How to Be a Conscious Eater : Making Food Choices That Are Good for You, Others, and the Planet

A lively, surprising, and necessary guide to navigating our food choices—is a certain food OK for your health? OK for the environment? How do I know if the people who grow or create it are fairly treated?—by an expert in public health from the Culinary Institute of America.

A radically practical guide to making food choices that are good for you, others, and the planet.  
 
Is organic really worth it? Are eggs ok to eat? If so, which ones are best for you, and for the chicken—Cage-Free, Free-Range, Pasture-Raised? What about farmed salmon, soy milk, sugar, gluten, fermented foods, coconut oil, almonds? Thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or somewhere in between?

Using three criteria—Is it good for me? Is it good for others? Is it good for the planet?—Sophie Egan helps us navigate the bewildering world of food so that we can all become conscious eaters. To eat consciously is not about diets, fads, or hard-and-fast rules. It’s about having straightforward, accurate information to make smart, thoughtful choices amid the chaos of conflicting news and marketing hype. An expert on food’s impact on human and environmental health, Egan organizes the book into four categories—stuff that comes from the ground, stuff that comes from animals, stuff that comes from factories, and stuff that’s made in restaurant kitchens. This practical guide offers bottom-line answers to your most top-of-mind questions about what to eat.
 
“The clearest, most useful food book I own.”—A. J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author