PICKY: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History, Dr. Spock has a LOT to answer for

PICKY: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History
HELEN ZOE VEIT
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An eye-opening investigation into why American kids no longer eat broadly and with gusto

Are children naturally picky? It sure seems that way. Yet, amazingly, pickiness used to be almost nonexistent. Well into the 20th century, Americans saw children as joyful omnivores who were naturally curious and eager to eat. Of course, this doesn't make sense today. Don't kids have special taste buds? Aren't they highly sensitive to food's texture and color? Aren’t children incapable of liking “adult foods,” and don’t parents risk harming kids psychologically by urging them to eat?

But Americans in the past didn’t think any of those things. They assumed that children could enjoy the same foods as adults, and children almost always did. They loved spicy relishes, vinegary pickles, and bitter greens. They spent their allowances on raw oysters and looked forward to their daily coffee. So how did modern kids become such incredibly narrow eaters? The story is fascinating – and about much more than rising abundance. Picky shows how fussy eating came to define "children’s food" and reshape American diets at large. Maybe most importantly, it explains how we can still use the tools that parents used in the past to raise happy, healthy, wildly un-picky kids today.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I wasn't a picky eater because I was raised by parents who loved food. I'm so grateful to them for the lesson they each taught: "try it, if you don't like it you don't have to finish it."

I'm also old. This message was more common among the Depression-era denizens who raised me than postwar-boom kids who raised the picky eaters we're discussing in this book.

As "experts" got hold of the conversation around food (author's scare quotes), the wheels came off. We know from decades of research findings being reported and then challenged, the "experts" (remember, not my scare quotes!) have been tarred by the backlash that keeps growing against expertise in general. It feels kind of justified to me, in this case, because there are no real reasons that the advice the "experts" gave should have been heeded as none of them made any sense at all. But, well, expertise needs to be respected. It's the world now that does NOT respect expertise that's in terrible trouble.

Author Veit has researched the question "is a generation of US-born kids pickier in their food choices than earlier generations?" and presented findings and posited reasons for the findings. It is a fascinating topic. The sources are broad-based and wide-ranging; cited in line which I appreciate; and to the extent I randomly sampled credible. What they aren't, and what the book itself isn't, is prescriptive. Nowhere in the text is there a solution to a problem identified. It was not promised, it was not suggested in the research sources to be intended; I bring it up because I don't want to give the impression there is anywhere anything about addressing the behavior being studied.

I get the impression that the title led previous readers down that garden path. Don't be one of them! I'm interested in the subject of picky eating because it seems so absurd to allow it. I was glad to read Author Veit's study because I feel much less...superior...about the realities of the issue. I think there's a lot of value in this lens on our present social moment's roots and results. I felt there was genuine curiosity, a real "I need to know" on the author's part, and I resonated with that feeling. It gave me a four-star reading experience. I was impressed with her research, her cogitations on the research, and convinced by her conclusions based on them. I was perhaps less drawn in than I might have been by the shifts I felt between the presentation of her digests of research and the chattier tone of her presentation of her conclusions drawn from it...this was more like feeling some charming cocktail-party acquaintance was suddenly taking me into the lecture hall.

Entirely irrelevant to the value I received from the read. It was a factor that impacted me on a reading-pleasure level alone. You might feel entirely differently. I hope you will get the book to find out for yourself.

VIBRANT HARVEST: Cultivating a Kaleidoscope of Colors in Your Vegetable Garden with Heirlooms, Modern Hybrids, and More

VIBRANT HARVEST: Cultivating a Kaleidoscope of Colors in Your Vegetable Garden with Heirlooms, Modern Hybrids, and More
SANDRA MAO
Cool Springs Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$26.99 all editions, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Vibrant Harvest is the ultimate guide to bringing more color and diversity into your veggie garden (and your diet!) by growing the most colorful veggies on the planet. Fill your garden and plate with a rainbow of flavorful produce with this engaging and visually stunning guide to a Vibrant Harvest.

It’s easy to “eat the rainbow” when you’re growing one right in your own backyard! In Vibrant Harvest, you’ll meet some of the most colorful veggies on the planet and learn how to grow, harvest, and enjoy them. Author Sandra Mao (@sandra.urbangarden) and her color-infused garden hand you all the insight you need to grow a kaleidoscope of heirloom, hybrid, and ancestral vegetables that are not only a feast for the eyes but also nutritional powerhouses.

With this inspiring guide, bringing bright colors and rich flavors into your kitchen has never been simpler or more dynamic. From purple tomatoes, pink beans, yellow carrots, magenta potatoes, and black radishes, to speckled lettuces and orange cucumbers, you’ll find handy advice for growing them all. Plus, learn the best varieties to seek out.

