rossana martinez

A while ago, my friend Margie, an awesome athlete, cook, and nutrition expert, recommended me to read the book Real Food by Nina Planck. One of my favorite things to do is to cook simple and fresh food, and I find so many similarities between cooking and working out an idea in the studio.

I’m currently hooked on the book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I think these books are great tools to open our eyes and remind us that we have the power to change things — even if it’s a small change. Since I’m not into junk food (had enough in art school!) or diets, eating healthier feels natural to me.

As Michael Pollan says in his introduction to The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

“Eating is an agricultural act, as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too. Though much has been done to obscure this simple fact, how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world—and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life afford quite as much satisfaction. By comparison, the pleasures of eating industrially, which is to say eating in ignorance, are fleeting. Many people today seem perfectly content eating at the end of an industrial food chain, without a thought in the world: this book is probably not for them; there are things in it that will ruin their appetite. But in the end this is a book about the pleasures of eating, the kind of pleasures that are only deepened by knowing”.

So thanks Margie! And here is my list of recommended books for those interested in food, nutrition, wellness, and social responsibility:

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution by Alice Waters.

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating by Mark Bittman.

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.

Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck.