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What I've Learned About Food and Peace

by Rose Lord

241 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0582; ISBN 1-4120-0214-1; US$22.50, C$26.00, EUR18.50, £13.00

This book proposes that mankind needs to make a correction in the way we interact with the earth and its harvest and that a conscious shift in the way we look at food can be the catalyst for attitudinal changes that will bring greater peace, understanding and contentment into our lives.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts or Table of Contents      catalogue info

About the Book Each chapter of What I've Learned About Food and Peace begins with a brief autobiographical segment about the author's ongoing awakening to the issues around the way we nourish ourselves as individuals and as a society. The chapters proceed to report her findings on the research that resulted from her own questions. The book first examines how our eating habits have evolved to what they are today. It then considers the question of what it truly healthy and natural to man and looks to the healthiest people of the world: as the ultimate source of an answer to that question. It then examines the major controversies in the world of diet and nutrition and the underlying factors behind those controversies. The author then presents what she believes, as a result of her research, to be the real threats to our well being. And follows with some specific suggestions as to what can be done to turn things around. The book concludes with some simple dietary guidelines, menus and recipes.

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About the Author Rose Lord is a wife, mother of three grown sons, grandmother and nurse. She is co-founder of the Global Coalition for Peace. For more than ten years she has been studying the relationship between food and peace.

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Sample Excerpts or Table of Contents

"Lack of education in the science of nutrition and the willingness to put this important aspect of our lives into the hands of other people may be the single greatest threat to our personal and societal health. Although this subject is given cursory attention in our children's primary education, it is not considered nearly as important as math, English, history or the other sciences. It's kind of mind-boggling when one considers how much of what we learn in many of those other subjects never plays a role in our lives beyond the 'final' test and how what we eat affects our lives every day for the rest of our lives."

"That thorough research should be done and that the public should have access to the results and be informed of what they are buying - these do not seem like unreasonable demands. Unfortunately it is estimated that 70% of the processed food in this country already contains bio-engineered ingredients such as transgenic corn and soybeans and we have no way of knowing whether those ingredients are in the products we are buying."

"Why must we sit by and allow those who hunger for power to ignore the needs of the many; those with insatiable appetites to ignore the damage they inflict upon our ear thly home; those whose intellect and curiosity blind them to the destructive potential of their pursuits to threaten the very existence of life as we know it?"

CHAPTER ONE - HOW DID THINGS GET THIS WAY?

"...eating is the most fundamental interchange between the environment and human beings."
Michio Kushi in his essay on World Peace Through World Health.

The stirrings of my awareness of the relationship between food and peace began about twelve years ago when my eldest son, who had just graduated from George Washington University, was living on a Kibbutz in Israel. political science major whose goal was to be a journalist, Richard had gone over there because he wanted to know what it was like to live and work in a very different culture. On the kibbutz he would have the opportunity to learn another language (Hebrew) , and to work right alongside the residents in a communal environment. What he hadn't planned on learning was what it's like to be in a country under attack. During his three month stay on the kibbutz, the United States went to war with Saddam Hussein and virtually every scud missile that was thrown at Tel Aviv was felt on Kibbutz Ramat Hacovesh, located just northeast of Tel viv. In fact, the kibbutz volunteers spent a good part of the first couple of days of that war in a sealed room with gas masks on and syringes full of atropine at their side, while listening to the same conflicting and inaccurate reports that we were receiving about chemical and gas attacks. Needless to say, it was a harrowing time for all of us.

It was the first time that anyone whom I cherished had been so directly in harm's way, so vulnerable to the effects of war and even though I've always been appalled by overt cruelty or violence, I had not, until then, defined for myself my position on war. But when someone you love is directly involved in a situation, it changes the whole perspective on things and during those months I came to feel an abhorrence for this way of resolving conflict.

During the weeks preceding the war our son wrote to us regularly. There were efforts on the part of the Kibbutz volunteers and local Arab families to make their own peace. He became friends with a Palestinian family, had dined at their home several times and was planning to teach them English in exchange for lessons in Arabic.