The book is organized into four parts:

Choose Your Plants: First, meet these multihued dynamos via detailed plant profiles organized by both the growing season and the edible portion of each plant—stem, leaf, bud, fruit, pod, or root.

Plan & Start Your Garden: Next, gain insight into planning and installing your garden, from site selection and soil prep, to seed starting and transplanting.

Care for Your Garden: Then, learn the ins and outs of caring for your polychromatic garden and all the plants living in it, including watering, feeding, staking, pruning, and trellising.

Pick, Preserve & Prepare Your Harvest: Finally, discover how to harvest and enjoy your rainbow-hued garden through recipes and easy preservation techniques.

It’s a KALEidoscope of possibilities out there for modern gardeners! Meet dozens of vivid varieties and gain the expertise you need to plant and tend your own super-colorful garden in Vibrant Harvest.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A book I thought I'd mildly snort at...colors matter! faugh!...when I got it, but it's about useful gardening as opposed to ornamental gardening, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

"Eat the rainbow" is actual, serious food science; adding color to your diet has measurable health benefits. If you're going to garden,I say do it to enjoy really fresh foods you wouldn't otherwise have access to; adding the color factor also adds a certain pleasurable frisson to the work as well as the harvest.

two of my favorite veggies in a row!

It's a serious book, about a serious subject...food security, health and lifespan improvement...that people my age need to consider seriously because we didn't when we were younger. If you're under 40, first of all hello! how on earth did you get here of all places?, please learn from my mistake: eat carefully and intentionally as a habit. Go wild on holidays, take the occasional extra cookie, but as your baseline, be very intentional in your eating habits. It pays off in the medium and the long run.

Growing your own is a solid habit to form, as well. No ordinary grocery store will have anything as beautiful as these:

...and there's no sense looking at the pretties unless you know the problems you'll likely face in growing them:

All said and done, this is a great gift to the aspiring gardener, the new homeowner, and the flagging, bored plant butler. And/or yourself.

THE PRESERVER'S GARDEN: How to Grow a Garden for Fermenting, Canning, Pickling, Dehydrating, Freeze Drying, and more

THE PRESERVER'S GARDEN: How to Grow a Garden for Fermenting, Canning, Pickling, Dehydrating, Freeze Drying, and more
STACI HILL & JEREMY HILL
Cool Springs Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$30.00 any edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Preserver’s Garden is an essential guide to planning and planting a garden specifically for the preservation and long-term storage of the harvest. Discover how to plan, plant, and grow a garden with food preservation and long-term storage in mind—plus, meet seven different preservation techniques.

Growing a garden with the intent to preserve the harvest and improve your self-sufficiency is an entirely different world than growing food for fresh consumption. When growing for preservation, your efforts need to be focused on the promotion of uniform ripening, high yields, and flavor that remains stable through the preservation process. Since the end goal is to have plenty of food to eat for months to come, how do you know how much to plant, which varieties are best, and which preservation method is ideal for each different vegetable and fruit? In The Preserver’s Garden, you’ll learn all that and so much more from a modern farming family with a pantry lined with jar after jar of preserved homegrown treasures, a fully stocked freezer, and endless bags of dehydrated and freeze-dried goodies!

In addition to taking a deep dive into seven different methods of food preservation—including freezing, drying/dehydration, pressure canning, water bath canning, salting, freeze drying, and fermenting—authors Staci and Jeremy Hill of @goosberrybridgefarm teach you how to:

Plan your garden around the veggies your family eats the most.

Figure out how much to grow to meet your preservation goals.

Decide which preservation methods are best for your harvest and your home.

Safely prepare your harvest for processing and preservation.

Achieve success in growing a lot of food organically, with less time and less work.

Also included are 22 in-depth produce profiles—from tomatoes and squash to onions and berries—where you’ll learn specifics about everything from growing requirements and harvesting tips to the best preservation methods and plant care techniques to increase the harvest. It’s time to plan for your family’s future with help from The Preserver’s Garden.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I long for a garden when I read books like this...they're much more aspirational than flower gardens, herbaceous borders, topiary and fountains...fine if you're a king or queen but I'm just your basic queer.

contents page explaining the way we're going

This clear, concise...no wasted words...handsomely designed book is packed with basic concepts, ideas for fillips, and overall inspiration for you to think realistically about your garden plans. It can't be a bad thing to devote some space to planting and nurturing tings that can nourish you in their turn.

Samples of the look follow:

There are chapters on key concepts:

...and key crops everyone always wants to grow:

everyone loves home-grown tomatoes

...and ways to use them:

It was not a bad experience reading the book on a tablet, but what a beautiful thing to see glossy and present on a page!

No matter the format you choose, this is a useful way to spend gifting money on your gardening buddy, on your first-time homebuyer, or yourself.

