Animal, Vegetable, Junk Quotes

“To quote the philosopher Max Roser: “Three things are true at the same time. The world is much better; the world is awful; and the world can be much better.” There is plenty of good work to do.”
― Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book

“Ecologists recognized that resources are finite, and that nature is in charge. That's basic science. Capitalists believe that nature exists to be exploited by humans, a tenet perfectly in tune with Western religion.”
― Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book

“It would take Western science centuries to develop a truly rational branch of thinking, one that recognizes that everything is connected—the body, the natural and spiritual worlds, the wondrous and the inexplicable and the irrational.”
― Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book

“In what's usually referred to as "the Columbian Exchange" -one of history's great misnomers, given the genocide that followed - Europe took so much of value from the Indigenous people of what became known as North and South America that it was able to rule most of the world until the mid-twentieth century.”
― Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book

“The legendary wheat-field triumphs came from financial incentives, irrigation, and the return of the rains, and they came at the expense of more important food crops. Long-term growth trends in food production and food production per capita did not change, [and] the Green Revolution years, when separated out, actually marked a slowdown.”
― Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book

“The third most abundant substance in breast milk is an oligosaccharide. Babies don’t digest it directly. Rather, it nourishes a bacterium called Bifidobacterium infantis, transmitted through vaginal birth and wiped out by antibiotics, and now thought to be missing in most American babies. B. infantis is essential in programming our metabolic operations. Those who maintain a healthy population of the bacterium are less likely to become overweight, experience allergies, or have Type 1 diabetes. But the majority don’t, which leaves them prone to numerous autoimmune diseases, colon and rectal cancers, allergies, asthmas, Type 1 diabetes, and eczema. All of these conditions have increased as breastfeeding has declined.”
― Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book

“Domesticated animals were often too valuable to be eaten. Indeed, the amount of meat consumed per person may well have gone down with the advent of farming as wild animals became scarce, at least near villages. (In fact, it’s safe to say that meat consumption has fluctuated greatly throughout history and throughout the world, and that, with very few exceptions, until recently it was mostly eaten occasionally.)”
― Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book