The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved

Sandor Katz has given us a refreshing, wholesome, wise book on something that affects all our lives. It points us not only to eating in a new way, but thinking in a new way. I hope it will be widely read.

—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

An instant classic for a new generation of monkey-wrenching food activists.

Food in America is cheap and abundant, yet the vast majority of it is diminished in terms of flavor and nutrition, anonymous and mysterious after being shipped thousands of miles and passing through inscrutable supply chains, and controlled by multinational corporations. In our system of globalized food commodities, convenience replaces quality and a connection to the source of our food. Most of us know almost nothing about how our food is grown or produced, where it comes from, and what health value it really has. It is food as pure corporate commodity. We all deserve much better than that.

In The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, author Sandor Ellix Katz (Wild Fermentation, Chelsea Green 2003) profiles grassroots activists who are taking on Big Food, creating meaningful alternatives, and challenging the way many Americans think about food. From community-supported local farmers, community gardeners, and seed saving activists, to underground distribution networks of contraband foods and food resources rescued from the waste stream, this book shows how ordinary people can resist the dominant system, revive community-based food production, and take direct responsibility for their own health and nutrition.

Chapter Topics Include:

• Local and Seasonal Food versus Constant Convenience Consumerism
• Seed Saving as a Political Act
• Holding Our Ground: Land and Labor Struggles
• Slow Food for Cultural Survival
• The Raw Underground
• Beware the Nutraceutical: Food and Healing
• Plant Prohibitions: Laws Against Nature
• Vegetarian Ethics and Humane Meat
• Feral Foragers: Scavenging and Recycling Food Resources
• Water: The Source of All Life

"This revolution will not be genetically engineered, pumped up with hormones, covered in pesticides, individually wrapped, or microwaved.... This revolution is wholesome, nurturing, and sensual. This revolution reinvigorates local economies. This revolution rescues traditional foods that are in danger of extinction and revives skills that will enable people to survive the inevitable collapse of the unsustainable, globalized, industrial food system."
—The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved

About the Author

Sandor Katz

Sandor Ellix Katz, a self-taught fermentation experimentalist, wrote Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods in order to spread the fermentation wisdom he had learned, and demystify home fermentation. Live fermented foods are critically important to human health, and are central elements of many different culinary traditions.

Following the publication of Wild Fermentation, Katz embarked upon a tour to spread "fermentation fervor" and has taught more than 100 hand-on fermentation workshops around the U.S. and Australia. Through these workshops, Katz met many different food activists—varied in their specific projects but ...

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