Cover: Food Matters, 3rd Edition by Holly Bauer

Food Matters

info icon

Third  Edition©2021  Holly Bauer

ISBN:9781319304256

ISBN:9781319244590

ISBN:9781319379025

About

An appetizing topic for serious inquiry — at an affordable price.
No matter what your major is, what could be more interesting to read and write about than food? After all, everyone eats. In this volume, you will evaluate central concepts around this theme through these questions: What is the purpose of food? What forces affect our food choices? What does it mean to eat ethically? How does our food system contribute to the climate crisis? What is the future of food?

Readings from scientists, journalists, farmers, activists, essayists, ordinary citizens and others take up these issues and more in Food Matters. With this book you will examine food from a diverse range of perspectives and learn to write effectively about them.

E-book

Read online (or offline) with all the highlighting and notetaking tools you need to be successful in this course.

Learn More

Achieve

Achieve is a single, easy-to-use platform proven to engage students for better course outcomes

Learn More

Table of Contents

[[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 Omnivores 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

Holly Bauer

Holly Bauer (PhD University of California, San Diego) worked as a journalist before she began teaching college composition. Currently, she teaches academic writing at the University of California, San Diego, where she has received distinguished teaching and service awards as the Associate Director of the Analytical Writing Program. Dr. Bauer regularly teaches writing courses focused on the themes of food, water, and sustainability. She has taught writing for more than 20 years in various segments of public education in California, including high school, community college, and state university institutions. She is a long-time teaching consultant for the San Diego Area Writing Project and is involved in several programs aimed at fostering meaningful cross-institutional partnerships with high school, community college, and university writing instructors. Her academic essays have been published in South Atlantic Quarterly and Writing on the Edge, and she is a frequent presenter at professional conferences.