December, 1990:

"Interesting news - there was a big festival for peace in an Arab village up the road from the kibbutz. About 15 of us decided to go. t the festival, a wealthy rab family invited us to their house for coffee. We all went. Later they gave us a tour of the fields and greenhouses they own. Then they served all 15 of us dinner. None of them spoke any English. At dinner, I told an rabic man next to me that I am interested in learning Arabic after I am finished studying Hebrew. He said he would teach me rabic if I would teach him English. I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. He took me to his house, introduced me to his wife and kids, and gave me all kinds of fruit. His house was gorgeous. His kids were jumping all over me and talking to me in Arabic -they are 3 and 5 years old. In a few days I'm going back to his house to start the lessons. nother American, Brad, is coming with me. Between us, we had enough Hebrew to have a good conversation with Josif, the Arab man. Anyway, I am enormously excited."

My son's excitement came to an abrupt end when the United States bombed Baghdad and Saddam Hussein responded with his scud missile attacks on Israel. Here at home, we had tried to maintain a spirit of hope that the conflict would be resolved without any further aggression but those hopes were firmly dashed on January 16, 1991 and after that it became too dangerous for rabs and Israelis (or their guests) to interact with one another. In his letters Rich vividly described what it was like to be on the kibbutz that night - the panic and uncertainty stimulated by the first attack at 2:30 AM and how he felt the day after finding himself in the middle of that conflict.

January 17, 1991

"I'm at work by 7:00, helping stock vegetables in gas-proof refrigerators. One more attack and four more alarms later, (false alarms, thankfully) most of us are very professional about it. Israeli military planes pass over, literally every two minutes, and sometimes every 15 seconds. When a door slams I hear bombs and shiver. When a truck accelerates, I hear sirens and jump. I'm not one of the panicking people, and I'm not one of the "Oh, this war is nothing" [jerks ] I try to multiply my fear by a few thousand times and figure how the people of Baghdad must feel."

So what does this have to do with the connection between food and peace? Not long after the war began, my middle son, Rob, handed me a book entitled Diet for New merica, by John Robbins. Hundreds of thousands of people have read this book, written by the would-be heir to the Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Company. His personal research into the way we eat had led him to believe that our standard meat and dairy-based diet is contributing to the deterioration of our health, causing intense suffering to the creatures who supply the food and greatly contributing to the devastation of the planet. Consequently, he has devoted his life to awakening people to this reality.

I read John Robbins'book and learned about many things I had never given much thought to. I was alerted to the relationship between the amount of meat and dairy products we eat and our risk for contracting heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoporosis, kidney disease and a host of other ailments. I learned about how one of the major causes of the destruction of the rain forests in South merica is the clearing of that land for cattle grazing to supply our grocery stores and fast food restaurant chains with beef. I became aware of the drugs (antibiotics, sulfur drugs and hormones) , that go into our meat and dairy foods. I learned about how much more food is produced by an acre of cropland versus an acre of grazing land and how unnecessary it is for anyone in this world to go hungry. But what shook me up the most at that moment in my life was to learn of the horrific lives led by the animals who are destined to become our food. I'm talking here about the factory farms, where virtually all of our meat now comes from. In my Gulf War-induced state of sensitivity to violence I found it impossible to continue to contribute to the perpetuation of this other kind of violence and so, much to my family's surprise, I became an overnight vegetarian.

I found that vegetarianism agreed with me. Some of the chronic health problems I had been dealing with like arthritis, PMS, sinusitis and persistent colds dramatically decreased. So I started looking further into what was happening to me and whether these were commonly experienced benefits of a meatless diet. I started doing a personal study of the way people eat and how various diets seem to affect people and I noticed that nutrition-conscious people all seemed to be striving for a "natural diet."However, there appeared to be some differences of opinion as to exactly what that means. So I determined that the first thing I had to learn was what really is a natural diet. Little did I know what a heated controversy I was wading into.

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Catalogue Information

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