Gigi Berardi - FoodWISE: A Whole Systems Guide to Sustainable and Delicious Food Choices

It is often asked whether we should eat to live or live to eat. Gigi Berardi persuades us that we can and should do both, as eating FoodWISE is good for our health, good for the animals and environment in our care, and also profoundly enjoyable. That conclusion is based both on scienceremembering that food production is primarily a biological rather than a technical processand on empathy. As Berardi demonstrates, empathy for other living beings can and should be extended to the animals and people involved in food production round the world, to other workers in the food chain, and to our families and friends sharing our foodthrough the deeply personal principles, stories, and recipes she shares with us in every page of this life-affirming book.

Michael Appleby, OBE, professor at The Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education, University of Edinburgh

Often the world of food is complex and confusing, with marketing messages that mislead even engaged consumers. FoodWISE empowers interested eaters with tools to approach their food in a more thoughtful, sustainable, and healthy way, all the while illuminating some of the pitfalls of our current food system. No fad diets herejust a call back to whole foods and mindful eating.

Marie Burcham, JD, director of domestic policy at The Cornucopia Institute

Food scholar Gigi Berardi wades into the troubled waters of advice about what to eat and proposes some truly wise and inspired guidance. FoodWISE offers the nuanced, honest answers youll never get from a diet book, with a possibilist spirit reminiscent of Frances Moore Lapp.

Liz Carlisle, assistant professor of environmental studies at University of California Santa Barbara and author of Lentil Underground and Grain by Grain

Gigi Berardis FoodWISE moves beyond inflexible notions of black and white to criticallyand unapologeticallyexamine the gray. By the end of the book, I realized that her seemingly common-sense approach had led me to a profound knowledge about how to be a self-conscious and responsible consumer.

Jason W. Cornell, MS, cheesemaker (affineur)

For all of us who find ourselves overwhelmed with food choicesWhich apple is most sustainable? Ethical? Affordable? Should I even be eating an apple in April?Berardis FoodWISE provides a clear set of unpretentious and practical ideas to guide our eating and cooking. Interspersed with compelling case studies, personal experiences, and sound science, the book reflects an ethic of care for the people and ecological systems that coproduce our food.

Kate J. Darby, associate professor of environmental justice and sustainability at Western Washington University

If you want to be an informed consumer of food, heres your definitive guide. So many answers to so many questions! Berardi gives background to the backgroundperspective to the perspectiveproviding a rare, detailed guide to the food world nexus. If you cant figure out what to eat after reading FoodWISE, you might as well just stop eating.

Steve Ettlinger, author of Twinkie, Deconstructed

Berardi gently and often humorously guides readers through the intricate threads of the food web from soil to eater, that is, from manure and soil to me and you. Her goal is to share her own expanding pleasure based on a lifetime of the experience: that eating is more rewarding the more we are connected to the source of our food. You and I can tug on threads of the food web if we stop, think, and act based on awareness of mostly invisible people, practices, and relationships that placed an egg or lettuce or a Twinkie before usespecially if we reacquaint ourselves with cooking and gardening. This is a guide, partly about how to choose how we engage with the food system but even more about how to think and act based on knowledge, experience, and good judgment. Although changing direction of the food system requires comprehensive social and policy changes, Berardi helps us make ourselves healthier and the food system more sustainable by aligning our choices toward emerging ways of doing food WISEly.

Harriet Friedmann, professor emerita of sociology at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto

FoodWISE asks us to stop, think, and then act when making food choices. Why? Because every bite we take has impacts on people, place, and planet. To support us approaching our food choices in this way, Gigi Berardi takes us on a journey of self-reflection around our food values and beliefs and how these influence the decisions we make every day in relation to buying, growing, cooking, and eating food. Its also a journey of learning about our food systems, their current complexities and challenges, and what we need to make them more sustainable. Berardi grounds all this, where else but in the kitchenplacing the ability to make a difference easily within reach of the reader. This book gives us practical tools we can use every day to support FoodWISE choices right in our own kitchens.

C. K. Ganguly (Bablu), executive director at the Timbaktu Collective, Chennekothapalli village, Anantapur District, Andhra Pradesh, India, and board member of IFOAM Organics International

The dairy industry has changed over the fifty years since I have been in business. The little farms are not efficient, the countryside is filled with empty silos of dairy farms, no longer milking. These small farms are being absorbed by their neighborsno matter if they are dairy or cash crop farms. The little farms go out of business and their larger neighbors get bigger. The changes in the upper air currents from the tropics and the arctic have led to severe flooding in the central United Stateswe need to understand that climate is changing. It's made the spring here in New York very wet. I believe there will be a shortage of corn for beef and poultry and hogs, and we may face food shortages and/or severe price increases. Gigi Berardi's FoodWISE touches on some environmental concerns but, at its heart, really keeps the farmer in mind. That's what we need right now. Nothing's going to change unless we appreciate farmers and support policies that aid all farmers.

Ed Gates, Seneca Valley Farms, Burdett, New York

If you ever find yourself in solitary confinement, or the equivalent, with one book to read, make sure its FoodWISE. Rarely is so much wisdom, common sense, and original thinking elegantly pressed between two covers in a world hungry for food and even hungrier for the full story about the staples of life.

Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell University

Why treat nature's food as just another manufactured consumer commodity and agbiz profit center? Gigi Berardi offers a bigger, richer ethic as the centerpiece of a sustainable future.

Jim Hightower, former Texas agriculture commissioner, populist author, radio commentator, and editor of The Hightower Lowdown

FoodWISE is an incredible body of workit covers several aspects that I am involved with and that are close to my heart. Berardi takes a critical look at organic farming, climate change, food marketing and fads, vulnerable communities, labor, GMO, and more. Yet, her approach does not paint an apocalyptic picture of the times to come. Without glossing over the hard facts, she successfully creates a multifaceted robust framework that is absolutely logical and critical for our time. At its core,