Enough by Dr Cassandra Coburn

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for Enough by Dr Cassandra Coburn and published by Octopus Books.

About the Book 

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 is easy to feel helpless.
But there are things we can do to positively impact our own health, as well as that of the world around us.

About the Author

Dr Cassandra Coburn is a scientist, writer and editor. She obtained her PhD in Genetics from the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College London, UK. She joined The Lancet in 2013 and is now Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet Healthy Longevity. Cassandra has given talks on health in China, Japan, the USA and across Europe, and has led multiple specialist commissions to address inequities in healthcare provision. A career highlight was launching a research programme for cancer care at the United Nations, alongside US President-Elect Joe Biden.

My Review

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.

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour

Buy this at your local independent bookshop. If you’re not sure where your nearest is then you can find one here

My thanks to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for the copy of the book to read.

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6 Comments

  1. annecater

    Huge thanks for the blog tour support Paul x

    • Paul

      You’re very welcome, Anne

  2. Annabel (AnnaBookBel)

    I really enjoyed this different way of looking at the food we eat through how we grow it. Great review.

    • Paul

      And also it highlights just how interconnected and interdependent everything is

  3. Liz Dexter

    This does sound an interesting and important book.

    • Paul

      Apologies for the delay in replying. The blog has been down a lot of the weekend, server issues from what I can gather. I think that it is Liz, but the suggestions in here must be carried out in conjunction with other measures to combat climate change

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