Being a through-and-through Kentuckian, while reading this post, I couldn't help but think of Wendell Berry's essays on eating and agriculture "The Pleasures of Eating".

I can still remember reading it for the first time and how striking it was that eating could be an agricultural act.  I highly recommend it for anyone who hasn't read it.  It's available online if you Google it.

I grew up with parents who were rabid Adele Davis fans (40's and 50's)- I would never eat something with preservatives, dyes... an abusive ex-husband once tried to force feed me a hotdog because I'd never eaten one.  I also grew up with Gypsy Boots' "cook"book, which would be right in line with today's vegan diet.  Jack LaLanne's recipes.  Bob Cummings' recipe for yogurt pie.  Long history of what used to be called "health food" obsession.  But... I will never ever forget discovering as a young adult that food and its preparation could be sensuous and loving.  A father-in-law that I loved showed me from the Vincent Price cookbook how to make souffles, custards. My first avocado- picked warm off the tree- heaven on earth.  Baking bread, cooking with people you love, food that feeds heart and soul...food as taste, smell, hearing, color and flavor... food as love.  This has stayed with me and deepened as I grow old.  So now I have the best of all worlds:  eating for health, for sheer pleasure, and as a political environmental act!

Upon discovering my cholesterol was 280 at the age of 21, I bought the (controversial) book "Fit for Life."  What an eye-opener. Controversial or not, the Diamonds take you back to fresh food cooking.  Many of my health problems, besides the horrifying cholesterol count, went away as I learned to eat better.  Shortly after that I was given the Moosewood cookbook and I was on my way to official health food nut. Which led to me being seen as an environmentalist so things like Greenpeace catalogs were thrown my way. Turns out I was a greenie; and so I bought my first canvas grocery bag and worked to become a better steward of the planet.  This led me to even further waking up to the many connections between our health, the environment and the industrialized, processed world we live in.  The rest is history.
(and my cholesterol is 140 :)

Turns out choosing fresh whole foods unite flavor, health, and land/resource stewardship. It may seem more expensive than industrial crap, but it's actually quite a bargain.

VR said:
Turns out choosing fresh whole foods unite flavor, health, and land/resource stewardship.

I think another key criterion is local foods.  Terms like "organic" and "free range" are quickly falling prey to the agricultural giants, who can find ways to just barely comply with the rules, or to change the rules altogether.  But going to the farmer's market, or the farm itself, and shaking hands with the person who grows the crops, you can't fake that.

[Honest food] may seem more expensive than industrial crap, but it's actually quite a bargain.

Yeah, when you factor in that Triple-McBypass from decades of sitting and snacking, it pretty much evens out.

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My own turn-around came when I read a review of Frances Moore Lappe's book "Diet for a Small Planet" in the Farm Bureau Journal.  (My husband I were Farm Bureau members because that was a way for us to get group health insurance, and we qualified then, having 7 fruit/nut trees on our one-eighth acre town lot.) I had always been a "from scratch" cook, and was even raised to cook and eat nutritious, tasty, whole-grain food.  However, Lappe's book taught me so much more about diet, balance, and how to assess what we eat and how to plan my family's meals. She also opened my eyes about the politics of what we eat, and how, on a family kitchen basis, we can BE informed citizens of the world.  (My children, now adults, are conscious cooks themselves - but still tease me about Lappe's carob cake I used to make : no substitute for the real thing, I learned!!)          

I leaned a lot from Sundays at Moosewood, and cooked many a dish from it in the early 1990s. Another favorite from that time, though quite different in style, was Silver Palate. So decadent! Every recipe started with:
1 cup creme fraiche
1 stick butter
etc.
but the techniques were solid as a rock.

Food consumerism seems to me to be the only kind of consumerism that is entirely justifyable.  One must eat to live, and eating and responsibly 'treating' our waste (ie. properly putting it back into the system where it belongs) is the way our existence is integrated into the planet.  If only everyone started 'consuming' food with the degree of attention and zeal with which most people consume the latest gadget, or status symbol, or fashion, or celebrity gossip, etc........ Overnight the planet would become a better and different place as people realized the true importance of food, how it's treated, where it is from....

to eat well is to live well

I was thinking as I read this article that it points the way toward the next "revolution" in cookbook writing and food: local food. Many Americans may be starting to appreciate how good food can be in terms of flavor and variety, but most of us still don't realize that fruits and vegetables have local seasons where they are much better than the rest of the year. We don't understand that our food accounts for more fossil fuel burning than our cars. I'm putting together a cookbook that will help cooks make use of farmers' markets, CSAs, and other venues for locally grown produce, to enjoy and savor those tomatoes in August and September and WAIT FOR THEM the rest of the year. (Parsnips are coming up in April, and I'm excited; just finished a Brussels sprout run that was most satisfying.) I'm thoroughly convinced that anybody who doesn't like tomatoes has just never had a locally grown one in season.

I second the Vegan With a Vengeance cookbook recommendation. Another nice one is Vegan World Fusion.  A whole foods, locally-based vegan diet is what I strive for. I've got the vegan thing down and am working on the local.  A great non-animal based, non-transfat alternative to butter and margerine is Earth Balance, which is olive oil-based and delicious.

In addition to being inhumane and unhealthy, I think our dependence on factory farmed meat and poultry (and sometimes fish) is one of our biggest environmental problems in the western world, and unfortunately we're spreading these practices to developing nations. Hense bird flu.

are you familiar with Ann Vileisis' "Kitchen literacy"? Very well written and researched, tracing the way we simply lost knowledge of our food stuffs. And thanks for the Wendell Berry link! My American Studies prof at Cal Fullerton was an absolute Wendell Berry fan and I had completely lost sight of him.