Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Meeting: Monday 6th April 2008

Quorum: 6

Average Score: 8/10

I chose this book after reading it last year and being completely drawn into thinking about our relationship to the food we buy and eat.

This book chronicles the 12-month journey taken by Barbara Kingsolver (author of The Poisonwood Bible) and her family to see if they could live off whatever they could produce on their small property in Virginia, USA. Throughout the course of the book Barbara not only discusses the family's experiences but comments on the state of food production in the US, the trend away from eating a diverse range of food species and the number of miles food travels before it gets to our table.

"According to Indian crop ecologist Vandana Shiva, humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. After recent precipitous changes three-quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species, with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy and canola." [excerpt from book, p.49]

Research by Australian group CERES (Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies) estimates that the contents of the average shopping basket will have travelled over 70,000km to get there.

This book is a discussion of the culture of food.

We discussed:

• the difficulty in sourcing locally produced food
• the Victorian family who became "Locavores" and committed to the 100-mile diet by eating only what could be grown, caught or raised within 160km of their home.
• understanding the "provenance" of food - where it comes from, who made it, how they made it
• food choice dilemmas: fair trade coffee or locally produced coffee? Is it better to buy an organic item from overseas than a non-organic locally-produced item? Could we give up Italian Parmesan? Kalamata Olives? Pine-nuts?
• that eating locally means buying in season and buying food that has had no or minimal processing. It means making more things from scratch and this goes right to the heart of our food culture: can we do this anymore?
• did the pursuit of local food completely take-over the Kingsolver/Hopp family's life? What else did they do in that year?
• are we prepared to kill our own animals? Or can we only handle meat in polystyrene packs? Do our children understand where Lamb or chicken comes from, really?

In relation to the writing:

• While some found this book to be an easy, well-flowing read others disagreed and found it "difficult to get into".
• It was generally agreed that a potentially dry subject was made readable by Barbara's expert writing.
• Many members enjoyed the side notes by Stephen Hopp and Camille Kingsolver noting that the extra information was important to the overall story. Others (myself included) largely ignored their entries choosing to focus on Barbara's contributions. We've heard reports that Camille's recipes are delicious so maybe I was wrong to ignore them.

We also talked about:

• Coeliac disease and other dietary restrictions
• The emergence of Peanut allergies in children - is it related to the increased intake of nut products including peanut oil in a wide range of foods?
• Whether by purchasing a product while overseas and bringing it back with you on the aircraft can be constituted as not having travelled additional "food miles" because you were coming back on that flight anyway, with or without the product? What if you had flown Carbon Neutral?