Food Matters: A Bedford Spotlight Reader

[[New selections are marked with an asterisk]]

About The Bedford Spotlight Reader Series

Preface for Instructors

Contents by Discipline

Contents by Theme

Contents by Rhetorical Purpose

Introduction for Students

Chapter 1. What Is the Purpose of Food?

Michael Pollan, Eat Food: Food Defined

Eric Schlosser, Why the Fries Taste Good

Jill McCorkle, Her Chee-to Heart

Marion Nestle, Eating Made Simple

Wendell Berry, The Pleasures of Eating

Lily Wong, Eating the Hyphen

*Thich Nhat Hanh and Lilian Cheung, Are You Really Appreciating the Apple?

Chapter 2. What Forces Affect Our Food Choices?

United States Government, Nutritional Guidelines

Dhruv Khullar, Why Shame Won't Stop Obesity

David H. Freedman, How Junk Food Can End Obesity

*Joe Pinsker, Why So Many Rich Kids Come to Enjoy the Taste of Healthier Foods

*Barry Yeoman, The Hidden Resilience of "Food Desert" Neighborhoods

Mary Roach, Livers and Opinions

*Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Why I've Never Learned to Cook

*Stephen Satterfield, I'm a Black Food Writer. Here's Why We Need More Like Me

Chapter 3. What Does It Mean to Eat Ethically?

Margaret Mead, The Changing Significance of Food

Barbara Kingsolver, You Can't Run Away on Harvest Day

Bill McKibben, The Only Way to Have a Cow

Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Monsanto's Harvest of Fear

Yuval Noah Harari, Industrial Farming is One of the Worst Crimes in History

Blake Hurst, The Omnivore's Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals

*Amanda Little, Stop the Rot

*Chapter 4. How Does Our Food System Contribute to the Climate Crisis?

Jonathan A. Foley, Can We Feed the World and Sustain the Planet?

*Alejandra Borunda, Grocery Stores Are Packed with Plastic. Some Are Changing

*Georgina Gustin, Can a Climate Conscious Diet Include Meat or Dairy?

*Rowan Jacobsen, The Biography of a Plant-Based Burger: One Man's Mission to Make Meat Obsolete

*Nicole Walker, How to Cook a Planet

*Paul Greenberg, Heartland

*Bren Smith, The Least Deadly Catch: Ocean Farming in the Climate Change Era

*Abaki Beck, How One Tribe Is Fighting for Their Food Culture In the Face of Climate Change

Chapter 5. What is the Future of Food?

David Biello, Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?

Robert Paarlberg, Attention Whole Foods Shoppers

*Joon Yun, David Kessler, and Dan Glickman, We Need Better Answers on Nutrition

Richard Marosi, Hardship on Mexico's Farms, a Bounty for U.S. Tables

Frances Moore Lappé, Biotechnology Isn't the Key to Feeding the World

*Bob Quinn and Liz Carlisle, Recycling Energy

*Selina Wang, The Future of Farming is Looking Up

*Sentence Guides for Academic Writers

Index of Authors and Titles