As someone who is plant based for the planet, this book premise really appealed to me. That said, I do think it fell a flat when it came to the recipes. Many were overly complicated, with ingredient lists over a page long. While I am aligned with the mission to introduce more plant based foods to those hoping to reduce their carbon foot print, the recipes and ingredients first and foremost need to be accessible to the average home cook, which this book was not. For example, many recipes called for dehydrating ingredients rather than purchase the (sometimes more accessible) dried form (which also feels counter intuitive to the overall message of the book).

Overall the images for the recipes are gorgeous and many recipes do sound good, but I’m not sure who this book is for. There are many vegan cookbooks that are less intimidating for someone looking to learn more about plant based cooking, and I don’t think many of the recipes are exciting for the experienced plant based home cook.

This cookbook is not practical. It’s a cookbook you can read like a book but isn’t functional for actual cooking with how wordy it is. The instructions are far too long and verbose as are the ingredients.

I would have vastly preferred a glossary of ingredients rather than long definitions with every ingredient in the LOI.

I also found it odd that a cookbook wanting to save the planet often called upon ingredients that, for most people, have to be flown from very far away.

'Love the Foods That Love the Planet' has an admirable core premise, one that's informative while also giving simple ways for us to each help the environment through what we cook. The visuals are colorful and well-planned. I think this will encourage a lot of readers to try new foods and methods of cooking that they hadn't before. There's a good amount of recognizable core foods in here, but usually they're repurposed unexpected with ingredients which is refreshing.

This cookbook caught my eye immediately with the amazing title and as I paged through it I continued to be more impressed.
I love how this book educates each reader on how we can carry over our commitment to caring for the planet into how we make our meals. Each recipe is vegan and presented with information on the footprint each recipe makes.
Though, I’d have loved to see more about how we could reuse leftovers or sections on composting or regrowing some of these veggies. I feel like with all the other information provided being eco friendly, this was a pretty big section to leave out, but that is my one critique.
I’m so impressed on the diversity of the recipes with many different cultures being included and recipes that I’ve never been exposed to. I’m really looking forward to trying the Indian dal and Japanese okonomiyaki especially.

I was very intrigued about the premise of this cookbook. I thought it was new and innovative take on cuisine and eating foods that also benefit the environment. I can’t wait to try out all of these recipes and the sauce section alone is divine.

I love that this book provides scientific information about their claims. There are great full colored photos and instructions are easy to follow. But I think I will only try one or two recipes. The food was not at all appetizing to me.

Let me start by saying that the opening quote of this book is truly a chef's kiss: "The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it."

Love the Foods That Love the Planet is 424 pages of recipe goodness. Although the book begins with a few pages on climate change, it's well worth the read. The information is presented in an informative way without being overwhelming. Once you get past this section, the book delves into its core—shopping, stocking up on ingredients, tools, and helpful tips and tricks.

The layout of the book is easy to navigate, with plenty of colourful photographs that are pleasing to the eye. What stood out to me were the recipes that include carbon footprint information—a detail I particularly appreciate. The recipes are well-organized, with easily obtainable ingredients, making it simple for anyone to follow along.

This cookbook will be a valuable resource for any vegetarian kitchen, offering a variety of cuisines from around the globe.

Thank you to NetGalley and HCI Books | Health Communications Inc. for gifting me the e-book in exchange for my honest review.

I received an ARC of this cookbook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a great cookbook! I enjoyed it a lot!

Some days it's a struggle to remember that there are more vegetables than the five that most commonly appear in cheap plastic trays in the deli section. But if you're looking to expand your knowledge of just how many raw vegetables there are in the world, I encourage you to pick up this recipe book. It offers fun facts about lesser-known veggies and gives a checklist of ways that each food affects the planet. With this book in hand, readers can plan their meals in a way that protects the earth by avoiding the raw foods that are most likely to contribute to climate change (most of which are meat).

I really appreciate how thoroughly-researched this book is, and it doesn't hesitate to include ethnic foods as well as dishes I'm more familiar with, usually with a vegan or vegetarian twist. I trust that these recipes are healthy and full of nutrients, and I'm eager to incorporate them into my diet. However, I was a little frustrated at how inaccessible some of the recipes are. Firstly, many of the ingredients are uncommon or expensive. I don't have a car, so I can't be driving around looking for miso paste or saffron threads, but have you seen how much they cost if you want them delivered from an online shop? I'd love to see some more accessible substitutions. Second, some of these recipes would take actual hours to make, particularly for someone who isn't experienced in the kitchen. I consider myself a proficient home cook and a reasonably adventurous eater, but I balked at some of the extensive preparation instructions and weird flavor combinations. Overall, I ended up with ten recipes I'd like to try, which is a pretty high statistic, given that I usually only pick out two or three recipes from recipe books I borrow from the library. I've tested two of them already and found the instructions easy to follow and the taste satisfying.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to add new foods to their diets, particularly vegetables and mushrooms. This book offers lots of creative ways to incorporate exciting new ingredients. It's not for beginners, though.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

Eating consciously has become a much bigger concern for quite a lot of people, and this cookbook is a step in the right direction to a more holistic approach to eating climate friendly.

The cookbook starts out with a summary of the current state of the climate and how proposed solutions are working, like the UN Paris Climate Agreement. It then delves into how food contributes to GHG emissions, including agriculture pesticides, etc.

