From your burger to your soda, Gustafson unpacks how even the hyper local can cause worldwide ripples. For instance: American agricultural policy promoting corn and soybeans in beef farming means we feed more to cows than to hungry people. This is compounded by the environmental cost of factory livestock farming, rising obesity rates, and the false economics of unhealthful high meat consumption.
The answer? Eat a hamburger – just make it a smaller, sustainably raised, grass-fed one. Gustafson – a young entrepreneur, foreign policy expert, and food policy advocate – delivers a wake-up call that will inspire even the most passive reader to take action. We can love our food and our country while being better stewards of our system and our health. We the Eaters is nothing short of a manifesto: If we change dinner, we really can change the world.
Ellen Gustafson is a sustainable food systems activist and social entrepreneur. She is the cofounder of Food Tank: The Food Think Tank and lectures around the world on global food issues. The cofounder of FEED Projects and the FEED Foundation, which have provided more than 60 million school meals to children in need, Gustafson has also worked at the U.N. World Food Program, ABC News, and the Council on Foreign Relations.