Formerly Known As Food by Kristin Lawless explains all of the problems with America's food. Most of the information should come as no surprise, but the scope of damage is shocking. I expected for this book to read like a textbook. The book was enjoyable to read although a bit repetitive at times. At the end the author offered some "solutions" but no feasible way for them to be enacted. A system broken due to big corporations and government apathy cannot be fixed by more government involvement. It does discuss important information regarding the issues facing current and future generations. Formerly Known as Food was much more enjoyable to read than similar books on the same topic.

Hard to rate this one... but I must say despite the scientific language and bombardment of stats, I was utterly rapt reading about how detrimental the industrial food industry is to our health. I had an inkling, but I had no idea that the escalation of hormones, antibiotics and various pesticides and herbicides has so infiltrated nearly every piece of meat and produce to the point where unless a consumer knows the farmer personally, it's unlikely one can truly know what residue or nutrients are actually in the food stuffs being purchased. The current generation of children and young adults are likely to have shorter life spans due to the shear prevalence of overly processed foods and lack of "whole foods" in their diets from Day 1. The one tidbit that will stay with me (aside from whole eggs essentially being a superfood which should never be separated for egg white omelets) is how important natural birth and breastfeeding is for babies, and the lack of vaginal birth and over-saturation of formula use in the last century has wiped out an important microbiota in our digestive track, but no longer naturally occurs due to the ingestion of antibiotics by any woman in the family line, C-sections, and formula. Absolutely fascinating, yet horrifying.

This was an intense read and I came away better educated but also feeling overwhelmed by the task ahead for us as consumers. From the start, she makes it crystal clear that there is a vast amount of, at this time, unavoidable and unhealthy, stuff in our foods. On one level that's not really news to most of us. We know about organic food, clean food, whole food diets, etc, etc. We now know that nothing has changed and it's only gotten worse. Over the last almost 100 years, we have been eating a very additive rich diet and hopefully it isn't too late to improve it. Kristin Lawless is passionate on the subject of good food for everyone. She even speaks out for child care leave, reducing the big agra push of infant formula over breast feeding and striving to create a better diet for all of us. After reading this excellent book, I have to say my food choices ,which I thought were getting better, are in need of a lot of hard work..

Kristin Lawless is a necessary voice in the world of nutrition and food production. With so much of our food being genetically modified and chemically processed it's difficult to know what's actually good for you. In Formerly Known As Food Ms. Lawless sheds light on many of the issues surrounding the food supply in our modern world.

Didn't really care for this as the information didn't seem new or presented in any new way. It seemed there was a fair amount of mommy-shaming due to formula feeding. I kept waiting for the bit where author might suggest what could be done on an individual basis, but it never seem to come, so the only feeling I have with reading this was a helplessness over my diet.

This is a difficult book to read, but one I wish more people would. It is a big picture look at the food system that is going to make readers uncomfortable whether they have never thought about what is on their plate and where it comes from or they already try to avoid GMO products in their food and shop local. Very important topic.

Kristin Lawless believes in the importance of whole organic foods, breast feeding, etc., but says it is not enough. She will scare you to death with her descriptions of what is getting into our food supply and what it is doing to our bodies. And all this has come to be in the past 75-100 years--for the sake of speed, efficiency, convenience and profit. "What about public health, nourishment, stewardship of the land and water, the preservation of Earth and all its species, and the protection of the young and their future?"

There is much information here and it is not always easy to read. Alarming to say the least. But perhaps it is time that all of us really understand what we are feeding ourselves and our families and what it may be doing to our health.

Lawless concludes her book with 'a radical food manifesto' listing what she'd personally like to see happen but only if we come together and demand change:

--the end to poor-quality industrial foods, primarily pushed on low-income people;

--that food processors stop marketing infant formula to parents;

--warning labels on processed food packaging stating these foods may be harmful to your health;

--third party testing of chemicals used in and on our food supply;

--affordable access to chemical-free and whole foods for all;

--nutrition and cooking classes in our schools;

--a universal basic income;

--a wage given for cooking and household work;

--a six-month paid parental leave to encourage breast feeding.

Read this book and perhaps be inspired to join her challenge for better food, and perhaps a better world, for all.

I received an arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange foe my honest opinion. I am grateful for the opportunity.

#FormerlyKnownAsFood #NetGalley #Nutrition #Parenthood #Wellness

This book is powerful! The author is nutrition educator working with cardiologists in Manhattan. She not only demystifies the danger of processed food but also the so called labelled super food or healthy food like the Organic Mac & Cheese and the healthy an veggie options of the big chain of fast food. Kristin teach us more about other factors that affect our health like free radicals and more.

This was a really informative book and it made me think a lot about food - what real food means, and how we should be careful about what we put into our bodies. It also had good information about big food companies, how the farmer needs to be supported, or the food we eat is no longer going to be real food, which may be happening already. It is also good for opening people's eyes that we need to be the ones demanding change with our words and our money, or no change will ever happen. It is a sensible book that deals with why we need to eat whole foods, and make sure everyone has access to whole foods, through fair wage programs, without being overly sensational and exaggerated. I think that everyone should have access to this book, or information like what is in this book.

