Avocado Anxiety: and Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From

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When we come back to look at the early decades of the 21 st Century, the dish that will surely sum up our age is avocado on toast? Louise uses a series of stories and real-world examples to show just how complex even the foods we think of as 'simple' are. Avocado Anxiety encourages understanding the science behind one's food and demonstrates the global impact of every meal. A fascinating book full of surprising facts that will force you to reconsider everything you thought you knew about fruit and vegetables.

Through visits to farms, interviews with scientists and trying to grow her own, she digs up the dirt behind organic potatoes, greenhouse tomatoes and a glut of courgettes. In recent years, she has written for The Sunday Times , Scottish Field , the Guardian and The Spectator , among others. Potato farmers are learning how to look after the soil better, largely from watching the organic movement. In recent years she has written for The Sunday Times, Scottish Field, The Guardian and The Spectator, among others. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.In one meme it was claimed eating avocado on toast rather than saving money for a house, was preventing young people getting on the property ladder. She has since followed that up with The Cauldron of Life, The Sword of Light, and The Spear of Truth. Very enjoyable and well narrated read/listen covering a lot of stuff we should all be trying to learn more about.

In a quietly confident manner, Avocado Anxiety makes you think for yourself on matters that can only be described as universally urgent. This book avoids the doom and gloom that often comes with discussions around complex problems with our food system. So much of the modern world would be incomprehensible to medieval peasants, but not the rows of glossy vegetables in our supermarket aisles. As a nation we do not eat enough fruit and veg (only a third of adults eat the recommended five-a-day), we need to start filling our plates with vegetables from farmers and growers we trust.Generally, fruit and vegetables have a lower carbon footprint because it takes a lot less energy to grow a plant than to raise an animal. However, if the vegetables have been flown in by air freight, such as asparagus from Peru (18kg CO2e per kg), it can be up there with steak. A vegan diet generally has a lower carbon footprint, unless you are living off exotic fruits and vegetables flown in from abroad. Have you ever wondered who picked your Fairtrade banana or how far your green beans travelled to reach your plate? I think instead we could be educating ourselves about the delicious alternatives and the small ways we can make the food system better.

Instead, it’s hopeful and balanced and still manages to cover an impressive breadth of material without ever feeling overwhelming or preachy. Trying to make sense of it, environmental journalist Louise Gray tracks the stories of our five-a-day, from farm to fruit bowl, and discovers the impact that growing fruits and vegetables has on the planet. If our ancestors could time-travel to one location in the present, where would modernity astound them most? Avocados may not have a heavy carbon footprint but they use up a lot of water, around 85 litres to grow an avocado from Peru.Louise is passionate about environmental issues, increasingly focusing on how individuals can make a difference through the choices they make, such as the food we eat. As pressure grows to share our healthy, environmentally friendly lives on social media, Avocado Anxiety is also a personal story of motherhood and the realisation that nothing is ever perfect. Essential reading for anyone that eats, Avocado Anxiety takes you on a journey through food and its impact on our planet.