WE ARE EATING THE EARTH: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate, klaxon in your ear

WE ARE EATING THE EARTH: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate
MICHAEL GRUNWALD
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of New York Times bestseller The New New Deal, a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of the next climate the fight to fix our food system.

Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, an ingenious phrase coined by Michael Grunwald, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems.

In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. It’s an often infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but it’s also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be done—and trying to do it.

Michael Grunwald, bestselling author of The Swamp and The New New Deal, builds his narrative around a brilliant, relentless, unforgettable food and land expert named Tim Searchinger. He chronicles Searchinger’s uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. And he illuminates a path that could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generations—through better policy, technology, and behavior, as well as a new land ethic recognizing that every acre matters.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: If one emerges from this read an ardent capitalist, political "conservative", and a climate-change skeptic, one is defective intellectually and morally.

Honestly I could end the review there because anything else I say will only be repetition of these statements with embellishments.

We are at a crossroads in many areas of our existence as a species. We have access to immense mountains of information and have little training to contextualize and interpret it. We are, for the first time ever, able to see with our own eyes, the entire Earth as it appears from space...a literal god's-eye view...and have done nothing to make that unique in humankind's entire history as a species awareness part of our worldview. We act as though problems are local, or localizable, and have just one cause so need only one solution.

Nothing in Nature supports this delusion. It is debunked in immense bodies of data collected, analyzed, and tested over generations now. Bad-faith arguments made by profit-seeking entities have ruined, to an extent I naïvely thought was actually impossible, the very idea of the data we already have being usable to start patching up the mess we have before us.

Books like this one walk you through the way we know what we know...briskly, but with integrity and expertise balanced by enthusiasm...and what we can in fact do now to make a positive impact on the course we're taking. I could wish for more viewpoints drawn from our Global Southern neighbors, and the women who outside the West perform the vast majority of food growth and harvest. I could wish for a less preaching-to-the-choir bent to the narrative.

But I can't fault Author Grunwald's data sources or synthesis. I can't fault his palpable sense of urgency. I can't help but wish more of y'all would get the message he's putting out: Action is the need and it's an urgent one.

2020...the year the world stopped for a minute

THE DARK FANTASTIC: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games
EBONY ELIZABETH THOMAS
NYU Press
$16.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

Many thanks to Edelweiss+ and NYU Press for my DRC of this book

This past November 1st, Author Ebony Elizabeth Thomas won the 2020 World Fantasy Special Award for Professionals in recognition of this title's outsized importance in its field. Any in-depth review of the book will simply be retyping it; the author is adept at stating home truths in trenchant, relatable ways: "Maybe it’s not that kids and teens of color and other marginalized and minoritized young people don’t like to read. Maybe the real issue is that many adults haven’t thought very much about the radicalized mirrors, windows, and doors that are in the books we offer them to read, in the television and movies we invite them to view, and in the fan communities we entice them to play in." It is a wonder to find someone as adept as Octavia Butler was at making the nature of the wrongs embedded in our lush, vibrant SF literary world clear and present and, as a result, actionable. If you're white, love to read fantasy, science fiction, or horror fiction, this is a must read.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE SECRET LIFE OF GROCERIES: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket
BENJAMIN LORR
Avery
$27.00 hardcover, $15.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

Many thanks to Edelweiss+ and Avery for my DRC of this book

In a five-year odyssey through the world created to feed American consumers, Author Lorr sees the behind-the-scenes costs of the cornucopia you visited weekly if not daily....and now likely use the internet to have delivered to you. The appalling conditions of Asian slave laborers, the crushing debts of US truckers, and the battle to prevent consumers from knowing the true cost of cheap food come flying at you as fast as you can turn the pages. Those of us holed up in isolation need to read about those who have no choice but to risk plague to keep us from the risks of stepping outside. Given how many discovered the sheer creative joy of manipulating our food to taste even better might've slightly reduced our own carbon footprints...but others took up our slack. My dote Mary Roach (Stiff, Bonk, Packing for Mars) said it best in her blurb:

The modern shopper wants groceries that are ethical, sustainable, humane, affordable, fresh, and convenient. But as Lorr discovers, the costs of our demands are recouped from the bottom of the food chain: debt-ruined truckers, foreign slave labor, and Whole Foods workers in our own communities — the people whose lives Lorr shared (and sometimes lived) for weeks or months. Does it sound grim? It’s not! The Secret Life of Groceries is a terrific read. The stories flow, and the hard truths are seasoned with wit and hope.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

VESPER FLIGHTS
HELEN MACDONALD
Grove Press
$27.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for my DRC of this book

