Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need

by Michael P Hoffmann, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, Danielle L. Eiseman

Our Changing Menu unpacks the increasingly complex relationships between food and climate change. Whether you're a chef, baker, distiller, restaurateur, or someone who simply enjoys a good pizza or drink, it's time to come to terms with how climate change is affecting our diverse and interwoven food system. Michael P. Hoffmann, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, and Danielle L. Eiseman offer an eye-opening journey through a complete menu of before-dinner drinks and salads; main courses and sides; and coffee and dessert. Along the way they examine the escalating changes occurring to the flavors of spices and teas, the yields of wheat, the vitamins in rice, and the price of vanilla. Their story is rounded out with a primer on the global food system, the causes and impacts of climate change, and what we can all do. Our Changing Menu is a celebration of food and a call to action―encouraging readers to join with others from the common ground of food to help tackle the greatest challenge of our time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food

264 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2021

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wondering why coffee prices keep rising? How climate change will affect the future of your wine? Our Changing Menu, Climate Change, and the Foods We Love and Need is a wake-up call that addresses questions about food and climate change. The book is written by Carrie Koplinka Loehr, Michael P. Hoffman, and Danielle L. Eiseman and published by Cornell University Press, 2021. It takes the reader through our dinner menu and explains how climate change interrupts food production. A consistent format throughout, each section concludes with current solutions employed to keep our menu intact. While the authors state on page one that the book “is intended to provide a wake-up call,” it becomes clear that they also want to engage a broad audience in solving a problem we have all created.

Our Changing Menu takes climate change from a sometimes confusing concept to an understandable problem. The authors have an academic background, and they distill the issue into language that is not too laced with sophistry but also not so simplistic as to bore the reader. After reading this book, a non-scientist can easily discuss some of the concepts inherent to global warming. The engaging narrative is complemented by the beautiful illustrations of Lindsay Potoff depicting many of the book’s points.

The first chapter sets the tone for why our climate and the food we eat is in such danger by discussing our life-sustaining atmosphere: a mere seven miles above sea level. “We live in a small space. Though the earth can seem vast, as can the endless skies above, in fact, we exist in a wafer-thin layer of the atmosphere averaging about 7 miles above sea level.” This point is followed by an explanation of how carbon dioxide gets trapped in these seven miles and causes climate change. An apple is drawn with a long ribbon of skin extending across the page: a metaphor for the delicate yet vital atmosphere. This image stays with the reader and makes an impression when described to others.

Our Changing Menu adds much to global warming education as it hits us where we live: our wine, our coffee, and other vital parts of our meal. The authors follow chapter one with a tour, menu item by menu item, and instill a sense of urgency bordering on shock. We realize with a new lens that the delicate balance of water, wind and oxygen is changing and putting our food in danger and, by extension, us.

The narrative of many of our favorite meal components is interesting and informative. The authors discuss the cultural and nutritional context of food items. They explain how farmers adapt to keep food on our tables when the rains and temperatures fluctuate to extremes.

An examination of rice shows its import to three billion people worldwide, its multicultural place on menus, and the threat it both receives and poses to the environment. There is much to discover in this section: California is a significant producer of wild rice, and rising sea levels seep salt into the water of rice paddies, which contribute to declines in rice yields. In addition, rice adds to global warming because the “microbes in rice paddies anaerobic soils decompose organic matter and produce 9 percent of global anthropogenic methane emissions.”

The authors don’t leave you hanging out with the problem. This section ends with: “What is Being Done for Rice?” and explains a farming practice of alternate wetting and drying (AWD). This practice saves water consumption and reduces methane emissions, assisting in sustainable production. The discussions of rice and other menu items throughout the book demonstrate the premise outlined in chapter one. Climate change means changes in daily weather and the temperature and water that sustain human and animal life.

Our Changing Menu is both hopeful and sobering: example after example, from wine to avocados to rice point to a world at its tipping point, yet people are working to adapt growing methods in so many creative ways. The seven miles of atmosphere we depend on is threatened as increased carbon dioxide warms the earth leading to changes in atmospheric conditions that leave our food sources prey to disease and death. The authors point out at the end that its intent to inform is chronicled on their website. While this is a good idea, I would suggest incorporating social media into their vision for outreach education. Social media happens in real-time, and there is an audience of young, concerned people interested in voicing the urgency of this matter who can benefit from what Our Changing Menu shares. The social updates can, of course, be housed on their website and linked to their site.

Finally, one closes this well-researched, engaging narrative wondering what social scientists add to elucidating our climate change problem. While the book focuses on science and scientific interventions, we need to dig at the philosophical underpinnings that brought our world to this point. Only one in seventy-five workers is a rancher or farmer, and the suicide rates among male farmers in parts of the US are twice that than those in the rest of the country. How did humans get so far from nature, and when will we wake up to her call? When will we stop the collective poisoning of the earth and the atmosphere that sustains us? When will we take the burden off of the farmer and place it in the collective?

Our Changing Menu is a project which has opened my eyes in a new and different way to climate change. I will use the valuable information on the website and incorporate their suggestions about What I can do to be part of the solution.

In full disclose, Carrie Koplinka Loehr and I were in the same writing group.

[Val Hicks]

Very informative; I learned a lot about food in general. I wish it took more of a stance on how food is impacting climate change (it touched on it but only here and there.) If climate change and its effects on our future interest you, you'll definitely get something out of this. It's not a doom and gloom book, so it's great to educate yourself without getting depressed about the future (because none of us need more reasons to be depressed about the future.)

[Johnny Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Information is a bit too cursory and repetitive.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unique viewpoint toward informing people about the climate crisis, especially the effects on the foods we eat. Using the progression of courses in a meal, the authors present how climate change is influencing the foods we eat, the trends of what is going on, and some things that are being done to compensate, although you might not necessarily have the same food you are eating now. There are also some general guidelines on what people to do to help with the effort to deal with climate change. Things are more urgent than many people realize, but by using food as an example, it connects to people that thing that they may consume regularly will share in the effects that climate change is doing to the world.

The 7 key takeaways are worth repeating here: 1) Become climate change literate and help others learn; 2) Start talking about climate change; 3) Adopt a more plant-based diet; 4) Reduce food waste; 5) Consider your entire carbon footprint; 6) Appreciate and support the people who supply the menu; 7) Be an activist and help created the change we need now.

[Sydney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview but I wish they were more in depth in with the end topics. Seems like they didn't research as much on aspects outside of the United States but that is only my perspective