A week after penning his final article for the New York Times as The Minimalist, and just before beginning a weekly op-ed column and becoming a regular Times Magazine contributor, Mark Bittman spoke to Civil Eats about his vision for a saner and more delicious food system.

What issues have you been focused on?

The four main issues in food right now are sustainability, nutrition, getting people in the kitchen to cook, and regulation and policy. Until a few years ago, I spent almost all of my time working on helping people to learn to cook—now I’m spending more time now working on and thinking about the others. Obviously the changes at The Times are a part of this.

What inspires you to do this work?

It’s fine to talk about how terrific food is, to be interested in and focus on wonderful food, how it’s made, how’s it’s cooked, all the joy it can bring. The simple fact is that’s not all there is to it. Not everyone has access to wonderful food, so to focus exclusively on that is short-sighted. We need to look at policies, many of which were put in place before any of us were paying attention (or born, for that matter). Nutrition is clearly important also, as is sustainability. Silent Spring and Diet for a Small Planet aside—how far ahead of their time were those works?—many of these issues are new to many of us. Now, global warming—which in a way came out of nowhere—and peak land, peak water, peak oil, and peak food are all on our minds.

So those of us with a platform must use it. There is no more important work for me to focus on, and to see whether anything I can write or say can have some kind of impact.

What’s your overall vision?

A generous person might say that to some extent I’ve helped salvage the loss of home cooking over the last generations. For the first 10 or so years of my career, very, very few people were writing about good home cooking. (There still aren’t as many of us as I’d like to see.)

Those of us trying to make it fun, easy and accessible now have an opportunity for a bigger platform then we’ve had in the past. It’s important to point out that any attempt to improve the food situation in the United States must involve people cooking for themselves; only by starting with real food and preparing it outselves can we make progress.

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

I don’t check any blogs routinely; I rely on aggregators. Arts and Letters Daily. Twitter. Links from wherever. I read The Times every day, and I try to read the WSJ and The Guardian—mostly, though, I get distracted by links and wind up all over the place. All of this leads to some fun reading.

And I’m not reading fiction. Obviously an anti-answer but every time I try I’m finding difficulty locating the relevance. I wouldn’t argue this; I feel badly about it. But that’s how it is.

I’m currently on a mountain climbing jag. There’s a book by a Times colleague named Graham Bowley called No Way Down; insanely exciting. I think it has something to do with marathoning, which I do. But though marathoning is stressful, it’s not dangerous; there’s some dividing line in will when it comes to us and mountaineers.

I’m reading a biography of Thelonious Monk. I read the food stuff that comes along that I think is important to read. The Coming Famine by Julian Cribb was the latest; I’m about to start Hot.

I also regularly read The New Yorker, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.

Who’s in your community?

I’ve worked at and with people at The Times for so long, and I’m married to a Timesian, so a large part of my community is people there. And I couldn’t be happier about that.

There’s a community of food people who are interested in politics and policy, and I feel very collegial about them, and some of those have become friends. And, there’s a running community I’m a part of; which is terrific in New York.

I also have two kids and I’m pretty close to them. And I have about a dozen lifelong friends, and a bunch of people I’m just getting to know.

What are your commitments?

Besides work, besides family, those are the two big ones, I have three hobbies: I cook—it’s a hobby as well as work, I still love it, I fly small airplanes–not as often as I’d like—and I run. I’m committed to all of that.

What are your goals?

I think I covered this above. But I now have two new and important jobs, so I’d have to say my new goals are to be successful at them. I’m going to be writing three out of four weeks for The Times Magazine, and in that role I’ll have a pretty big portfolio; the idea is to find or create at least one fantastic recipe in each piece—not necessarily a “minimalist” one, but still one that people will be drawn to, will want to cook. But to do that I’ll have to meet new people, think in new ways, travel, and more.

And a weekly Op-Ed column? It’s a dream come true, so in a way you might say I’ve achieved a life goal. But now I have to become good at it. And frankly that makes me nervous as hell.

What does change look like to you?

In food? I’d like to see a fairer form of taxation, subsidies moved from one place to another; a stronger FDA, a more sensible USDA (really, the USDA should be broken into two agencies, one for agribusiness and one for consumers); and emphasis and support of regional food and food grown at small farms, by farmers making a decent wage. Oh, and better treatment of farmworkers and animals. And, of course, an increase in home cooking and support for that. That’s already a lot, but I think we can make some progress towards those goals in the near future.

