of organic and local foods is cursory and unilluminating. This book could have been so much more. Where's the pleasure? Where's the intellectual electricity? Where, more to the point, is the appetizing food?

In "Food Matters," Mark Bittman has distilled the arguments and recommendations of food guru/philosopher Michael Pollan (Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food) and others into a manual for better eating. Where Pollan focuses on the philosophy of our food choices, Bittman focuses on the practical aspects of buying, cooking and eating a healthy diet.

While Bittman's previous cookbooks, "How to Cook Everything" and "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," are, as their titles would suggest, enormous tomes weighing in at close to five pounds each, "Food Matters" is a slimmer, more manageable read. He summarizes the current arguments about what constitutes a sensible diet, then shows you how to set up your kitchen, your shopping, and your cooking to make this style of eating simple and easy- but most importantly, he makes it all sound appealing, like something you want to start doing, you want to try his meal ideas; and then you want to try them again with the alternative ingredients he suggests.

If you are unfamiliar with Mark Bittman, this book is a great introduction. Even if you have one of Bittman's other cookbooks, this one is a concise summary of his ideas and how to put them into action using recipes from both the vegetarian and and non-vegetarian realms. If you've read Michael Pollan, but are not sure where to start, this book is your user's manual. It would also make a great gift for friends who start asking you, "what's that you're eating?" and "how do you stay so thin?"

I like Mark Bittman as a food writer and really wanted to like this book, but it's really difficult to get past the constant repetition of the theme (yes, we know Food Matters), the repetition to eat more whole grains, fruits and vegetables instead of meat and processed foods (repeated on almost every page), and the constant back-patting he does praising his own diet efforts. I gave it two stars for the concept only. Mr. Bittman provides lots of statistics without any references or footnotes, which is sloppy writing and editing at best, and completely erroneous at worst. His diet plan is appalling (eat whole grains, fruit and vegetables during the day, but for dinner eat anything you want, as much as you want - doesn't this negate the whole idea of the diet and the book?). A 12-oz. T-bone makes up for not eating meat all day, so how does this benefit the planet or your body? If Mr. Bittman lost weight on this diet, I can't even imagine what his eating habits were before.

I'll be honest, I didn't finish this book. I read about half-way, but felt I was wasting my time. Maybe it got better or the recipes are good. Mr. Bittman has the right idea - treat your body right and you'll be healthier and be living more sustainably, and individual efforts will add up. But if you already know that, then there is nothing new in this book that's interesting. I think this is Mr. Bittman's very self-indulgent attempt to profit by jumping on the sustainability bandwagon. I'm sure the concept helped him lose weight, but that clearly doesn't qualify him to write a book about it. His editor should be ashamed.