Feed the People! Is Almost Here

It’s T-minus 4 days until the publication day of Feed the People!: Why Industrial Food is Good and How To Make It Even Better. A few things of note:

1. If you are considering purchasing a copy of the book, doing so directly through Hachette’s website before February 17 and using the FEED20 discount code at checkout will save you 20%. The code and discount are only for pre-sales and won’t work after the book is released.

2. If you’re in New York City on Tuesday, February 17, please come to our book launch event at the PowerhouseArena in Brooklyn (28 Adams Street, Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway, Brooklyn, NY 11201) at 7:00PM. Dr. Sarah Garland, founder and executive director of Triple Helix, will be moderating a discussion about the book, and we’ll be taking questions from the audience and signing copies. If you can’t make it, don’t fret; C-SPAN will also be broadcasting the event.

3. If you’re interested in a very concise take on some of the book’s arguments, check out the Op-Ed that Jan and I wrote for the New York Times this past Sunday. Come for the food systems knowledge, but stay for the magnificent commissioned art accompanying the piece. Here’s a brief excerpt to pique your interest:

Between the social media influencers extolling the benefits of local, organic and natural food, and the government’s new dietary guidelines commanding Americans to “eat real food,” ideally cooked from scratch, it’s easy to look at your beloved morning bagel with cream cheese and see only a minefield of ultraprocessing and refined carbs.

But before you hurl that bagel into the trash, consider that it represents much that is good about our food system: It is affordable, convenient and nutritious. Virtually all the food we eat, junk and vegetables alike, is part of an industrial system. Acknowledging that fact and embracing the system’s scale, reliability, safety standards and abundance is a far better path to improving it than chasing a fantasy of Edenic premodern food that never existed.

4. We also have additional book events scheduled for San Francisco, New York City, Chapel Hill, Indianapolis, and Boston. If you’re interested in hosting one or both of us for an event, please do get in touch.

5. Writing for a general educated audience is fun and challenging. It takes vastly more work and smarts than I would have guessed before I started on this journey many years ago, especially if one is going to strike the balance between offering a nuanced discussion of complex issues and avoiding being boring or speaking past readers. As I’ve reflected on what I’ve learned as a writer, I think the biggest thing is that I’ve become more aware of the academic tendency toward defensive qualifications in my previous texts. It was often in service of indemnifying myself from anticipated (even imagined) criticism rather than clarifying my arguments. Good editors and smart readers rarely have patience for it.