That’s the work, anyway.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

There’s currently some despondency among the world’s progressives these days, and though it’s understandable it has to be combated. The Tea Party does not have a monopoly on anger, on demonstrating, on making demands; progressives need to do all of those things. If it starts with more letters or more progressive talk shows, that’s a start. We need action to keep from despair; we need activity, and with it will come a sense of empowerment. Shopping at farmers’ markets and growing our own food is nice, but this isn’t a back-to-the-land movement—at least not for most people—this is a how-the-hell-are-we-going-to-make-big-changes movement. We have enemies, mostly in big corporations, and we have to figure out how to force them to change their ways. A detailed manifesto of this would take some time to put together, but it’s possible.

Of course two years ago, many thought Obama was going to make a big difference, but regardless of what you think of the President’s or First Lady’s efforts it’s become more clear than ever that if citizens want change it has to come from the ground up. Only we can push the government and the corporations to make change; no one is going to do it for us.

What projects and people have you got your eye on or are you impressed by?

If I had to single out one person it would be Marion Nestle; she continues on an almost daily basis to inspire everyone who’s doing interesting and important things in the food world. There are a hundred other people I know who are important; there are thousands I don’t know, but hear about.

There are a lot of people whose work I like, and even envy, mostly for their analytic skills and ability to articulate things—for the most part they’re journalists and academics, both of whom have critical roles to play. People on the ground in the industry are also important–farmers, of course, but also people in food service—I’d single out the food service company Bon Appétit here (not the magazine!) who are starting to see the light. And even a few chefs.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility?

It’s inevitable; it’s that or steady decline. The real question is “Does change happen because we win some important battles, or does it happen because the country or the world experiences some unforeseen disaster wakes us up?” I’m not rooting for disaster, but I’d guess we see either significant change or disaster—or both—in the next 20 years; food-wise, scary things are right around the corner. Typically, though, Americans need bad situations to bring about significant change.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be more effective?

I don’t know if the movement really exists yet; it’s just starting. It would be great if there were some loud, clear and consistent voices out there. Michael Pollan has become a force to be reckoned with, and you can tell that because he’s regularly attacked by the food industry–how great is that? Oprah, of all people, could’ve been a voice, but she caved in. Maybe she’ll give Civil Eats a hundred million bucks, which would help.

I might say that I believe Josh Viertel is doing a good job with Slow Food USA—he’s really turned it around, made it a voice for change—but that’s just beginning also.

We just need more and more people fighting for food policy that benefits everyone. Right now the so-called movement feels like a few thousand people talking about it to each other—I mean, really, who’s reading this interview? Not that it isn’t worth doing, but how do we get these notions to a broader public? We need tens, hundreds of thousands of us, making noise in public. We need a new anti-war movement, one that’s not only anti-war but pro-food and, of course, pro-justice in all arenas. This is not a small thing!

Do we need WalMart and the First Lady working together? Maybe that doesn’t hurt. But we need to build community, and two things that do that are CSAs and real co-ops, and here I’m talking about community-run supermarkets. Imagine, for example, a co-op board saying “We’re going to have a small cereal aisle and a small soda aisle; we’ll carry that stuff because some of our members want them, but we want to focus on whole foods.” And note the case here: I’m talking about whole foods and not Whole Foods!

In the 70s, I worked as a community organizer. It seems I was saying the same things: we need a bigger voice, we need more activity. It remains true; but as important as it was then to fight against the war, to fight for racial and gender and economic justice—well, gee, guess what? The same issues remain important. Food is a big one, but it’s all the same struggle; it’s a struggle for power. If this is a democracy, let’s run it. If it’s not a democracy, let’s fight it. Only by acting that way will we be moving towards real food, good food, for everyone. And I might note that when I say “everyone” I mean everyone—not just Americans but humans.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

It depends on my mood. I couldn’t plan it in advance. At times there’s nothing better than a fried egg on bread with butter, or I could ask my dear friend Jean-Georges Vongerichten to cook for me or I could go shopping and cook. I don’t have a pat answer and I just don’t know. I hope I never have to plan it.

Photo swiped from SpliceToday

Mark Bittman has been cooking and writing about food for four decades, including creating simple recipes for his weekly column at the New York Times, The Minimalist. Simple, because they don’t require difficult-to-find ingredients (and if they do, he gives alternatives) or an elaborate process to get a delicious and often impressive meal on the table. He has challenged his readers to travel across cultures, try things they thought were really difficult to prepare, and to rethink the tools in their kitchen repertoire (last week’s Minimalist, for example, breathed new life into the food processor).

