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Enough: How your food choices will save the planet
Cut through the doom and confusion around the food we produce and eat - this shows the way forward for both people and planet.
Enough is a practical explanation of the Planetary Health Diet's research, allowing everyone to understand the science and to adopt its recommendations in our daily lives. The PHD specifies the food groups we should be eating. But what does a diet composed of, for example, 30% carbohydrates really look like? Which carbs, exactly? The diet is largely plant-based but does encompass meat and fish - but how many servings? It also explains what the nine 'planetary boundaries' are, that our food production systems must not exceed - from the quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus in the ecosystem to freshwater use.
We produce and eat unhealthy food, killing ourselves and the planet in the process. Food production systems are the single biggest cause of environmental change to the planet. And the food we are producing is killing us - more than a quarter of the world's population is overweight or obese, and deaths from stroke, heart attack, cancer, diabetes etc are at epidemic levels. It's easy to feel helpless.
In 2019 a seminal piece of research was published which, for the first time, made clear recommendations for a way to produce food and to eat that would save both the planet's resources and our own health. The Planetary Health Diet was the culmination of years of research by 37 eminent scientists of various backgrounds into this question - can we provide a growing population with a healthy diet from sustainable food systems? The answer is yes.
As a scientist and journalist Dr Cassandra Coburn is brilliantly placed to provide this clear, ultimately hopeful and hugely important roadmap for own future health, and that of the planet.
Enough is a practical explanation of the Planetary Health Diet's research, allowing everyone to understand the science and to adopt its recommendations in our daily lives. The PHD specifies the food groups we should be eating. But what does a diet composed of, for example, 30% carbohydrates really look like? Which carbs, exactly? The diet is largely plant-based but does encompass meat and fish - but how many servings? It also explains what the nine 'planetary boundaries' are, that our food production systems must not exceed - from the quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus in the ecosystem to freshwater use.
We produce and eat unhealthy food, killing ourselves and the planet in the process. Food production systems are the single biggest cause of environmental change to the planet. And the food we are producing is killing us - more than a quarter of the world's population is overweight or obese, and deaths from stroke, heart attack, cancer, diabetes etc are at epidemic levels. It's easy to feel helpless.
In 2019 a seminal piece of research was published which, for the first time, made clear recommendations for a way to produce food and to eat that would save both the planet's resources and our own health. The Planetary Health Diet was the culmination of years of research by 37 eminent scientists of various backgrounds into this question - can we provide a growing population with a healthy diet from sustainable food systems? The answer is yes.
As a scientist and journalist Dr Cassandra Coburn is brilliantly placed to provide this clear, ultimately hopeful and hugely important roadmap for own future health, and that of the planet.
- GenresVegan
280 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 7, 2021
12 people are currently reading
120 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 22, 2021
We seem to be reaching crisis after crisis at the moment. There is the pandemic, just in case you haven’t noticed it, then the climate crisis that if it hasn’t already reached a tipping point, will probably be along any day soon. On top of that, we have a food crisis that is building and we are starting to run out of potable water in certain places. The vast factory farms and food production systems are designed to pump out low nutrition and heavily processed food that is at best unhealthy for us and at worst will kill us and the planet.
Great…
Thankfully some really clever people have been working on a system that should be able to help us and help draw the planet back from the abyss. It is called the Planetary Health Diet and was first published in 2019. It asked the question; can we provide a growing population with a healthy diet from sustainable food systems? The answer is yes. But to do it successfully we have to make lots of changes to the way we produce our food to give us a healthier lifestyle and to save the planet.
First, we have to understand where we are at the moment and how we got to this point. In her new book, Enough, Dr Cassandra Coburn takes us through the how we farm at the moment and the negative effects it is having on the planet. There are chapters on carbohydrates and sugars, fat, meat and fruit and vegetables. How we grow each of these food types is explained in a clear way along with how the present methods of producing them are harming ecosystems and us.
To produce 1kg of beef for a small family Sunday joint takes 326 square metres of land. That family that is going to be eating it, is living on 68 square meters of land. So that one joint need just under five times the amount of land to produce. Wheat needs about 4 square metres to produce a kilo, rice 3 square metres and potatoes 1 square metre. That is quite some difference.
Along with the details on what the is going wrong, there are lots of clear explanations on how we can change our eating habits, recommend diets and more importantly if lots of people start to make these changes to their diet how they will start to have a cumulative positive effect on our environment.
With Coburn’s academic credentials, this could have been a dry read. Thankfully it isn’t. It is full of clear and concise explanations of how and why the Planetary Health Diet will work in practice and being jargon-free is very accessible to readers of all levels. This is a very important book in lots of ways and I hope that it gets the attention it deserves.
