What’s Making Our Children Sick?

How Industrial Food Is Causing an Epidemic of Chronic Illness, and What Parents (and Doctors) Can Do About It

The What's Making Our Children Sick? cover
Pages:272 pages
Size: 6 x 9 inch
Publisher:Chelsea Green Publishing
Pub. Date: November 20, 2017
ISBN: 9781603587570

What’s Making Our Children Sick?

How Industrial Food Is Causing an Epidemic of Chronic Illness, and What Parents (and Doctors) Can Do About It

Availability: In stock

Paperback

$29.95



Exploring the links between GM foods, glyphosate, and gut health

With chronic disorders among American children reaching epidemic levels, hundreds of thousands of parents are desperately seeking solutions to their children’s declining health, often with little medical guidance from the experts. What’s Making Our Children Sick? convincingly explains how agrochemical industrial production and genetic modification of foods is a culprit in this epidemic. Is it the only culprit? No. Most chronic health disorders have multiple causes and require careful disentanglement and complex treatments. But what if toxicants in our foods are a major culprit, one that, if corrected, could lead to tangible results and increased health? Using patient accounts of their clinical experiences and new medical insights about pathogenesis of chronic pediatric disorders—taking us into gut dysfunction and the microbiome, as well as the politics of food science—this book connects the dots to explain our kids’ ailing health.

What’s Making Our Children Sick? explores the frightening links between our efforts to create higher-yield, cost-efficient foods and an explosion of childhood morbidity, but it also offers hope and a path to effecting change. The predicament we now face is simple. Agroindustrial “innovation” in a previous era hoped to prevent the ecosystem disaster of DDT predicted in Rachel Carson’s seminal book in 1962, Silent Spring. However, this industrial agriculture movement has created a worse disaster: a toxic environment and, consequently, a toxic food supply. Pesticide use is at an all-time high, despite the fact that biotechnologies aimed to reduce the need for them in the first place. Today these chemicals find their way into our livestock and food crop industries and ultimately onto our plates. Many of these pesticides are the modern day equivalent of DDT. However, scant research exists on the chemical soup of poisons that our children consume on a daily basis. As our food supply environment reels under the pressures of industrialization via agrochemicals, our kids have become the walking evidence of this failed experiment. What’s Making Our Children Sick? exposes our current predicament and offers insight on the medical responses that are available, both to heal our kids and to reverse the compromised health of our food supply.

 

Reviews and Praise

  • "Knapp combines a science background with experience running his own farm, and after speaking with cold storage innovators across the country, he is sharing what he has learned . . . [With] practical know-how [Beyond the Root Cellar] ultimately shows that cold storage is within reach for all farmers."Modern Farmer

More Reviews and Praise

 

  • Beyond the Root Cellar is the best resource on storing vegetables that I know of. This is next-level market gardening. Knapp is practical and inspiring—he shows modern methods for storing food and makes a strong case for why you should probably be storing more food on your own farm. Storing food is a win for customers, for farmers, and for the planet. If you grow vegetables, I recommend that you pick up a copy of this book.”—Ben Hartman, author of The Lean Micro Farm
  • “As a seasoned practitioner and teacher of market gardening, it’s rare for a book to ignite my passion, but Sam’s work does just that. Overflowing with invaluable tips and innovative strategies, this guide goes beyond the typical fast crops seen in most market gardens. It dives deep into storage vegetables for year-round growing, empowering growers to extend their season. In the face of constraints, we discover our greatest teachers, and Sam’s insights from Alaska and its short growing season have broadened his perspective. This new book has certainly broadened mine, and I encourage all growers to study it and level up their farming game.”—Jean-Martin Fortier, author of The Market Gardener and The Winter Market Gardener
  • “This book is the next step in creating resilient food systems and communities, telling us how to provide high-quality, nutritious local vegetables all year rather than importing them from warmer places in the winter. It is a vital resource for small farmers and home gardeners who want to extend their growing and selling season. Sam presents extensive and detailed information about the best varieties for long-term winter storage; which crops to harvest first when a fall cold snap is predicted and everything needs to be done at once; how to prepare crops for storage with curing, precooling, and proper washing; appropriate storage containers; and optimal storage conditions for each crop. I wish I had read this before I designed my own root cellar!”—Helen Atthowe, author of The Ecological Farm
  • Beyond the Root Cellar is a must-read for anyone who wants to store produce for any length of time. It’s too much work and investment to grow produce, only for it to decline in quality in storage. Produce can rot surprisingly quickly when stored under the wrong conditions, but it can also last for a surprisingly long time under the right conditions. Sam Knapp shows us the reality that vegetables will last only if harvested at the right stage, with the proper postharvest handling, temperature, humidity, and other factors. Detailing everything from the produce itself to the infrastructure you need to store it and the equipment that will help you maintain the right conditions, this book is an important contribution to making the entire year local food season! Even if you don’t plan on storing produce all winter, this book will show you how to keep it as fresh as possible for as long as possible.”—Andrew Mefferd, editor, Growing for Market magazine, author of The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower’s Handbook
  • Beyond the Root Cellar is a very thorough exposition of how to build, stock, and manage a root cellar. While it is definitely most helpful to large commercial operations that are mechanized, it goes into great detail across the board. Sam Kapp lays out the proper crops to store in a root cellar, along with their varying temperature and humidity needs. Because he lives in Alaska, it is particularly impressive what he has done to raise high-quality produce and then store it for later sale. An impressive and highly detailed book!”—Julie Rawson, organic farmer; author of Many Hands Make a Farm
  • "[A] creative guide that demonstrates how growers can select, harvest, store, and market vegetables during the off-season. . . This practical, comprehensive book . . . is packed with valuable insights and unique strategies for readers looking to innovate their winter farming practices. It's a great resource for gardeners, farmers, homesteaders, and curious readers."Library Journal

 

 


About Vincanne Adams

Vincanne Adams, PhDis a professor and vice-chair of Medical Anthropology, in the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Adams has previously published six books on the social dynamics of health, scientific knowledge and politics, including most recently, Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina (2013), and Metrics: What Counts in Global Health (2016). She is currently editor for Medical Anthropology Quarterly, the flagship journal for the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association.

Books by Vincanne Adams

The What's Making Our Children Sick? cover

About Michelle Perro

Michelle Perro, MD, is a veteran pediatrician with over thirty-five years of experience in acute and integrative medicine. More than ten years ago, Dr. Perro transformed her clinical practice to include pesticide and health advocacy. She has both directed and worked as attending physician from New York’s Metropolitan Hospital to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. Dr. Perro has managed her own business, Down to Earth Pediatrics. She is currently lecturing and consulting as well as working with Gordon Medical Associates, an integrative health center in Northern California.

Books by Michelle Perro

The What's Making Our Children Sick? cover