Bittman has also emerged as a sane voice in the discussion around food policy, penning excellent reporting on industrial meat production, sustainable fish, and organics, to name a few stories. In addition, he digests news on the food system, writes about his cooking exploits and publishes the work of other food writers (full disclosure: I’m one of them) on his site, markbittman.com. In his recent book, Food Matters, he discussed why we should cut out the junk food and cut down on the amount of meat we eat for our own health and for the well-being of the planet. Building on the success of that work comes the Food Matters Cookbook, with 500 recipes for inspired “less-meatarians.” I spoke with him this week about his new cookbook and the state of the discussion around food politics.

Civil Eats: Many of our readers might be familiar with your “vegan before six” diet. Why did you start eating this way?

Mark Bittman: I wrote How to Cook Everything Vegetarian in the mid-aughts because I saw the handwriting on the wall, that eventually we are all going to be eating way more plants than we are now. And it seemed like a good idea for me to get familiar with whole grains, legumes, vegetables, etc. more than I was. In the course of writing that, it became clear that animal products in general, and meat in particular, as well as processed foods and junk foods, were really doing us in. And at the same time it became evident that industrial livestock production was a big contributor, not only to bad health, but to global warming. So I decided to write Food Matters. I realized at the same time that my own health was suffering at age 57 after years of eating like an American. So while I was writing that book, I decided to put this whole thing into practice. I was unwilling to become a vegan, I didn’t think it really made sense for me, but I thought that a seriously modified diet would. So I decided to eat as a very strict vegan, that is no processed food–not even white rice, pasta or bread–no animal products of any kind, until dinnertime. But then at dinnertime I would do pretty much whatever I wanted to do, although I try to stay more moderate. That’s pretty much the diet I’ve followed for about four years, and I can certainly say that I am healthier than I was four years ago. It turns out it was a pretty smart thing for me to do.

CE: People often think that eating ecologically and healthfully is a sacrifice. How do you respond to that?

MB: People think that way because they think that [a diet] has to be extreme. To be completely principled about this, I think you’d be a vegan. But I think to suggest that people become vegans really alienates them immediately. I think some compromise is necessary, but I don’t think that it means that you have to start eating in a way you don’t want to eat. I think it means that you consciously start eating in a saner way, and if that means that you start with two salads a week–you know that is very significant for a lot of Americans.

CE: There are no sections in the Food Matters Cookbook dedicated to meat, poultry, fish, etc., and yet this is not a vegetarian cookbook. Can you talk a bit about the layout?

MB: There are two ways to eat less meat: you can eliminate it from a given meal, day, or your life if that’s your choice, or you can reduce the amount in a given dish. The Food Matters Cookbook is often about reducing the amount in a given dish. So, because we’re not putting meat in the center of the plate–as in “here’s a big piece of meat and a couple of things to go with it”–it didn’t seem appropriate to have meat chapters. It’s more a book that says “here’s a smart way of eating.” And a smart way of eating can include meat, but it isn’t about meat.

CE: In the intro you write that you are “confident that as your diet changes, so will the sorts of foods you crave.” Is this what happened to you?

MB: What I can tell you is that there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t cook a pot of beans and eat it through the course of a week, there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t cook a pot of grains, and/or make a whole grain bread–and these are things that I’ve come to enjoy and rely on more and more. When I go out for lunch and am confronted with sort of standard lunch fare at this point it really turns me off. Which has sort of led me to bring my lunch places more often than I used to.

CE: You have been writing more on food policy in the last couple of years. How do you think the media is doing in covering food policy stories?

MB: It depends on what you call the media. I find plenty of interesting stuff every week, in the New York Times, Time Magazine, the Guardian in the UK. There are plenty of publications that do a good job, and I think you see the occasional decent story on television on things like Nightline. But I think the brunt of [this reporting] is on the web, on good sites like yours and in blogs. So is this stuff being discussed openly? Absolutely. Is it being covered as widely as it might be? No, I don’t think so. Even the people who are covering it I think are missing a lot of the picture–of how scary this is and how terrifying it might become.

CE: There has been a shift happening over the last couple of years in the way people are thinking about food. Would you call it a movement?

