The Center for Sustainable Medicine

Real Food


The best books, articles, and links on Organic Food, Slow Food, Sustainable Agriculture, and the Localvore movement.

Food is the most intimate connection between our bodies and nature. We eat nature, and how we choose to do that can nourish us or make us sick. How we grow our food, what we choose to eat, and how we prepare it—all these are indicators of our relationship to the land and to our bodies. Many wonderful movements are afoot: organic and sustainable agriculture, the “Slow Food” and “Localvore” groups, groups looking at the health benefits of traditional food preparation, seed saving groups, and groups educating the public on the dangers of genetically engineered crops that could create a global disaster in our food supply. Below you will find some of the many books and articles I have found helpful, as well as links to other organizations working on these issues. This page will be updated soon with additional books and links. I am collecting data from my favorite radical gardeners…
—Didi Pershouse
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Books:

Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon Sally Fallon’s cookbook is so much more than a cookbook. In the center of the pages are really wonderful recipes, but on the borders of the pages are quotes and information on why certain foods, and ways of preparing foods, make all the difference. You can browse through it looking for recipes, and be learning a lot at the same time. The information is broken down into nice little digestible chunks. The essential message of this book is that if you look back to the ways foods have been traditionally prepared in every culture, there are certain basic things we have forgotten—and nutritionally these make all the difference. For example, for grains to be truly digestible for humans, they must be soured before cooking, such as sourdough bread vs instant yeasted breads. Likewise, raw or unpasteurized milk allows the body to absorb far more nutrients than pasteurized. Animal fats and egg yolks are extremely nourishing, as are soups made from bones. Her work is based on the work of a dentist named Weston Price who traveled around the world looking at cultures whose teeth were in good health and whose jaw structure fit their teeth appropriately. What he found were certain dietary traditions regarding the preparation of foods (which we have all but lost). When those traditions were given up, the health and bone structure of the people changed dramatically within one generation. I recommend this book to all my patients.

This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader by Joan Dye Gussow One of the many things I love about this book is the way Joan weaves useful information—about gardening, composting, cooking, and the politics of local and seasonal food—into a very entertaining story about battles with neighbors and being flooded by the Hudson River while trying to renovate a house. Essentially, she converts you to her point of view in such a friendly way that its hard to even notice that your thinking has changed by the end of the book. I read it during the summer I first planted a garden at the clinic, and felt I had good company along the way.

Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine by Ronald F. Schmid

Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck

Real Food for Mother and Baby by Nina Planck

Eat Fat Lose Fat by Dr. Mary Enig & Sally Fallon

The Vegetarian Myth By Lierre Kieth
Articles:

Articles on Sustainable Food by Vandana Shiva
Links:

Vandana Shiva is one of the most fruitful and outspoken authors on the politics of the sustainable food and seed-saving movement. This link will take you to a list of her articles.

Weston Price Foundation: Educational resources on real food, slow food, and traditional food preparation. (See Nourishing Traditions in the books section above.)

Organic Consumers Association: Breaking news on issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children’s health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade, and environmental sustainability.

Food First: Advocates for ecologically-sustainable and socially-just food production.

For  information on raw milk see The Bovine

If you live in the Upper Valley area, please use this map tool to find the farms, sugar houses, bakeries and markets nearest you:

http://www.communitywalk.com/PompanoosucAgriculturalSocietyFarms

See also Vital Communities’ Valley Food & Farm Guide

For links to people interested in building community by gardening through yardsharing, check out www.hyperlocavore.com