Real Food

The first edition of this book was published in 1990, with a revised version in 2002. I expected to have to make lots of revisions for this 2014 edition. However, in rereading it, I realize that not so very much has changed. The 1990 prices can now be safely doubled. I now make very little use of soy in any form, and also very limited use of powdered milk. Readers interested in the recently identified casein variant in milk known as A1A2 will find a concise explanation in my book Keeping a Family Cow . Perhaps the most important change since the first edition of Real Food is the difference in animal feeding following the outbreak of Mad Cow disease in about 1996. Legislation in Europe, the UK and the US was passed to prevent the recycling of most waste products from butchering into ruminant feeding. (Some is still used for swine, poultry and pet food.) The use of these products as a protein source in commercial agriculture largely ceased. In its place agribusiness stepped in with a huge expansion of soy production as a new protein source. Vast acreages of soy around the world are destined as animal food. The international system of confined animal feeding (CAFO) is now largely dependent on corn and soy production, as is the rapidly expanding business of fish farming. By-products from butchering are now treated as a waste problem rather than as a valuable resource. The only escape from this system of institutionalized waste is a return to local food production. In such systems it is possible to make effective use of waste products. This is also the most efficient way to have an agriculture that does not pump CO2 into the atmosphere, since grazing animals do not cause the losses that constantly occur with plowed soil. With a return to local agriculture must come an awakened recognition of the importance of grass. Grazing of cattle draws CO2 out of the atmosphere and back into the soil. I urge readers to acquaint themselves with the Marin Carbon Project, which scientifically demonstrates the truth established by Allan Savory and others: Nature comes into proper balance only in synchrony with grazing animals.