Diversity

Reading is such a good thing yet I find myself with so little time to do it.

I've been reading Barbara Kinsolver's book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle for weeks! I know I'm late at getting to this after it's already been a best seller and in paper back forever, but if you haven't picked it up and you are interested in food - run don't walk to you nearest local bookstore and buy it! And please, shopping local means shopping local for everything, support small business and buy books from bookstores or soon they will no longer exist. This message was brought to you by my friend Keith who runs a bookstore in lower Manhattan. Besides, walking to the store is good exercises as well!

OK enough of that, here is an excerpt from page 54:

Crop failure is a possibility all farmers understand, and one reason why the traditional farmstead raised many products, both animal and vegetable, unlike the monocultures now blanketing our countries midsection. History has regularly proven it drastically unwise for a population to depend on just a few varieties for the majority of its sustenance. The Irish once depended on a single potato, until the potato famine rewrote history and truncated family trees. We now depend similarly on a few corn and soybean strains for the majority of our calories (both animal and vegetable) eater by U.S citizens. Our addiction to just two crops has made us the fattest people who've ever lived, dining just a few pathogens away from famine (emphasis added by me).

This reminds me of my favorite new statistic: for the first time in history we have poor, obese people who are undernourished!