A stimulating and refreshing read that helps you make informed decisions about what to eat for your health and the planet’s
Review by Olivia Edward
When Louise Gray meets a farmer growing potatoes in the fens of eastern England, he illustrates the challenges food producers face by cutting up an apple. He cuts a quarter out of the apple and tells her, ‘This is how much of the Earth’s surface is land, rather than water.’ He then splits that quarter in two to represent the half of that land that’s inhospitable – places like the ice-capped polar regions, deserts or mountaintops. He then cuts that eighth of an apple into four pieces and he puts three of them to one side, saying, ‘Those are the land we use to build cities or motorways or where it is simply too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry for growing crops.’ He holds up the small slice he has left, the remaining 1/32nd of an apple, between his finger and thumb. ‘This is all the land left to grow the crops needed to feed more than seven billion people’. He then carefully peels the skin from the remaining apple, and dangles that tiny skin-sliver under her nose, saying, ‘All we can use is the topsoil. Not much is it?’ Rather than seeing himself as a farmer, he views himself as a soil manager, stewarding the soil for future generations.
What Gray cleverly does is tell stories about the people who produce or trade food, and by doing so, guides you towards not only which foods might be better for your health, but also which foods might better benefit both those who grow them and the wider health of the Earth.
A descendant of Scottish greengrocers – her grandparents ran a wholesale business at a time when the trade had a certain glamorous air to it, giving access to an international panoply of exotic fruits and vegetables that shone out against the dreary background of inter-war Britain – she is pragmatic and sensible but simultaneously sensitive to people’s anxieties and limits. Food, she understands, needs to be chosen intuitively and that can’t happen if people are crippled by fear around their choices. It’s a refreshing and informed approach.
