I read two books recently....

....that really shook me up a little.  I got them both from our local library. The first was Making Supper Safe, by Ben Hewitt.

It's about our food industry and the lack of oversight which leads to food contamination. A good read, but also a little frightening. The only way we can ever be truly sure that our food is not contaminated is to grow it all ourselves, something which in our society today is nearly impossible to do. It makes me wish I had enough of a backyard to have a huge garden.

The other book was American Wasteland, by Jonathan Bloom.

This one is about the massive waste of food that goes on every day in our country, mostly due to the fact that we Americans want all types of food available at all seasons of the year, and we want it to look pretty and seem fresh-picked. Stores throw out thousands of dollars' worth of food every week. This book, more than the first, made me really stop and take stock of our own food consumption.  There isn't much I can do about food contamination in the supply line before we buy the food, but there is a lot I can do here at home to prevent wasting perfectly good food.

My current non-fiction read is The Smart-Aleck's Guide to American History, by Adam Selzer.

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law gave it to me for Christmas.  It's hilarious, but also a seriously well-researched book on American History. I'll blog more about it when I'm finished reading it.