Great…
Thankfully some really clever people have been working on a system that should be able to help us and help draw the planet back from the abyss. It is called the Planetary Health Diet and was first published in 2019. It asked the question; can we provide a growing population with a healthy diet from sustainable food systems? The answer is yes. But to do it successfully we have to make lots of changes to the way we produce our food to give us a healthier lifestyle and to save the planet.
First, we have to understand where we are at the moment and how we got to this point. In her new book, Enough, Dr Cassandra Coburn takes us through the how we farm at the moment and the negative effects it is having on the planet. There are chapters on carbohydrates and sugars, fat, meat and fruit and vegetables. How we grow each of these food types is explained in a clear way along with how the present methods of producing them are harming ecosystems and us.
To produce 1kg of beef for a small family Sunday joint takes 326 square metres of land. That family that is going to be eating it, is living on 68 square meters of land. So that one joint need just under five times the amount of land to produce. Wheat needs about 4 square metres to produce a kilo, rice 3 square metres and potatoes 1 square metre. That is quite some difference.
Along with the details on what the is going wrong, there are lots of clear explanations on how we can change our eating habits, recommend diets and more importantly if lots of people start to make these changes to their diet how they will start to have a cumulative positive effect on our environment.
With Coburn’s academic credentials, this could have been a dry read. Thankfully it isn’t. It is full of clear and concise explanations of how and why the Planetary Health Diet will work in practice and being jargon-free is very accessible to readers of all levels. This is a very important book in lots of ways and I hope that it gets the attention it deserves.
March 17, 2021
A must read if you are concerned about climate change and the treatment of the natural world. This book goes into fascinating detail about how our food choices link to climate change, land use, extinction, and so many other key environmental issues. The Planetary Health Diet is not vegan (dont worry!!). There are clear steps in showing how you can still eat the things you want but in a more responsible way. A relatively unbiased and scientific view on food choices and key environmental issues. I'll be getting all my close friends and family to read this.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 26, 2021
LEES DIT BOEK!!
July 7, 2023
Heavy reading, very insightful
January 19, 2021
Dr Cassandra Coburn is an impressive character. A scientist, editor and now author of her first book, Enough: How Your Food Choices Will Save the Planet, she has a doctorate in genetics and is associated with The Lancet; all great credentials. The danger though that sometimes occurs when academics write books on subjects key to their hearts is that the language isn’t accessible enough and the reader therefore disengages quite quickly. That’s not the case here – thankfully so, as this is an important subject, one which we all need to take note of and, more importantly, act on.
In the early pages of the book, Coburn states: ‘The food that we eat worldwide has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. While an unhealthy diet was once believed to be a Western problem, this trend can now be seen worldwide.’ Using well-interspersed stats and data, Coburn presents a damning but also hopeful view of our future, linking dietary choices to current prevalent health issues, such as diabetes and obesity and also to COVID–19, but saying we have the chance to change this, to change the way we live, the way we eat and by doing that save our planet.
Enough has an important message and Coburn supplies a great deal of research in a very readable way. It’s not preachy. There are no judgements, she is a scientist after all, just the presentation of information that supports her viewpoint.
The text itself is presented in manageable sections, backed up by the occasional diagram or chart to make the information more accessible to readers. And one could just dip in and out of the book. Yet, reading it straight through gives a great overview of what we’re facing if we don’t own up to what we’re doing, the impact of which is that we’re not just hurting ourselves and each other, but the planet, too.
In the last chapter of the book, Coburn talks about the pineapple (and Charles II) as an example of global agricultural systems. She states that these systems are ‘contributing to the way we are pushing the world out of a safe operating space for humanity and into an uncertain and unstable future. Things must change.’
Probably like a lot of the people who have or will read Enough, I was already aware of many of the issues that Coburn raises, but what this book serves to do is bring home how much we need to act, how much we need to respond to the issues that, yes, we may have inherited from previous generations, but that we, individuals, not government, have the power to alter. As the author concludes, ‘Just by changing the way we eat, we have the power to change the world’.
And that is enough. It’s that simple.
Recommended.
See: https://www.theliteraryshed.co.uk/rea...
This review was originally published as part of the virtual book tour. Many thanks to the publisher for sending us a review copy. All opinions are our own. All rights reserved.
In the early pages of the book, Coburn states: ‘The food that we eat worldwide has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. While an unhealthy diet was once believed to be a Western problem, this trend can now be seen worldwide.’ Using well-interspersed stats and data, Coburn presents a damning but also hopeful view of our future, linking dietary choices to current prevalent health issues, such as diabetes and obesity and also to COVID–19, but saying we have the chance to change this, to change the way we live, the way we eat and by doing that save our planet.
Enough has an important message and Coburn supplies a great deal of research in a very readable way. It’s not preachy. There are no judgements, she is a scientist after all, just the presentation of information that supports her viewpoint.
