Know Your Food
Marketing messages and gimmicks at the grocery store can lead us to believe that we’re making healthy choices when that often isn’t true. Pull back the curtain on our food supply to discover what food is truly healthy and how to eat to your advantage.
About The Book
To be healthy, you must eat healthy food.
Sounds simple enough, right? Unfortunately, the sea of marketing messages and gimmicks at the grocery store can easily confuse even the most nutrition-focused among us. Logos with images of farms and labels with “all-natural” lead us to believe that we’re making healthy choices when, in fact, that is often not true.
It’s time to pull back the curtain on our food supply to discover what’s happening in agriculture, food production, and food service that is an assault on your health.
Eat to Your Advantage is a must-read for anyone who wants to get conscious about our food chain and its effect on our lives and bodies. Chapter after chapter is filled with information substantiated by Kirsten’s years on “the front line” of the food chain—from her decades in the restaurant business to her nutrition studies, farming, and personal health crisis.
V. Capaldi — Paleo Boss Lady
This book is for people who:
- wish to really understand food and how to use it to their advantage
- desire to heal their body & brain
- need a way out of food confusion
- want to cut through the food pseudo-science fads and diet culture crap
Eat to your advantage is a bestseller!
Get your copy of my new bestselling book today. It's your field guide to defending your brain and body in the face of the insane American Food System!
Local? Pick up a signed copy exclusively at Main Street Books or This Old Farm.
What’s inside
What? Here is the Problem
Defining Health and Where We Seek It
The Microscopic Revolution
How? Eat to Your Advantage
Things Forgotten
Getting Local
Savvy Shopping
In The Kitchen
Why? Where It All Went Wrong
A Little Bit Of History
How’d You Grow That
How’d You Raise That
What’s In That
Now What? Be A Rebel
The Power of Food
Rebellion
Engaging
Introduction (Excerpt)
A BROKEN SYSTEM
Our food system is completely broken. This will become clear as you read on (Section Two is all about this). There are all kinds of issues intertwined with the rise of industrial food—gender roles, classism, ethnic identity, economic status, and diet culture among them. Systemic change is needed. This book focuses on helping you maneuver a broken food system so you can eat to your advantage. Along the way, I hope you will become committed, like me, to voting with your fork. Consumers are already providing the catalyst for a new food economy, but we need a lot more people to opt-in.
Above all, I am an educator. I have learned that by understanding food, you can understand health. I’m a nutrition expert, but I am also a farmer, a restaurateur, and a patient who uses food and lifestyle to manage or eliminate a long list of chronic and autoimmune issues.
It’s time to pull the curtain back, take a sobering look, and make a plan. Over the past 15 years, I’ve researched and focused on food, nutrition, and health. What I’ve learned is contained in this book, so now I can lead the way for you. But I’m not going to kid you; it takes some effort. What you’ll discover, though, is that choosing real foods is life-changing and absolutely worth it. I’ll help you figure out how to make decisions about the foods you choose so you can eat to your advantage.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Section One—What?
This section defines the problem. Essentially, we’ve traded nutrition for modern convenience. I share my dramatic health story and explain how becoming food and farm literate changed everything for me. In this section, we will keep coming back to pickles, because real foods and those little microorganisms are the keys to getting back on track.
Section Two—Why?
This section focuses on the reasons why our society is struggling with food. I’ll delve into the disconnect between the food we produce and the food we need for our health.
I’ll draw on my background and experience as a farmer, restaurateur, patient, and nutrition professional to help you understand what has gone so terribly wrong with our food system. I’ll review how trading traditional food preparations for modern convenience contributed to our current problem. This is the bad news section.
Section Three—How?
This section addresses how you can learn to eat to your advantage. Based on the knowledge gained in Section Two, I’ll teach you how to make informed, healthy food decisions. You’ll get practical, real-world help on how to shop and what to eat so you can build a better body and brain. I’ll outline what food short-cuts are okay to take, and the ones you should avoid.
Section Four—Now What?
In the final section, I’ll detail what to do when you need to go further and how to find help. I’ll cover the next steps and give you a road map so you can continue your food literacy journey and up your health game.
Chapters
Pages
Increase your healthspan and wealthspan
Getting smart about food is what you need to improve your focus, energy, and productivity.
You don’t have to be a farmer or food producer. but you do need to know the hallmarks of well-raised and produced food so you can eat to your advantage. What you see becomes your normal, but there is nothing normal about our food today.
Author’s Note
I am a nutrition expert, farmer, restaurateur, and patient who has used nutrition therapy to heal from chronic and autoimmune disease. I use my unique background to give you the food truth and the inside track on food to feel and think better.
Along the way, you’ll learn that true health is less about the food you refuse and more about the food you choose. I uncovered this truth for myself when struggling physically with a myriad of health issues that stole my quality of life. Working with healthcare professionals, I found a holistic recovery process through food. I wrote this book to give you the keys to unlock the doors to a better brain, a more resilient body, and better living.