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EATING OURSELVES SICK (How modern food is destroying our health) by Louise Stephen (MacMillan Publishers, $39.99, available now) www.foodtechnology.co.nz 31 THE LITTLE BOOK OF SLOW THIS MONTH’S LUCKY SUBSCRIBER, Mark Pearson from JdeR Cintropur, Auckland, will receive all three books reviewed on this page. B O O K R E V I E W S When the authors chose the word ‘little’ in their title, they weren’t kidding. This pint-sized book is so cute that you want to fry it lightly in olive oil and serve it with a crunchy salad for a long and lingering Sunday brunch! Written to help the reader slow their life down, relax and de-stress with hints and tips from a more leisurely time, this wee gem can easily fit in your handbag or pocket for when you feel like reading something worthwhile. How about learning how to bake your own bread, pickled vegetables, fresh cheeses or yoghurt? Or the art of packing the perfect picnic, cook using a wood-fired oven, hosting a vintage-style high tea, beachcombing, growing indoor plants, collecting vinyl, holding dinner parties…you get the drift. Cookbook author Wise and ABC radio personality McIntyre have created a little piece of essential reading as the cooler weather beckons. THE LITTLE BOOK OF SLOW (Live mindfully and enjoy the simple things) by Sally Wise and Paul McIntyre (Harper Collins, $29.99, available now) When Louise Stephen contracted flu in 2002 which led to dialysis and a kidney transplant, she was perplexed as to how she – a reasonably healthy middle-class 33-year-old professional – could get so sick. So, putting on her analyst hat, the former Australian corporate strategy consultant started to investigate the world of food and medicine by applying her business mind research skills to looking at modern diet. What she found will knock your socks off. “Food is picking up where big tobacco left off, making multi-million-dollar profits by selling us food that is destroying our health,” Stephen says. “Not only this, governments and peak health bodies – recipients of generous donations – are paving the way.” Stephen says diet has changed radically in the space of 100 years, with home-cooked food made with whole ingredients swapped for processed food made from sugar, seed oils and refined wheat. “Modern-day food is cheap, convenient and accessible, but also hugely destructive to our health,” she says. “Looking closely at the parlous state of our modern-diet led me to wonder: is there any hope for us?” It makes you think. Freelance writer, journalist and novelist John Newton starts off this fascinating book with equally interesting questions: when was the last time you seared a kangaroo fillet and served it with a pepperberry sauce? Have you ever eaten quandong? Riberries? Magpie goose? For us in New Zealand, those names may not be familiar, but when you consider that before Europeans arrived in Australia in 1788, Aboriginal people living in the tropical North chose from among 750 different plant and animal foods, it’s hard not to reflect and compare the diets and appetites of ancient Maori here at home. Newton says he wrote the book because ancient Australian food has been ignored by European Australians for more than 200 years, but times are now changing as home and professional chefs start tentatively using foods that have been eaten for more than a staggering 50,000 years. He refers to ‘food racism’, saying that “We’ll happily eat boat noodle soup – with beef blood stirred through it – or stinking tofu, but not kangaroo. Which dispenses with the theory of neophobia – fear of the new: in this instance, new food. There’s something else going on here in the rejection of native foods. Moving on from that rejection can only be good for Australian culture.” Packed with interesting recipes, this book will ask plenty of questions, much of them relevant to us over the Ditch. EATING OURSELVES SICK THE OLDEST FOODS ON EARTH THE OLDEST FOODS ON EARTH (A History of Australian Native Foods), by John Newton (NewSouth, $34.99, available now)


FT-Mar17-eMag
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