MB: I’m reluctant to call it a movement until I see some kind of leadership and some kind of purposeful direction. I think there are a lot of people doing a lot of great work, and I hope to count myself among those. I think most people, who are a part of what I guess I would call a nascent movement, are against the same things. But I’m not sure we’re for the same things, and I’m pretty sure we haven’t articulated it right if we are. What ever “it” is, it is moving in the right direction. But we need leadership in terms of publications, in terms of spokespeople, in terms of guiding principles. I don’t think we really yet have that.

CE: You don’t call yourself a chef, but instead a home cook. Why is the distinction important?

MB: Few things annoy me more than being called a chef. A chef is a person who runs a restaurant. I don’t think there is such a thing as a “home chef.” There are cooks, and cooks cook at home, and there are chefs, and chefs cook in restaurants. And there are a lot of differences between those two styles of cooking, and I think it’s important to maintain those distinctions. Aspiring to be a chef is something young people can do, they can go to school or apprentice themselves, but home cooking is really the most honorable tradition, and we should all aspire to be home cooks.

CE: What inspired you to learn to cook?

MB: I grew up in New York, and we had pretty good food at home, and we had pretty good food on the street, and then I went to college in Massachusetts and the food everywhere was so disgusting that I was forced to learn how to cook. I wouldn’t say it was inspiration, it seemed like life or death at the time. So I started to cook and I really, really liked it. And when it came time to earn a living, I tried to write about a variety of things but no one was interested. But when I started writing about food, people were interested.

CE: Do you think people are more interested in cooking now than when you started?

MB: Its hard to say, because when I started cooking, which was forty years ago, there were still pretty normal mothers, for lack of a better term, cooking dinner for their families. And there weren’t young people who were interested in cooking the way there are now. There was obviously no food television–there was Julia Child and Graham Kerr, but there was really nothing beyond that–and people didn’t say “I’m really into cooking.” On the other hand, there were probably 50 million people in the United States that regularly cooked dinner and I don’t think we’ve returned to that number yet. I think that people are really into cooking, but if you are into cooking as a hobby that’s swell, but the goal is to have most people cooking on most days, and then we’ll be approaching something that ought to be considered normal.

The valet made me do it. We bared our souls and talked with each other about food. We did it in the middle of the tastefully decorated lobby of a reputable Cannery Row hotel in Monterey, CA. It began as a very unexpected moment, and has become one of my all-time favorite experiences talking about access to good food. Because it was a conversation not with a chef, foodie or expert. It was with a regular person who longs to connect to food and is somehow stuck, marooned on an island alone, full of latent desire.

The valet—let’s call him Paul—asked me the very question I yearn to hear, and with him I had the discussion that I never tire of. Paul had parked my car when I checked into the hotel, had smiled professionally at me and held the door three mornings in a row when I sashayed excitedly out into the sunlight. The cause of my excitement was a food issue conference hosted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Cooking for Solutions Sustainable Media Institute is an annual gathering of journalists and experts who cover food system issues ranging from sustainable seafood to GMOs. It is the highlight of my year, second only to the Ecological Farming Association annual meeting.

The third morning, Paul held the lobby door open and commented that I looked happy. I told him yes, I was happy because I spent the last three days at a conference talking and thinking about food. He immediately grabbed my arm. He looked a bit shocked at his intensity, but recovered quickly and said: “You were at a food conference. Tell me, what should I eat? And why? I know there’s a big debate now about food but I can’t follow it. I can cook, but I’m confused about what’s good for me. The grocery store? I go in there, I walk around…it feels wrong, and I come out with stuff I don’t like. Can you talk with me for a minute?”

Although he spoke quietly, his interest was so intense that the small lobby grew quiet. The receptionist, guests checking out and the other staff stood waiting for my answer. Where to start? Full disclosure: I’m a communications professional who relies on the power of my words to make a living. I know I’ve got about six seconds to keep him or lose him. Do I start with a slogan: Know your farmer, know your food? Nope, too abstract. Do I punt to Michael Pollan’s now famous: Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much? Nope, too abstract again for a lobby conversation. Marion Nestle wrote a huge book about this, like War and Peace for the American eater.

Plus, do I need a pundit or am I ready to be my own? I took a deep breath: “I like to shop at farmers’ markets because they sell food that’s grown right up the road. I bet there’s one near here. I walk around the market, talk to a few farmers, see what looks good to me and buy what I can afford and know I can handle in the time I have available in my basic kitchen. Did you know artichokes are grown in Castroville, just a few miles away from here, and you can steam them in about five minutes?” He burst into a smile. “I’m Italian, from Florida. My family loved artichokes! Growing up we’d save money to buy the good ones, from Italy, in olive oil, in a glass jar, for pasta. You mean I can get them fresh here?” Ah, what a moment.

Several contradictions bear illustration: We’re on Cannery Row in Monterey, CA, where super-green list sustainable seafood sardines had their heyday until the species collapse in 1950s. Right near Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the shrines of ocean conservation, sits the restaurant Bubba Gump, a shrine to farmed shrimp redolent of butter, garlic and disgusting chemicals like disinfectants, pesticides and antibiotics used to keep filthy shrimp ponds teetering on the brink of legal seafood production. Another contradiction: My food conference is teeming with experts on food system sustainability. A few hundred feet from that, a hotel valet wonders what to eat, and has the guts to talk to me about it. If only more people dared to, and if only we could build a real community around real answers. And buy those artichokes from right up the road.

For me, Paul is an archetype of the struggle around food access. He didn’t just open the door for me mornings. He opened the door to a conversation that needs to happen in every walk of life. Where do we find food that speaks to us? What impact might a deeper connection with food have on our local communities, our health and our environment? We all want to know how to make this connection.

Paul isn’t the only one who wants to talk. I frequently find myself drawn into these conversations. My neighbors, strangers on public transportation, and also people at farmers’ markets want to engage around food. Seems everybody always wanted to make five minute blender mayonnaise but it takes a catalyst in the community to make it happen. We should all share knowledge, not just about the joys of homemade mayonnaise, but also about why we should use a pastured egg from a farmer we know rather than an organic supermarket egg. And we should be talking how to cook a beet and why it has a low carbon footprint. It probably helps when information is shared from simple home cooks, not chefs. What’s clear to me is that engaging with each other around food is the gateway, the first step to transforming our relationship. It has to come from each other, no matter how unexpected the place or the time.

I recommended Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything to Paul as a straightforward tome featuring all the basics, then riffs, galore. But I don’t think cookbooks are the silver bullet. A community connection which starts that dialogue would be a better answer. Steps away from where Paul parks cars and opens doors every day, a food conference was trying to open the door. But it didn’t go far enough. For this movement to thrive, it will take community, connection and deeper dialogue. Let’s start a conversation about food with unexpected people in unexpected situations. I think we’ll all benefit from the results.

TED is a non-profit devoted to broadcasting innovative ideas spoken by persuasive thinkers. Its website spreads information through “TED talks,” a video component that spans a wide range of topics. Here is a selection of TED videos focusing on issues from the political food world—child obesity, industrial meat production, school nutrition programs, ecologically safe fish farming, food access within an urban landscape, re-envisioned permaculture—presented by some of the top enthusiasts and specialists.

Jamie Oliver is a chef who is intent on inspiring families to reintegrate cooking into their lifestyles while empowering children to learn the importance of healthful eating. His TED talk examines the epidemic of child obesity in Huntington, West Virginia, a  city that was voted the most unhealthy place in the US in 2008. The “tipping point,” as Oliver explains, is a triangular trap of Home, School and Modern Day Life (dubbed Main Street). Home is no longer about cooking; school lunch programs are centered on corporate gain rather than nutrition; modern day life is riddled with fast foods and deceptive food labeling. As we spend increasingly more money on health bills related to heart disease and obesity—a number that will double in the next ten years—Oliver delivers an urgent call for action.

The New York Times writer and cookbook author, Mark Bittman, writes accessible recipes, often with locally sourced ingredients. He is also a mindful eater who sees an imbalance in the Western diet, one that has been heavily reliant on meat, dairy and carbohydrates, since the advent of highway expansion in the 1930’s. Now our industrialized meat industry (with the emergence of CAFOs in the mid-20th century), emits the second largest amount of greenhouse gases, behind energy production only. Bittman argues that we can find other ways to get our protein. His recommendation: eat ½ lb of meat, or less, a week; eat more plants and in doing so, encourage change in our dietary and lifestyle choices.

How do we reform childrens’ image of food? This question fuels the work of chef Ann Cooper. who has committed herself to restructuring our nation’s school lunch program. Cooper’s fight for an increase in federal funding for the National School Lunch Program is discussed in light of an imperfect social justice issue. She begs that teachers, administrators, government officials–people in power–teach children that food is a real, unprocessed, tangible resource. If we start seeing food as a form of health, then the value attributed to consuming it grows. Much like Oliver, she proposes educational programs—hands-on cooking and gardening duties, an academic curriculum tied to land work, nutritious cafeteria foods, a school compost and recycling program—and public and private spending for the sake of the betterment of our childrens’ health.

