The Blue Plate

A Food Lover's Guide to Climate Chaos

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Pub Date Sep 17 2024 | Archive Date Dec 31 2024

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Description

Do you really know what’s for dinner? The Blue Plate is the perfect dinner companion for food lovers who also care about the planet. 

Ecologist Mark Easter offers a detailed picture of the impact the foods you love have on the earth. Organized by the ingredients of a typical dinner party, including seafood, salad, bread, chicken, steak, potatoes, and fruit pie with ice cream, each chapter examines the food through the lens of the climate crisis. Not a cookbook, but instead, gathered like guests around the table, you will find the stories of these foods: the soil that grew the lettuce, the farmers and ranchers and orchardists who steward the land, the dairy and farm workers and grocers who labor to bring it to the table. Each chapter reveals the causes and effects of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the social and environmental impact of out-of-season and far-from-home demand.

What can you do to eat more sustainably? Food lovers everywhere will be happy to know that the answer is not necessarily a plant-based diet. For each food group, Easter offers not recipes but low-carbon, in-season alternatives that make your favorite foods not only more sustainable but also more delicious.

The first step, however, is an understanding of how food is grown, produced, harvested, and shipped. In stories both personal and entertaining, the author offers a full understanding of what’s for dinner.

Do you really know what’s for dinner? The Blue Plate is the perfect dinner companion for food lovers who also care about the planet. 

Ecologist Mark Easter offers a detailed picture of the impact the...


Advance Praise

“Tag along with one of the premier scientists studying our food system's carbon footprint, as he takes us on a fascinating journey to meet the farmers, ranchers, and composters who are dramatically slashing emissions and transforming agriculture from a climate problem to a climate solution.”— Liz Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground, Grain by Grain and Healing Grounds

“The Blue Plate is a lively look at the carbon footprint of our food — a journey that takes us across America and zooms in on our favorite eats. Similar in spirit to Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush, this book directs an honest gaze at what’s going on — and what we can do about it. Grounded in science, and yet told in story, this book teaches, inspires, and informs. From peaches to bread to beer to fish, The Blue Plate is indeed about our planet, our plates, and our future.”— Laura Pritchett, author of The Blue Hour, Stars Go Blue, and Red Lightning

“The Blue Plate is the food book of the decade, and it tastes like hope. With the story-telling chops of Michael Pollan, the ethics of Thoreau, and the climate expertise of James Hanson, Mark Easter lays it all out: We CAN feed the world and nourish the earth at the same time. Here is how it can be done. And here is how you can participate. Authoritative, entertaining, and useful — this is the book I have been waiting for.” — Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Encouragement for Earth’s Weary Lovers

“Every bite we take — whether from a peach, a lamb chop, or a chunk of braised tofu — has an impact on a landscape somewhere in the world. Many thanks to Mark Easter for his thoughtful and comprehensive appraisal of the methods by which our food is produced and for this roadmap to align our eating with our concerns for the planet’s health.” — Kristin Ohlson, author of The Soil Will Save Us and Sweet in Tooth and Claw

“Anyone asking ‘can we eat ourselves out of the climate crisis?’ should begin with this book. Mark Easter offers not only a beautiful hymn to the elements, but a wonderful introduction to the difficult demands that science makes of us when we ask the most difficult questions with deep honesty and commitment.” — Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System

“In a well-structured mash up of research, analysis, and — above all — story, Mark Easter has created one of the most compelling books about climate change in recent memory. Or wait, is it about food? That's the beauty of the book — it is truly about both, and how our daily choices about what to put on our plates ties us into a global network of food production and delivery that has been the largest contributor to global warming, yet also holds the key to reversing the trend. In the end, they give the readers the power that only knowledge can instill: how to make the choices that support a food system that heals both body and planet... how to create blue plates.”— Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet

“An entertaining, enlightening, and uplifting guide to the food-climate connection.”— David R. Montgomery, co-author of What Your Food Ate and The Hidden Half of Nature

“A feast of vivid stories about the future of agriculture — and the future of us all. Let ecologist Mark Easter fill your plate with hope.” — Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

“Mark Easter gives us a different way of looking at food and a different way of looking at climate change He clearly loves food and has something important to say about it.” —Mark Kurlansky, New York Times bestselling and James A. Beard Award-winning author

“Tag along with one of the premier scientists studying our food system's carbon footprint, as he takes us on a fascinating journey to meet the farmers, ranchers, and composters who are dramatically...


Marketing Plan

Author will present the book at select bookstores and Patagonia retail stores.

Author will present the book at select bookstores and Patagonia retail stores.


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781952338205
PRICE $30.00 (USD)
PAGES 400

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Featured Reviews

Nearly a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions is created by growing, processing, and transporting food and disposing the waste. Ecologist Mark Easter asked the question “Can we cultivate from the Earth meals that nourish us, a Blue Plate of sorts, rather than the Earth being the meal itself?” Can we “eat our way out of the climate crisis”?

Easter’s book takes us across the country as he shows how modern farming methods negatively impacts the environment and how returning to pre-industrial farming methods maintains the soil and reduces carbon emissions. His broad study includes all aspects of food: vegetable farming, raising cattle and dairy farms, fishing, and animal and food waste management.

He offers suggestions of what we should have on our plate at meals. Eat local. Eat vegetables. Enjoy shellfish. Don’t throw food waste into the trash but compost it. But the book’s emphasis is not on the consumer end, but on the practises that can be changed to reduce carbon output and store it in the soil.

The book has aspects of memoir and travelogue as well as science facts while reporting his findings as Easter delved into how we get our food and the environmental costs of what we put on our plates.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

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