I'd enjoyed Mark Bittman's articles in the NY Times Food section.  In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, Bittman argues how agricultural practices and the unequal distribution of resources (land, water, wealth/capital, energy, labor) have caused and are causing the production of "junk".  Junk doesn't have the nutrients of regular food and is largely engineered substances of low nutritional value. The widespread consumption of the unhealthy junk instead of plant based whole foods has caused a public health crisis as well as further inequities.  This is a familiar argument.  
Bittman argues that Big Food is unsustainable.  He argues that agriculture led to settlements and the development of communities as well as increased calories and greater brain development.  It also led to development of agricultural techniques, irrigation, fallowing, crop rotation, etc and private lands, private property, class based societies, gender roles, conquest, primogeniture, fiefdoms, serfs, etc.  
I had hoped to read more about food but the book is a larger discussion of agriculture, industrialization, capitalism and the inefficiencies and dangers of our current system.

Read if you: Want a passionate, eye-opening, and at times, severe condemnation of our food supply, both past and present. 

Librarians/booksellers: Mark Bittman is a well-known name among those interested in food politics; purchase where interest is warranted.

Many thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Mostly Junk, Barely Any Meat. This anti-capitalist, anti-European, anti-agriculture screed is little more than a run down of a leftist view of world history (with concentrations in the post-Industrial Revolution world) as it relates to food . It often points to old and out-dated research in support of its claims, and its bibliography is both scant - barely 1/3 the size of similar nonfiction titles - and not cited in the text at all. (Instead, it uses a system of referring to a particular phrase on a particular page number inside the bibliography itself, rather than having a notation in the text of the narrative. Which is obfuscation intended to hide the text's lack of scholarly merit, clearly.) For those who know no better, it perhaps offers an argument that will at least confirm their own biases. But for anyone who has studied any of the several areas it touches in any depth at all, its analysis is flawed due to the very premises it originates from. All of this to say, this is a very sad thing. Based on the description of the book, I genuinely had high hopes for it, as food and its history and future is something that truly fascinates me and this could have been a remarkable text. Instead, it is remarkable only for how laughable it is. Not recommended.

I haven't come across Mark Bittman's work before, but 'Animal, Vegetable Junk' is a marvel of research and argument. 

The book is chronological, beginning with a summary of the birth of agriculture. I scanned this bit, I'll admit - this period in history has already been well-covered in 'Sapiens' by Yuval Harari (who gets a mention).

Where Bittman excels is the history of agriculture and the food industry in the USA. Now, I'm British, but I didn't really have a problem with the American focus. I assume the American food industry has served as a model for much of the rest of the world. The book certainly answers the question of "just why does America have such an obesity problem?". And while Bittman's writing isn't at the same level as Yuval Harari's (but then again, that author is in a league of his own), it still comes with plenty of shocks and some great one-liners like: "Bread had become a vitamin pill in the form of a sponge cake".

Another thing to truly commend the book for is its exposure of structural racism. I knew, like anyone does, that food is just one of many issues wrapped up with racial inequality in the USA. But I had no idea just how powerful the collaboration has been between historical and modern racism, and the depravities of the American food system.

Essential reading - for those in America and beyond.

(Just one quibble - early on, the author says that primates are the only animals known to make tools - but corvids are also known to do this)

With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this ebook, in exchange for an honest review)

Thank you to #NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of this book prior to publication in exchange for my review.  Animal, Vegetable, Junk  by Mark Bittman is a very informative book about the history and the future of food.  Bittman starts out by stating the obvious, that "obtaining food has driven human history from the start."  Without food, there would be no humans so it makes sense that the need to find food is paramount.  What I had not thought about before this book is that our diets had to be flexible and opportunistic; we had to eat what was available to us depending on where we lived and what the climate or season was at the time.  Bittman claims that it is ingrained in us to eat as much as we can whenever we can which was not a problem when we led a more active lifestyle.  It is only now that we lead a much more sedentary lifestyle that this has become a problem that we need to address and we need to begin eating a healthier diet.  He also brings in the various ways that food has led humans to some of the most ruinous moments in our history such as slavery, famines and being a big factor in climate change.  Bittman closes the book with a bit of hope.  He talks about things that can be done to turn things around and start moving things in a more positive, healthy direction for human beings as well as for the health of our planet.    I will be surprised if this book is not turned into a tv documentary or series.  I learned a great deal from reading this book and I recommend it.