The text itself is presented in manageable sections, backed up by the occasional diagram or chart to make the information more accessible to readers. And one could just dip in and out of the book. Yet, reading it straight through gives a great overview of what we’re facing if we don’t own up to what we’re doing, the impact of which is that we’re not just hurting ourselves and each other, but the planet, too.
In the last chapter of the book, Coburn talks about the pineapple (and Charles II) as an example of global agricultural systems. She states that these systems are ‘contributing to the way we are pushing the world out of a safe operating space for humanity and into an uncertain and unstable future. Things must change.’
Probably like a lot of the people who have or will read Enough, I was already aware of many of the issues that Coburn raises, but what this book serves to do is bring home how much we need to act, how much we need to respond to the issues that, yes, we may have inherited from previous generations, but that we, individuals, not government, have the power to alter. As the author concludes, ‘Just by changing the way we eat, we have the power to change the world’.
And that is enough. It’s that simple.
Recommended.
See: https://www.theliteraryshed.co.uk/rea...
This review was originally published as part of the virtual book tour. Many thanks to the publisher for sending us a review copy. All opinions are our own. All rights reserved.
January 27, 2021
At first glance I thought this book was going to try to convince me to become a vegetarian, but it turned out to be something more thought-provoking! Using the report of a worldwide review of food and food production from EAT-Lancet and the 'Planetary Health Diet' plan it came up with, Dr Coburn takes a long and hard look at how the food we eat affects the environment, urging us to eat better and most importantly to reduce the carbon footprint of what we eat, and to eat sustainably. Yes, eating less red meat, more wholegrains and more fruit and veg is an important part of that, but the problems are far wider ranging than cow burps and farts and manure run-off. Apart from clearing land to grow crops, there's how we process them too and ultra-processing is another big factor in poor diets. There is much to glean from this important book - read my full review on my blog here: https://annabookbel.net/enough-by-dr-...
May 9, 2024
Strong book - more sustainability than food
This is a great book, really great. It just wasn't quite what I was expecting and that is my fault. I had been looking for a more food focussed book rather than sustainability science. I'd say it is 1/4 food & health and 3/4 sustainability science, I was looking for it the other way round as I already knew the sustainability stuff.
That being said, the intro to the planetary health diet is very important and I enjoyed the read.
This is a great book, really great. It just wasn't quite what I was expecting and that is my fault. I had been looking for a more food focussed book rather than sustainability science. I'd say it is 1/4 food & health and 3/4 sustainability science, I was looking for it the other way round as I already knew the sustainability stuff.
That being said, the intro to the planetary health diet is very important and I enjoyed the read.
June 6, 2022
Accessible, non preaching, insightful book with excellent advice.
Wonderful book by a clearly insightful and knowledgeable author who has a brilliant writing style.
Thoroughly recommend.
Wonderful book by a clearly insightful and knowledgeable author who has a brilliant writing style.
Thoroughly recommend.
March 23, 2021
Such a clever book. I’ll probably re-read parts and come back to it every now and then.
It’s scientific and enjoyable at the same time. A must-read for everyone trying to be more conscious of how the food we eat impacts the planet with clear recommendations we could all follow.
It’s scientific and enjoyable at the same time. A must-read for everyone trying to be more conscious of how the food we eat impacts the planet with clear recommendations we could all follow.
January 20, 2021
Enough by Dr Cassandra Coburn has been my 'dip into' book over the past few months. It's a book that is so accessibly written that delivers a large punch. Anyone who has concerns about the future of our planet, and about our long-term health really should read this. The author comes across as both incredibly knowledgeable, but also totally understanding of how we have come to this point.
She doesn't preach at her readers, she produces facts, and explores ways that everyone can contribute to a future that doesn't include destroying more of our earth, and looks after our own health and well being too.
I've often thought that given my time again, I'd love to have trained in food science, or become a dietician. Over thirty years ago, I lost most of my small bowel due to adhesions and from that day forward, what I ate has had a huge impact on my health. I struggle to absorb the essential vitamins and nutrients from food as I don't absorb them, and have to rely on injections of various vitamins to maintain my health. I find it really fascinating how the average person disregards the effects of vitamin deficiencies, and the author goes into detail about the potential long term effects of a lack of nutrients.
At the end of October, my husband was taken into hospital, he was there for three weeks in total. His gallbladder and liver had become severely infected which resulted in sepsis. Due to the COVID situation, they were unable to operate to remove the gallbladder and he is now waiting for a date for the operation. He was really sick, and remains terrified that it may happen again. Since then, we've become even more conscious of food labelling, and I am constantly experimenting with new dishes, to protect his health, and to be honest, because even though I thought we ate well, I've realised that we could do much better.