It isn’t atypical for aquafarmed fish to be fed chicken in their fishmeal. Dan Barber, the executive chef at Blue Hill, probes this reality by examining a farming system that rejects practices like this, in favor of an “extensive” system. In the south of Spain, Veta la Palma boasts a landscape that includes a 27,000 acre fish farm, where biologist Miguel Medialdea produces 1,200 tonnes of sea bass, bream, red mullet and shrimp each year. The restored wetlands are home to many aquatic species but also over 600,000 birds—the largest private bird sanctuary in Europe. While flamingos flock there to eat shrimp, shrimp in turn eat photoplankton. As Barber suggests, the health of predators and an organic food chain makes this ecological balance possible. His proposal for a restorative farm system in which communities around the world could feed themselves is presented through a symbiotic relationship with the land.

Carolyn Steel notes that in most cities, one’s interaction with food involves an intricate relationship with its production, transportation, purchase and sale, preparation, consumption and disposal. In ancient times, cities mapped their layout according to access to food. People were aware of where their food came from and the farmers and butchers who sold it to them. With the introduction of trains and cars, food became separated from the city-view; it became “anonymous.” Steel envisions a re-conceptualization of city planning—a “Sitopia,” or a renewed way of seeing food as central to a city—through nutritional education, local consumerism and a reinvigorated organic framework, in touch with the land.

The farther we drift away from the land that reaps our food, the more we view ourselves as a competitor against nature. Michael Pollan explains our superiority complex through the rising influence of industrial agriculture; our mentality is that “we are winning against nature.” He also offers a counter world-view through the eyes of plants and animals that manipulate nature for their benefit as well. Pollan argues that if we focus on Darwinian evolution, we can begin to see our world as a cooperative mechanism, where plants, animals and humans harmoniously act within an ecologically-sound system of production and consumption.

Of course, that’s a primary theme of New York Times columnist Mark Bittman’s new book, Food Matters. He writes convincingly about the benefits of switching to a more plant-based diet, asserting, “By reducing the amount of meat we eat, we can grow and kill fewer animals. That means less environmental damage, including climate change; fewer antibiotics in the water and food supplies; fewer pesticides and herbicides; reduced cruelty; and so on. It also means better health for you.”

Bittman joins Michael Pollan in his crusade to get us to eat lower on the food chain. After all, Pollan’s In Defense of Food last year popularized among sustainable food advocates the slogan, “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

But it’s not just food icons urging that we lay off the animals a bit in favor of a saner, more humane and environmentally friendlier diet. Even local government officials, recognizing the importance of reducing the number of animals in our diets, are joining the chorus. In the land of half-smokes and hot dogs, Chicago’s health commissioner, Dr. Terry Mason, made headlines last month when he asked city residents to go vegetarian during January. Indeed, this is Mason’s fourth year trying to bring Chicago’s waistlines in shape and blood pressure and cholesterol levels down by urging a vegetarian start to the new near.

And in Ohio, the official Green Cincinnati Plan task force is asking that citizens reduce their global warming contribution by choosing to eat more plants and fewer animals. The city is reportedly contemplating making t-shirts to promote the initiative that read “Fight Global Warming, One Bite at a Time” and “Cooling the Earth …With My Fork!”

Of all the changes we generally think about in order to shrink our carbon footprint, cutting back on meat, eggs, and dairy may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But it should be.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization found that the animal agriculture sector actually generates more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector, including cars, trucks, SUVs, airplanes and ships.

That’s to say that, of course, we should be concerned about whether we drive a gas guzzler or a gas sipper (if we drive at all), but at the same time we simply cannot ignore what we put in our mouths three—or more—times a day. Every time we sit down to eat, we can control how much we want to contribute to global warming, and by eating more plants and fewer animals, we can take a positive step in the right direction.

In addition to the clear environmental and public health benefits, choosing more vegetarian options is also helpful in preventing cruelty to animals. More than a million animals (nearly all chickens) are slaughtered for food every single hour in the United States alone. Most of them are raised in conditions so cruel and inhumane that few of us would even want to bear witness to their misery, let alone partake in it. So long as we’re raising animals in such vast numbers, extreme cruelty will continue to be the norm. As Mark Bittman writes, “If you hate factory farming (and you should), your primary concern should be reducing consumption.”