Whether you like it or not this is the sort of book that everyone should pick up and read as it involves one of the most basic actions that we do every day, which is eating food. You don't need to be obsessive about the subject to justify spending a few hours in your life to have your eyes opened about the way in which food production is having a negative impact on our health. And if you already think that you are eating healthy food, you may be even more surprised. The biggest issue for me is who is going to do anything to change the direction in which we are going? It reminds me of a speech given last year (2017) by Danone CEO Emmanuel Faber last year, a video of which can be found by a simple Internet search.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Delving into the history of American industrial food production, Lawless makes a compelling argument for returning to a time when we ate whole foods rather than processed, packaged food. She discusses the social and environmental impacts, as well.

This book will have you rethinking what you put in your shopping cart as well as what you put in your plate! With the changes in our lifestyle choices, it becomes crucial to rethink the foods we are consuming. This book will be part of the conversation. I voluntarily reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book.

This book describes foods that we should be eating, these foods are vastly different from those that our grandparents and great grandparents ate in the 1930’s and 40’s before processed food became common. At that time period, most people ate home grown food or food that had been grown locally.
Our modern organic food is healthier than some processed food, but a great deal of it contains pesticides, trans fats and sugars.
You will discover the difference between organic foods and whole foods such as locally produced grass fed beef, eggs, whole milk, butter, and avocados, rotated crop foods, locally grown produce and other foods.
You will see why the American diet is causing long term health problems, and how this diet will affect future generations.
You will learn why breastfeeding is better for a baby’s long term health than infant formula, and why children should be eating the same food as their parents.
You will discover why bacteria are essential to a developing infant’s health, if a baby is not born vaginally and breast fed (but he/she are born via a C-Section and fed with formula), the baby does not receive the bacteria he/she needs for their health, which will affect them for the rest of their lives in the form of disease and poor health.
This book contains an encyclopedia’s worth of information on what you eat,how eating poorly affects your long - term health, and how you can change your way of eating and improve your family’s and the next generations health.

Formerly Known as Food is jam packed with information about our food production system, the impact of farming and other chemicals on our health, the "magic" of baby digestive systems developing and the lifelong impact they have and so much more. There are several paths of research and education in this book and while each was interesting, it seemed as though they weren't cohesively presented. Some could read this book and walk away with a sense of "we're doomed" because of the detail about how some chemicals and treatment exposures have multi-generational impacts and so we have already impacted our grandchildren and beyond with the chemicals in our lives. Others may walk away feeling like they want to get engaged by aren't sure what to do. The book can be filed on the book shelf with many other books that I've read about the state of food production and health today - and seems best suited for people that are reading across the spectrum of food/health books. Compared with other books of this vein, I felt like the author was more self focused in her narrative than some others.

Free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Book is available June 19th.

I do have a pet interest in this topic and have read a couple in a similar vein. This is a good primer in the current state of affairs in our industrial food system. If you enjoyed this and wanted more nuanced exploration, check out "The Dorito Effect", "The World According to Monsanto", "Combat Ready Kitchen", "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and "Food, Inc".

Great history on the evolution of food but not a whole lot of new information. Maybe that is the point? To go back to the basics of organic fresh produce locally grown. Good quick read but not a ton of new info.

This exposé about the food industry in our country and how the food industry, itself, has made food unhealthful for the consumer is a must-read for everyone interested in their health.

The bulk of the treatise exposes the dangers of food additives and packaging. Lawless was quite specific and documented her concerns with multiple studies. She fleshes this out nicely and presents her case well. Anyone reading this and wanting to make a change can see how to do it. She also explains how we got into the quagmire we’re in.

The last sections of the book, which are calls to action, are less easily put into action. She offers many opportunities for getting involved, but most are not feasible for regular people. And many are just plain unrealistic. In her summary, her loudest cry is for more and more government involvement and action. In the first 2/3 of the book I felt like she was wanting to educate everyone so that the consumers would exercise more personal responsibility for what they ate and/or fed to their families. By the end I felt like she was saying personal responsibility was no longer a possibility and the government should step in making all sorts of new rules, regulations and laws regulating everything from TV advertising to spokesmen for various food products.

There’s a lot that doesn’t apply to everyone, but there’s enough excellent universal information for each reader to glean something important. I highly recommend this book.

I received this ARC from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press. This review will be published on GoodReads immediately and at Amazon and on my library’s website
https://publiclibrary.cc following the publication date.

With the giant caveat that this galley copy did not have complete footnotes for each chapter, which makes it REALLY difficult to assess the content without being able to see the actual references being used...

Having some personal interest in the overall topic and coming in with quite a lot of highly specialized knowledge about gut microbiology and GI inflammatory diseases, this book seemed right up my alley. And for the most part, I think this is a pretty decent summary of what we know so far from the research and why it’s concerning. It’s definitely not perfect: Some sections do cherry-pick the data — the chapter on pregnancy and the early child microbiome is... rather problematic, shall we say — and in places it can get repetitive. I would have liked to see more thorough discussion about what can be done (realistically!) about these issues, rather than just a depressing litany of grim studies.

A really interesting look at the evolution of "food" as we know it and made for a useful advanced beginner nutrition reader. I knew some of the material she explained as someone who has followed health trends in the last decade, but a lot was new to me.

.What I think made this book most accessible is that while it relied on (solid) research, the author also made good use of interviews that were understandable to the lay reader. I appreciated that she took an honest look that there's no easy answer to the food marketing challenges, it's truly not as simple as "eat better", although that is a worthy goal. As a result, this came through as a useful "how to" rather than scolding readers.

I needed to read this. I can't begin to say how much I needed to read this. It dives into all the junk that we eat and how it's been processed so much its not even food anymore.
Great book and great way of writing.