Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #156728 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 452 pages

The Organic Way
`This is a compelling and readable book from an award winning
author...encouraging us to question our food suppliers. Harvey sets out
what we can do to win the fight for real, nutritious food that will stop us
being overfed and undernourished.

Olive (The Green Olive award) July 2007
Its concise, practical and shows you how to improve what you eat

Guardian Unlimited
Draws on a depth of knowledge to make fascinating connections... a book
that deserves to be properly chewed over.

Customer Reviews

Slightly naff title but a superb exposé of the poor quality of our food!
I would offer this as being pretty much a required book for anyone at all interested in the quality of the food that they are feeding themselves and their children.

Harvey's book is both well written and (it seems to me at least) very well researched. In essence, he offers evidence that modern industrial farming techniques are robbing foodstuffs of a high proportion of important nutrients - minerals, fatty acids and others. He links this in with the rise in rates of so-called diseases of affluence, which has been done to an extent by others, but goes further to suggest that illnesses such as dementia and behavioural difficulties may in no small way be linked to a deficient diet.

Harvey examines the ways in which nutritional balance could be returned to foods and how the production of even "organic" foods has been grossly compromised by the application of industrial farming techniques and a stretching of the definition of "organic."

Harvey provides plenty of reference to research in his text, but also includes considerable anecdotal evidence: if I have a criticism of the work it is that sometimes it is difficult to see where the hard science ends and the anecdote begins, but in general he does a good job in separating fact from speculation.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in farming, food production and, indeed, what they are putting into their mouths.

Essential, gripping reading
If you read nothing else this year, read this book. It will open your eyes to the staggering effects on our health of the foods that we all consume. It is very well researched, and draws in many of the author's personal experiences of farming and food of the forties, fifties and sixties. Although anecdotal, these are strongly relevant and will be identified with by anyone who has lived in those decades or earlier. If you were born since those times, it is even more important that you see what Graham Harvey is showing us, because our lives, literally, depend on it.

excellent
This book is an excellent look at the problems with the
production and the nutrient content of the food that the majority
of us eat. Harvey describes (a) how good diet relates to good
health, (b) how and why the nutrient content of food has gone
down over the last fifty or so years, (c) the problems with
the current agro-business approach to farming, and (d) he shows
how simple the recipe could be for better types of farming.

It's clear and it's written by someone who cares what he's
talking about. Even if you are already familiar with this
type of material, you might find new insights - for example,
I have previously read about the vitality of the Hunza
people, but I've never seen Harvey's explanation of how it could
relate to the fact that their water supply was glacial runoff.
The book is full of interesting stuff like that.

My one tiny quibble is that his book opens with an
anecdote about his disappointment with some organic food he
bought - but there is a second version of this anecdote
available online which is almost the same wording but
a different food. I don't trust the anecdote!