When the Best Food Books Are Not Cookbooks

These days some of the best food books are not cookbooks, but books about food, particularly about what we should be eating. These works go beyond the old arguments between vegetarians and omnivores, and ask us to consider whether our whole system of eating in the modern world, especially in the US, needs to be radically changed.

The most well read and talked about book in this genre is last year's The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. In that book he eats four meals, starting with a meal wholly dependent on the 'industrial food grid,' and ending with a meal in which he grew, hunted or gathered every ingredient. It is a very revealing look at our modern food habits, and I hardly know anybody who has read it who doesn't begin questioning their own diet.

Several new books will be coming out this spring that ring changes on this theme. One is A Movable Feast by Kenneth Kiple, an intriguing look at where the foods we are all familiar with came from, and how they have come to be disseminated throughout the world. Apples that originated in Kazakhstan, chickens that originated in China, potatoes that originated in Peru, the list goes on and on. The book climaxes in a long chapter that asks whether we can sustain a food paradigm in which we expect to see every kind of produce available at any time of year, regardless of how far it has to come -- and not only see it, but pay a low price for it.

Also out this spring is Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee. This book promises to be definitive look at the life and career of our doyenne of sustainable agriculture, local produce, eating fresh, you name it -- if it has been an important movement in food in the past quarter century, Alice Waters and her groundbreaking restaurant have been in the midst of it.

A third book is by beloved novelist (and perennial book-club favorite) Barbara Kingsolver. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver tells of moving with her family to a farm in Virginia where they take an oath to eat nothing that they themselves didn't grow or purchase within a narrow radius from surrounding farmers. Over a one-year period Kingsolver shares with us her many challenges and triumphs, and tells in her inimitable style of such things as trying to find enough food to live on at a barren farmer's market on a freezing day in March, trying to plan an elegant party for many quests based on farm produce, and encouraging reluctant turkeys to mate.

Keep an eye out for some of these books, and let us know what you think of them!