Product Description

An in-depth exposé of how the modern food system is putting our food supply in serious danger—with startling new evidence and guidance on what we can do to reclaim control of what we eat.

IN THE END OF FOOD, award-winning Canadian journalist and part-time farmer Thomas F. Pawlick documents the impending food crisis and traces its direct cause to the harmful methods of food production and processing currently used by the so-called agri-food industries—a corporate-run “factory farm” system that increasingly values profits over nourishment—to the detriment of everyone’s health and well-being. It’s a bleak picture, backed by hard-hitting evidence and true stories, but Pawlick makes it abundantly clear that it is not too late and devotes the latter part of the book to the many ways that ordinary citizens can take back control of the food supply by becoming active on a local level. This is an essential handbook for informing ourselves about the frightening but real decline of the quality of the food we eat and a self-defense guide to what everyone can do to put a stop to it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4093 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

About the Author
THOMAS F. PAWLICK has more than thirty-five years of experience as a journalist and editor, specializing in science, environmental, and agricultural reporting. He is a three-time winner of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association National Journalism Award and has won the National Magazine Award for agricultural reporting. He lives on a 150-acre farm in eastern Ontario.

Customer Reviews

important topic
Very timely and well researched. Gives strong warnings on a basic issue. Must read. The only thing I want to add is that the problem is a global one, plus countless other problems, which happen especially in the poor nations. Especially for now, the industrial surge in nations like China and India poses great threats to global environment and eco balance in general. One other book offers sweeping views on China and other Asian nations: China's global reach: markets, multinationals, and globalization by a Chinese journalist George Zhibin Gu.

A book that's true to its title
Overall, I found the End of Food invaluable for understanding the influences that determine what ends up in our supermarkets. For example, according to Pawlick, the vast majority of tomatoes grown in North America are of varieties selected primarily for their yield, ease of harvest, and ability to survive transport rather than their flavor and nutritional value. I especially enjoyed the section describing the substantially lower nutritional value of today's supermarket food (like potatoes) versus that of 75 years ago.

This book also contains a few sections of what amounts to a laundry list of things that are in our food that shouldn't be (heavy metals, EDTA, feces, etc.) and touches on their harmful effects. I found this section useful as a starting point for further research. However, the list is so long that you could hardly expect a complete evaluation of each of the contaminants.

The last section of this book is a sort of "what you can do about it" section, which I found to have little novel information -- it basically says, buy organic, plant your own vegetables, learn where your food comes from, etc. Hardly groundbreaking stuff.

Despite a weak finish to the book (i never did finish the last section), I highly recommend this book to get a perspective on the nutritional quality of mass produced food (especially perishables like meat, dairy, vegetables, etc).

This book does _not_ focus on animal cruelty in the meat industry, pollution by factory farms, or bashing big business. All of those issues are certainly discussed but Pawlick seems to resist getting on a soap box and instead uses them mostly to describe why the food that is in our supermarket is the way it is.

Some good information but a bit over the top
Generally a good review of the drop in nutritional value of our supermarket food but the author gets a bit carried away as the book progresses. Many of the sources are a bit rudimentary (e.g. introductory nutrition textbooks) and the author enters into a rather disjointed rant about environmental degradation, pollution and the evils of big business. To say that we should all switch to homegrown organic food may not be entirely realistic in todays world. From a personal perspective there is definitely "food for thought" here, but on a global scale it is be a bit simplistic. Still worth a read however for anyone interested in the current state of our food.