Very few issues have such clear connections among public health, animal welfare, environmental concern, and food sustainability. Whether we support one, some, or all of these movements, the time couldn’t be better to look down at our plates and recognize that we can simply live and let live—in so many ways—just by opting for the veggie burger.

Editor’s note: Listen to Mark Bittman speak about his new book Food Matters on yesterday’s Leonard Lopate Show on New York Public Radio:

Veteran cookbook author and New York Times columnist Mark Bittman knows his food — and what he dishes out is smart, contemporary and consistently delicious. For years, his books – including “How to Cook Everything” and “The Best Recipes in the World” (his “Chile Shrimp” is one of my husband’s all-time favorite dishes) have been permanent fixtures on my book shelves, and his kitchen savvy has informed my own style of cooking.

Naturally, I was excited to read his latest work, “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating,” released just as 2008 came to a close. In keeping with so many of Bittman’s other books, the recipes are appealing, straightforward and relatively accessible for busy, health-minded home cooks. But this time around, Bittman gives us some food for thought in addition to his recipes.

The relatively small book (his “Everything” titles are encyclopedic tomes) is divided into two parts, with the first half focused on a complex, interrelated web that includes the state of our industrialized food system, our resulting eating habits over the past generation, our collective physical health and the health of the planet. “For our own sakes as well as for the sake of the earth, we need to change the way we eat,” Bittman asserts at the end of his intro.

The following 70 pages support his argument that we must reclaim our diets and practice “sane eating,” but, he says, it’s something we must do ourselves, not “expect Big Food or the government to help us fix it.” For an avid reader of sustainable literature, he’s preaching to the choir, and I’m mumbling “Amen” as I work my way through the book. But – and here’s a big but – does (or will) this message, as delivered, resonate outside my food-obsessed universe, among the die-hard meat lovers who dunk donuts into their morning coffee and for whom the words “organic” and “sustainable” may as well be Greek?

Here’s what food writer Fuchsia Dunlop says in her recent review in the Washington Post Book World: “One suspects that Bittman is preaching to the semi-converted. The real challenge, surely, lies in persuading people who don’t read such books to invest time in preparing food for their families and reminding them how to do it (an immense task, as the British TV chef Jamie Oliver showed in his recent “Ministry of Food” series).”

There’s no doubt that Bittman’s heart (and message) is in the right place, but this book feels like two halves of two different books grafted together, asking lots of questions but offering relatively few answers. Well articulated, Part One’s plea to change our food system makes us hungry for an action plan, which is not fully realized in Part Two. Although the second half plays to Bittman’s strengths as a cookbook writer, the month of meal plans and accompanying recipes feel awkwardly attached to a political essay and without context to the mission which he clearly spells out on page 69: “Eat less meat, and fewer animal products in general. Eat fewer refined carbohydrates, like white bread, cookies, white rice (although try telling that to a family whose diet is based on the convenience of highly processed foods) and pretzels. Eat way less junk food: soda, chips, snack food, candy, and so on. And eat far more vegetables, legumes, fruits, and whole grains – as much as you can.”

I’m wondering, for example, why he doesn’t offer sustainable sourcing suggestions for the bacon in his yummy-sounding spinach and sweet potato salad with warm bacon dressing. (There’s an extensive bibliography but no list of resources, as is thoroughly done in “Eat Where You Live,” by Lou Bendrick) And why, if he “assumes, however, that if you want a grilled steak or a bowl of ice cream you won’t be looking here to find it” does he include a recipe for Thai beef salad, which calls for grilled flank steak?

As I’ve already mentioned, Bittman had me at “hello,” and I reckon you feel similarly, fellow Civil Eats fan. But what about the majority of Americans left out in the pasture scratching their heads about what the next step is supposed to be? For those just getting started on this “sane eating” journey, a bit more guidance may be in order. His “shop where you like and buy what looks freshest and most appealing to you” advice on page 104 is sound, but leaves the reader without a road map or a wellspring from which to jump. And how do you rally the eaters living in a food desert – rural areas with nary a farm market in sight or in the inner city where supermarkets are more an exception than the rule?

A noble attempt indeed to connect the dots between manifesto and mealtime, but the lines in this case are fragmented still and leaving us wanting more.