The author links between food choices and the effect on our planet are well observed and eye opening. She divides her finding into chapters that include our the earth is interconnected, and then goes on to deal with different food groups such as fats, animal protein and fruit. She suggests alternative sources of protein, in order to cut down on eating meat, whilst assuring the reader that she is not vegetarian and has no intention of becoming one. Her suggestions are pretty simple to adapt to, and could easily become things that we can all do, almost without thinking about.
Enough is not a book that I sat down and read from cover to cover, but has become a 'go-to' book for me when I'm thinking about creating a shopping list for the week ahead. One of the tips that I've really taken on board, is to plan meals around the vegetables that I buy, rather than making meat the main focus. I admit I have struggled a little during the winter as I much prefer summer vegetables and salad but I'm looking forward to creating more dishes as the seasons change.
This is an excellently written book, my copy is already dog-eared and I will continue to reference it in the future. Highly recommended, this is an important subject that we should all be aware of, and we can all doing our bit to contribute.
She doesn't preach at her readers, she produces facts, and explores ways that everyone can contribute to a future that doesn't include destroying more of our earth, and looks after our own health and well being too.
I've often thought that given my time again, I'd love to have trained in food science, or become a dietician. Over thirty years ago, I lost most of my small bowel due to adhesions and from that day forward, what I ate has had a huge impact on my health. I struggle to absorb the essential vitamins and nutrients from food as I don't absorb them, and have to rely on injections of various vitamins to maintain my health. I find it really fascinating how the average person disregards the effects of vitamin deficiencies, and the author goes into detail about the potential long term effects of a lack of nutrients.
At the end of October, my husband was taken into hospital, he was there for three weeks in total. His gallbladder and liver had become severely infected which resulted in sepsis. Due to the COVID situation, they were unable to operate to remove the gallbladder and he is now waiting for a date for the operation. He was really sick, and remains terrified that it may happen again. Since then, we've become even more conscious of food labelling, and I am constantly experimenting with new dishes, to protect his health, and to be honest, because even though I thought we ate well, I've realised that we could do much better.
The author links between food choices and the effect on our planet are well observed and eye opening. She divides her finding into chapters that include our the earth is interconnected, and then goes on to deal with different food groups such as fats, animal protein and fruit. She suggests alternative sources of protein, in order to cut down on eating meat, whilst assuring the reader that she is not vegetarian and has no intention of becoming one. Her suggestions are pretty simple to adapt to, and could easily become things that we can all do, almost without thinking about.
Enough is not a book that I sat down and read from cover to cover, but has become a 'go-to' book for me when I'm thinking about creating a shopping list for the week ahead. One of the tips that I've really taken on board, is to plan meals around the vegetables that I buy, rather than making meat the main focus. I admit I have struggled a little during the winter as I much prefer summer vegetables and salad but I'm looking forward to creating more dishes as the seasons change.
This is an excellently written book, my copy is already dog-eared and I will continue to reference it in the future. Highly recommended, this is an important subject that we should all be aware of, and we can all doing our bit to contribute.
January 18, 2021
This book definitely provides food for thought (excuse the pun) but it is thought provoking, informative and beyond all else is extremely interesting.
Thomasina Myers has quoted "for anyone who wants to eat better and save the world at the same time. Essential reading."
It is full of facts and figures which informs us how to eat better and that ultimately you dont have to give up meat to make the world a better place.
2021 is a year of exploring new foods, tastes and bettering my health and this book will accompany me on that journey.
⭐⭐⭐
Thomasina Myers has quoted "for anyone who wants to eat better and save the world at the same time. Essential reading."
It is full of facts and figures which informs us how to eat better and that ultimately you dont have to give up meat to make the world a better place.
2021 is a year of exploring new foods, tastes and bettering my health and this book will accompany me on that journey.
⭐⭐⭐
May 5, 2021
I'd say this is pretty essential reading for anybody who eats. It is irresponsible to turn a blind eye or try to plea ignorance about the impact of what we as individuals are eating, when it can mean the ability of future generations to live without wars over land use, water, food scarcity and so on. The book is heavy going, and down right depressing in parts - but that's not the fault of the author - that is the situation we are in - however I also found the book very uplifting and left me feeling much more hopeful for the planet in the end because there are very easy things we can do that will make a massive difference. So many books concentrate either on diets that are good for us and how to be healthy or they concentrate on saving the environment. This book very clearly explains the impact that what we eat has on both our body and our planet and ultimately gives a very clear guideline as to what we should be eating to save the planet but also be as healthy as we can each be too. I loved how the author has the ability to explain some very scientific stuff in very clear and easy to understand way. There's a lot of stats and so on but that's inevitable in this kind of book. I still found it very readable while being hugely informative too. I love how the author also relates things back to her personal experiences too. The tips in the last chapter are gold too. If only everybody would just do it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews