Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet – One Bite at a Time by Dr Mark Hyman.

Food Fix by Dr. Mark Hyman sets out a powerful solution-based manifesto of how we can improve our health, and that of our planet, through the food choices we make.

About the author

Dr. Mark Hyman is an American medical doctor and the Head of Strategy and Innovation for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine.

Why he wrote this book

Food can be a medicine in many ways. Dr. Hyman believes that by changing our food system we can “reverse the global epidemic of chronic disease, heal the environment, reform politics, and revive economies. What we eat has tremendous implications not just for our waistlines, but also for the planet, society, and the global economy. What we do to our bodies, we do to the planet; and what we do to the planet, we do to our bodies.”

Key topics covered in the book

• The true cost of food on our health, the environment, and the climate.
• The role of our food system in the global epidemic of chronic disease
• The dirty politics and information warfare of ‘big food’
• The impact of food on mental health
• The link between food and social injustice and poverty
• The environmental and climate impact of our food system

Why you should read this book

The book is a call to action and is filled with some startling and eye-opening statistics and facts. Dr Hyman guides us as how we can vote with our fork and has made the book very solution based. He provides several food related solutions or ‘food fixes’ on what can be done to change the food system from field to fork so that we can improve our global health, economies and societies, restore environmental health and reverse climate change.

Some things you can do

• Stop purchasing ultra-processed foods or franken-foods as Dr Hyman calls them
• Eat mostly plant foods
• Choose regeneratively raised animal products
• Reduce your food waste and start a compost pile
• Support regenerative agriculture and sustainable food
• Shop at farmers’ markets for local produce
• Create a community garden
• Address food deserts and food swamps in your local communities
• Support initiatives in schools such as cooking classes and school gardens.
• Be an agent of change and educate your family and friends on why food matters.