Good Eats
32 Writers on Eating Ethically
The essays collected in Good Eats explore people’s relationships to food through personal stories of love, connection, and emotional literacy.
Food is not just food, the book argues. To discuss food is to dig into the foundations of living, breathing culture and dissect everything along the way: growing, processing, in many cases exploiting, and finally consuming. And to consume food in an ethical manner, in landscapes wrought by inequity and that prioritize profit over well-being, requires concerted individual and communal choices. These ambitious essays cover the complex subject matter surrounding every facet of food, from production to consumption and information.
The topics include biting, unflinching looks at the conditions of both historical and modern foodscapes; the cruelty in slaughterhouses toward workers and animals; and the insidious process of colonization, including rampant bison extermination as a means of eradicating both animals and Indigenous populations who relied on them. Child slavery and exploitation in chocolate production is covered; so is the systemic overfeeding and under-nourishing of populations as a means of cutting costs.
More than their lessons and context, these stories bring unique compassion and understanding to the table. The book imparts a sense of the importance of making changes when one is able and of recognizing that other individuals and communities do not have the same opportunities to eat ethically. Even among the contributors, everyone has a different vision of ethical eating; they appear alongside one another in an effort to collaborate, not disagree. Together, these are lessons to pass down for generations.
The essays of Good Eats argue that, in its purest form, food is about security, with love learned through recipes, people healing from grief through sweet food memories, and reconnecting with the land made possible in the post-genocide US.
Reviewed by
Natalie Wollenzien
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