In this time of watching our wallets, our good intentions about eating sustainable food could easily descend into bad habits, cutting corners and disenchantment about the food system.  Instead, I’d like to offer a few ways I’ve been eating good, clean and fair on a reasonable budget:

1. Cut Out the Middle Man – Whether you sign up for a winter share of vegetables (look for one at Local Harvest), so that your money goes directly to the farmer in exchange for a weekly share of local, fresh food, or you shop at farmer’s markets (a tip is to go at the end of the day, when vendors are willing to bargain a bit more for the food they don’t want to bring home) cutting out the distributor or grocery chain will lower the price of your food, and still allow you to get the best produce.  As an example, my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share costs around $25 per week, and in the summer I’ve been receiving between 12-20 lbs of vegetables.  Also, buy less pre-packaged food (wine, olive oil and chocolate are my favorite exceptions) as it costs much more than unprocessed food.

2. Perfect your Kitchen Skills – Invest in one solid cookbook, like Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, or How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (you might even be able to get a used copy), and work on your home cooking.  On average, meals cooked at home cost less than half that of meals eaten in a middle-of-the-road restaurant.  Don’t have time?  A trick I like to use is to cook extra grains to add to future meals, and I always make lots of leftovers for lunch and dinner the next day.  Bringing lunch to work is always a good idea.  Home cooking is healthier, and you can be sure to know where you food is coming from.

3. Eat-In! – Have a regular Eat-in, or potluck, where attendees can bring their favorite dishes and everyone can eat well.  Eat-ins are a great opportunity to share ideas, whether about the change we need to see in our food system, or any good cause.  Empower your friends by helping them source the best priced good, clean and fair food and share the stories behind your dish.  (Yesterday I made pancakes, and my husband said they were the best he’d ever eaten.  Local eggs and butter, stone ground wheat from upstate New York, and Vermont maple syrup made it possible.)

4. Go for a Forage – This time last year, I spent a day foraging with the Wild Man Steve Brill in Central Park and came home with a booty of apples, spices, burdock root and edible greens.  Guide books are great, but don’t go nibbling on any mushrooms before you figure out which ones might kill you!  Having gone with a guide, I now feel confident that I could return to the park and locate and recognize a few edible species.  In places like Los Angeles fruit hanging over the fence is fair game for picking.  There is so much around us that is edible, we’ve just forgotten about it.

5. Plan Your Spring Garden – Collect the seeds from this year’s garden, or request seed catalogs and save money on seedlings by starting them yourself.  If you are like me and both suffer from a lack of a green thumb and live in an apartment in the city and lack soil, try this: What is the status of your roof?  Can you place planters up their without anyone noticing or with the permission of the building?  Get a book, like The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food by Tanya L.K. Denckla. Also, in my kitchen window I’m growing basil and occasionally sprouts, which are great in winter when there aren’t as many fresh local lettuces. Allotments are also a popular way to grow food in urban areas.

6. Eat Less – ‘Tis the season for loosening your belt, but is ritual overeating necessary?  Making a Thanksgiving feast to welcome friends and family to the table can be a celebratory moment, but savor it, and eat slowly.  The more you pace yourself the less you will ingest, as there is a twenty minute lag between when you are full and when your brain knows you are full.  And best of all, this leaves more leftovers for lunch!

7. Volunteer in a Kitchen or on a Farm – This is a great way to get some freebies, especially on the farm where you might get a meal and some of what you pick.  It’s the harvest season, and you’d be pretty hard pressed not to find a farm that could use a helping hand.  (Check out World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms)

8. Save Money Elsewhere Before Scrimping on Food – Okay, okay, so this is not so much of a tip about food savings.  But more of a plug for what good, clean and fair food can do to change our lives.  We don’t put enough value in food, and in turn our bodies and the Earth are in peril.  Supporting bad stewardship practices and corporate crops means there will only be more unhealthy food to go around. Americans now spend 11% of their income on food, the lowest percentage ever.  Yet if, instead of that 5th or 6th magazine subscription, or the television-phone, or extra pair of jeans, we could eat delicious, earth-conscious food and spend around 15 – 20% of our income instead, we should be willing to change our mindset.  This is switching from the “me” to the “we” mentality is unavoidable if we are to stay inhabitants of this planet into the future.

Finally, enjoy eating.  Taking pleasure in food is not a crime, even in dark times.  Reflect on the work that went into your dinner and you will appreciate every penny spent.  Now hop on your bike and head to the farmer’s market before it closes!

Photo: *patrick