The recipes can be quite daunting for someone who is not very experienced in the kitchen. There is a really nice introduction about how to source the ingredients, which can seem like an overwhelming task for anyone not in a major city with access to many of the ingredients. It does list the type of specialty stores where the ingredients can be found, highlighting local Asian, middle east, and African groceries.

Each recipe also has a little piece of trivia about the climate footprint of different ingredients included in each recipe, which gives the reader a more profound understanding of what all went into each meal. This is why the recipes are vegan and oil free.

Most of the ingredients used are easy to find at any grocery store, but there are a few things that I wasn't familiar with, so learning how arrowroot can help with sauce viscosity was brilliant.

There are a few recipes that really stick out, like the Corny Crostini with Mushrooms, which was the first recipe we tried. The step by step instructions are very detailed and easy to follow. The sides section of the cookbook is what really shines.

Once the reader can get over the overwhelming nature of the cookbook, I think anyone would have no problem enjoying the recipes and the knowledge in the book. It would be better suited for someone in a metropolitan area that has access to the different groceries, so I do think some will have an easier time with this cookbook than others.

Thank you Netgalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review

As someone who has only recently understood the gravity of the climate change issue, this title piqued my interest. This topic, I am saddened to say is not something I spend a lot of time thinking about in depth, and learning how to be conscious of what we do. "Love The Foods That Love The Planet" opens up with Cathy's view of climate change, and study-supported section of how significant the climate change is in 2024, and why the individual, us, matter to this whole movement in order to keep the Earth we live in habitable. She included helpful and friendly guides to be able to find the ingredients and make the meals and lower our carbon footprints. Unlike the typical tools of the trade, she does not give you a specific link to any brand, but encourages conscious and mindful usage of what we have.

I value that she places climate footprint information with each recipe. Informative, delicious recipes that utilize different cultural foods that give off less carbon footprints when we try to cook with it, from Eastern Asian to Mediterranean meals, this cookbook is well-thought out. No-nonsense images, and forward cooking. All of the meals are vegan, as the meat industry is a large contributor to this carbon footprint. However, I do think that it can be and is difficult for people that cannot access or purchase these meals due to certain conditions. I would've loved to have a section dedicated to growing plants from the leftovers or cut out seeds from the meals that we make, which can definitely contribute to that lesser carbon footprint as well.

I did enjoy the premise of this book but living in the UK perhaps made me look at it differently. The use of a dehydrator is new to me but using it for 40 hours to dry out some orange slices seems a little excessive (power wise) and the alternative of putting them in the oven for 10 hours made me blanch. Perhaps not the best book for me as we eat locally grown seasonal produce and this being an American book, obviously the produce is different and therefore not available (without air miles / transport miles costs) so not sustainable. Some nice recipes though.

This is a novel cookbook and I really like the concept— recipes that use ingredients that are the most sustainable, with lots of information about each ingredient and lots of flavors. There is a wealth of information in every recipe, and photos for most of them. The dishes are very international. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the recipes are all vegan. They sound fairly tasty and rather gourmet.

I was not expecting the level of effort involved in most of the recipes. Spices are freshly ground (which makes sense for sustainability, frugality and flavor). Lots of things are dehydrated. All of the elements are made from scratch, often with multiple tools like food processors that add to the clean up time as well.

I was also surprised not to see the use of foraged ingredients, which can be the most sustainable of all. You can even forage invasive plants that are ubiquitous and healthy, such as garlic mustard, dandelions, lambs quarters, mulberries and even kudzu. And sometimes the most sustainable meal is the simplest. A common meal for our family in spring is sautéed wild asparagus and morels (other wild mushrooms work too) over rice. You could do a foraging trifecta by serving it over wild rice. We don’t forage our own wild rice but we buy it from tribal members in northern Minnesota who do, which is about as sustainable as food can get (wild rice is hand harvested into a canoe and then dried and broken into small pieces).

There is also no nutritional information for the recipes, which always docks a star for me. Many of us need to track protein, fat, salt, carbohydrates, calories and/or fiber, and I generally will not buy a modern mass produced cookbook that doesn’t have that information.

That said, there are many pluses for the book. It will work well for folks who are gluten or dairy free. The dishes are diverse and healthy. They are very low in fat and salt if that fits your diet, and they tend to be high in fiber and flavor. It will be the best fit for cooks who are vegan or lean vegan, and who have the time and money to invest in these ingredients and dishes.

I read a digital copy of this book via NetGalley.

This book contains lots of interesting recipes for people trying to stick to a plant-based diet that will be good for the planet also. I would be very tempted to try a lot of these recipes out, but unfortunately I live in a small town where many of the ingredients are impossible to get without spending a small fortune having them shipped to me - making my carbon footprint much greater and defeating the purpose of the book. For people in larger cities, I think this book would be great for making a variety of plant-based meals. I give the book 4.5 stars based on good looking recipes - I had to hold back half a star for difficulty in finding ingredients for a lot of people.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you HCI Books and NetGalley for the advanced electronic review copy of this book. This is a beautifully illustrated book of healthy food recipes that is mindful of the environmental impact. There are sections on the global warming and environmental damage in the beginning of the book. The recipes call for unprocessed ingredients and the process of making each dish is clearly explained. I’m looking forward to trying some of the recipes.

This title called to me because I’ve been interested in trying to make healthier decisions for my family. These unprocessed ingredients and healthy meals will be perfect for our family of 4. We have been trying to go to the farmers market more often for ingredients. This cookbook is easy to read. The colors pop in the photos and are really beautiful. I can’t wait to make some soup and sloppy joes when the weather cools off.