A Book in Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle By: Barbara Kingsolver
Non-fiction: food 352 pages
Book Count: 56

This book was surprising good for the most part. Giving the other places I have seen it references I expected it to be mostly crap. It was for the most part interesting. It is mainly about how the author spent their year of living off the land. There are a few parts about how people are destroying everything and using fossil fuels is evil, but it also has an essay on why you should eat meat. There was only one place where the liberal earth first BS really annoyed me. In one paragraph the author goes on about how the way we eat is killing us and the world. (Not that I am not saying that some ways we use aren't bad for both.) But, she both talks about how the generations after her's (she's 55) are living shorter lives, and that the world is going to be horrible overpopulated in 40-50 years. Now even just putting theses to facts next to each other make it sound a little silly. When you look at the data on the world's population it becomes more of an issue of one or the other, but both of these things can't be true. Her longer living, large generation will be mostly dead in 50 years. If people are dieing younger then a lot of the next one will be dead too. Most of Europe and much of Asia average less then the 2 children per couple needed just to keep population at nearly a standstill. (2 kids still equals a small negative as not all people have kids. And the average is closer to 1.) And many of the populations that have a large number of children do so as they know most of there kids will die before adulthood, so unless people live longer lives in the future in 2 generations we most likely will not have a population explosion beyond what the earth can handle. Anyway besides that there were some fun and worth while info in this book. Things like menus and recipes for the foods found in each month and info on what time each food grows. In both cases that dates will very slightly based on where you live, but it gives a good rough idea.