Alone among the literate world, I was made uncomfortable by the relationship between naturalist Macdonald and Mabel the formerly wild hawk told in H is for Hawk. These essays on many topics are written in Author Macdonald's justly celebrated elegant prose, and include so many aperçus that my commonplace book blew up. If you don't share my unease with people venerating wildness while taming it out of a fellow being, you'll enjoy this collection without my unshakeable unease.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE HEALTH OF NATIONS: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations
ANTHONY J. MCMICHAEL
Oxford University Press
$26.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

Many thanks to NetGalley and Oxford University Press for my DRC of this book


I wanted to see what the world has done to challenge us as hard as unchecked climate change is doing at this very moment. With a startlingly immense grasp, the scope of Humankind's long fight to survive despite the ways Earth changes is calmly but urgently expressed by Author McMichael. Anyone who loves to learn the ins and outs of a complex topic with a master teacher will lap this book up. The regime change due in the US on 20 January 2021 is the perfect time to learn why we should force our lawmakers to focus on responding effectively to climate change's many effects on health, wealth, and food security.

BANANA, a good-enough book about an increasingly urgent global problem of food security

BANANA: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
DAN KOEPPEL
Plume Books
$5.99 ebook platforms, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

2019 UPDATE Climate change bids fair to deprive us of a childhood icon, says this book.
One step closer to reality.

The Publisher Says: A gripping biological detective story that uncovers the myth, mystery, and endangered fate of the world’s most humble fruit

To most people, a banana is a banana: a simple yellow fruit. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. In others parts of the world, bananas are what keep millions of people alive. But for all its ubiquity, the banana is surprisingly mysterious; nobody knows how bananas evolved or exactly where they originated. Rich cultural lore surrounds the fruit: In ancient translations of the Bible, the “apple” consumed by Eve is actually a banana (it makes sense, doesn’t it?). Entire Central American nations have been said to rise and fall over the banana.

But the biggest mystery about the banana today is whether it will survive. A seedless fruit with a unique reproductive system, every banana is a genetic duplicate of the next, and therefore susceptible to the same blights. Today’s yellow banana, the Cavendish, is increasingly threatened by such a blight—and there’s no cure in sight.

Banana combines a pop-science journey around the globe, a fascinating tale of an iconic American business enterprise, and a look into the alternately tragic and hilarious banana subculture (one does exist)—ultimately taking us to the high-tech labs where new bananas are literally being built in test tubes, in a race to save the world’s most beloved fruit.

My Review: This is yet another entry in the single-subject world of non-fiction. The narrowness of focus in books such as Salt and Cod and The Book on the Bookshelf and The Pencil and Longitude seems to be an increasingly prevalent trend in publishing. I am all for it on one level, since I like delving into the abstruse and wallowing in details that leave most people I know colder than a penguin's butt in the middle of the Antarctic winter; but on another level, I want to stop these publishers before they bore again with books inadequately edited and organized.

There are three pieces to the banana...the history of humanity's first cultivated plant (modern archaeological evidence (albeit disputed because perish forbid someone should change The Story white folks tell!) from New Guinea shows human cultivation from 9000 years ago was of bananas, but for their corms not the fingers we eat today); the politics of the modern cultivation of the banana (the term "banana republic", which I have used without thinking for 30+ years, has a very literal beginning and a scarily modern {2020 version} ring); and the future of humankind's most basic and widely distributed food crop (essential to survival in several parts of the world, the banana is also under threat from several pests that defy modern chemistry to abate, still less conquer, and squeamish food-o-phobes in wealthy countries oppose all modern genetic engineering that could save the survival crop of many parts of the world). These three strands are awkwardly interwoven, with no obvious guiding editorial hand to make sense of their interrelation.

It's a shame, too, because this is a huge, important topic, and the author's not inconsiderable talents are well-used in bringing the facts to light. The loss of our American favorite banana, the Cavendish, from grocery shelves will be an inconvenience at most; the fact that two major American corporations are, double-handedly (is that a word?), responsible for the spread of the blights that threaten the world crop with the complicity of the American government, should mean that we as a country are liable to find solutions to the pressing problems of food security in the places we've so screwed over. Free. But with 45 attacking US food security, that won't happen. You can bet the balance in your 401(k) on that.

Back to the book...too much narrative drive is lost in the author's back-and-forth cross-cutting of the basic story. I wish someone had said, "Yo Dan...first third of the book is the banana as a plant; second third is the politics of the banana; last is the science of the plant." I wonder if that was what they tried, and the interconnections of all the information prevented its success? I somehow don't think so.

It's a good-enough book on an important topic that SHOULD cause each person who reads it some discomfort at our societal callousness and myopia. I recommend it to those most likely to be irritated by progressive politics and social liberalism. Isolationists particularly encouraged to apply!