What's for Dinner?

What are we really eating? How do we eat in a way that nourishes us and does least harm to the environment? What exactly do farmers do? Should the world go vegan? Do food miles matter?
Never before has so much food been produced by so few people to feed so many. Never before have Australian consumers been so disconnected from their food production, yet so interested in how it is done.

What's for Dinner? delves into the way our food is grown and our responsibilities as eaters. Weaving together science, history and lived experience, What's for Dinner? takes readers on a journey to meet the plants, animals and people who put the food on our plates. It's a book for anyone who eats.

Ebook available through all major etailers

This nonfiction account by journalist and self-confessed food-obsessive Jill Griffiths is a deep dive into some of the biggest issues around agriculture, food production and food consumption in our increasingly complex world. Tackling the topic with a journalist's eye and with a sympathetic ear to farmers and workers in the industry, Griffiths breaks down her subject into chapters about different food basics - tomatoes, wheat, potatoes, chicken, salmon, and many more - plunging us into the controversies, the issues, and the uncertainties that lie around each particular product. Each specific foodstuff provides an entry point to talking about other issues. For example, discussion of potatoes naturally leads into a discussion about pesticide usage and no-till farming. Or macadamias, which have been our most successful indigenous crop, offer a natural segue into an exploration of why the native foods industry has yet to really boom here, given it has so much potential.

Linking the food we eat to farming in Australia and the environmental impact of all the many steps from farm to table makes for a complicated network of relationships. What Griffiths uncovers about our food industry is that there are no hard and fast rules and no easy answers, but for anyone interested in how we get our food, the market constraints around it, and how hard farmers work to make a living, this is a fascinating insight into the latest research and knowledge on the topic. Well referenced and with some ideas for further reading, this is an informative and highly readable book for anyone who eats - which is all of us!

Jill Griffiths is an acclaimed science writer based in Western Australia. She has written extensively within the fields of environmental, agricultural and life sciences, and has worked with world-renowned researchers to bring their stories and findings to the broader public. Her words appear on environmental interpretation panels in many national parks across Western Australia, and she has worked behind the scenes on many publications.

Jill is interested in the places, both physical and ideological, where people and nature intersect, where our biological reality meets our modern selves. Regardless of how clever technology becomes, we remain intricately caught in natural rhythms and cycles. Jill is interested in what that means for us as individuals, for humanity as a whole, and for the planet we call home.

Endorsement
In this deeply personal and heartfelt book, Jill Griffiths has separated the romantic from the reality, the emotional from the political and (literally) the wheat from the chaff in her exploration of how what we eat ripples deep into our farmlands. Far from being didactic, this joyous delve into food and farming allows readers to explore what it means for our environment when we eat, and how very little is as straightforward as the headlines would have you believe.
-Matthew Evans

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