New Book - "Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food Is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer--and What You Can Do About It"

I recently finished reading the companion book to the wonderful documentary film, Food, Inc. As the subtitle states, this book is for people who upon watching the film felt compelled to do something about the various food issues discussed.

If you watched Food, Inc. and found yourself wanting more - not only more information, more statistics, but also more resources about how to get involved with, participate in, and contribute to the food movement, then I highly recommend at least browsing through this book. The topics are wide-ranging and will suit a great variety of interests - whether you care about animal welfare, genetically modified foods, farmworker rights, or global warming, you will find this book useful because it touches on each of those subjects and more.

Here's a brief sampling of the types of resources that I found particularly helpful and worth mentioning:

• Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. The chapter in the book that this organization contributes is titled "Food Safety Consequences of Factory Farms," and gives an overview of some of the devastating effects (on consumers, on the environment, and on the animals themselves) of industrialized farming, which has become the norm in America. Visit their website to check out their labeling fact sheets, which explain what labels to look for when buying meat and dairy products.

• The Dirty Six, as listed and explained in a chapter by the Humane Society of the United States, are the six most abusive practices employed by agribusiness in the raising of animals for human consumption. Without going into too much (horrific) detail, here are "The Dirty Six": (1) battery cages, (2) fast growth of birds, (3) forced feeding for foie gras, (4) gestation crates and veal crates, (5) long-distance transport, and (6) electric stunning of birds. Visit www.HumaneEating.org for more information on how you can help farm animals when you eat, including recipes, tips on incorporating more animal-free meals into your diet, shopping list suggestions, and more. And for more information on the lives of farm animals, visit www.FarmAnimalWelfare.org.

• FoodPrint - In their contributed chapter, the Cool Foods Campaign (a project of the Center for Food Safety and the Corner-Stone Campaign) describes how to reduce your "FoodPrint," which reflects the amount of greenhouse gases that were created in the production and shipping of the food you buy (the "coolest" foods have the lowest FoodPrint), by answering the following questions: (1) Is this food organic? (2) Is this product made from an animal? (3) Has this food been processed? (4) How far did this food travel to reach my plate? (5) Is this food excessively packaged? Download this PDF for the best answers to these questions.

• Questions for a Farmer - Sustainable Table provides a list of questions they recommend asking  farmers (at farmers markets, for example) about their sustainable food production practices, along with the answers you should be listening for. Here are the questions, along with the answers you should be listening for.

• ONE Voice - Heifer International, whose mission is to end hunger and poverty while caring for the earth, provides guidance for people who want to know what they can do to help alleviate world hunger. ONE Voice is a resource they list that particularly stood out to me. A nonpartisan campaign made up of more than 2.4 million people from all fifty states and more than one hundred of the US's most effective and respected nonprofit, advocacy, and humanitarian organizations, ONE aims to raise public awareness about the issues of global poverty, hunger, and disease and encourages efforts to fight such problems in the world's poorest countries. Check out their extremely easy to use website to join the effort by entering your email address and zip code.

The above list is just a small selection from the abundance of resources and information featured in Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food Is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer--and What You Can Do About It. Although much of the book's content can be found online on the various contributors' websites, to have all of it accessible and organized in a single source will no doubt continue to prove very valuable.