Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Winne
Publisher: Beacon Press
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 73989
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0807047309
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.80973
EAN: 9780807047309
ASIN: 0807047309
Publication Date: January 7, 2008
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Product Description
In Closing the Food Gap, food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone?
To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America's food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was "rediscovered," and how communities have responded with a slew of strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community gardens, food banks, and farmers' markets. The story, however, is not only about hunger in the land of plenty and the organized efforts to reduce it; it is also about doing that work against a backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical expectations. With the popularity of Whole Foods and increasingly common community-supported agriculture (CSA), wherein subscribers pay a farm so they can have fresh produce regularly, the demand for fresh food is rising in one population as fast as rates of obesity and diabetes are rising in another.
Over the last three decades, Winne has found a way to connect impoverished communities experiencing these health problems with the benefits of CSAs and farmers' markets; in Closing the Food Gap, he explains how he came to his conclusions. With tragically comic stories from his many years running a model food organization, the Hartford Food System in Connecticut, alongside fascinating profiles of activists and organizations in communities across the country, Winne addresses head-on the struggles to improve food access for all of us, regardless of income level.
Using anecdotal evidence and a smart look at both local and national policies, Winne offers a realistic vision for getting locally produced, healthy food onto everyone's table.
"Closing the Food Gap is a deeply moving account of Mark Winne's long career as an advocate for policies that will ensure adequate nutrition for the poor. Reading this book should make everyone want to advocate for food systems that will feed the hungry, support local farmers, and promote community democracy?all at the same time. I want all my students to read this beautifully written and important book."
?Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, and author of Food Politics and What to Eat
"Mark Winne tackles the world of food deserts, hunger relief and the disparities of the 'haves' and 'have-nots' from both a personal and professional viewpoint that at once educates on and illuminates these very complicated issues. Winne makes these issues and their interrelationships not only understandable but also compelling for all those who care about social justice in our country."
?Chef Ann Cooper, author of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children
"An engaging, candid, and sometimes funny look at how ordinary people?and extraordinary ones like the author?have struggled over three plus decades to create a fair food system, in the absence of public sector compassion. Winne has done it all?food coops, emergency feeding, farmers' markets, community gardening, Community Supported Agriculture, public policy. He tells us why and how, weaving into his own experiences stories from other cities across the country to create an essential picture of how people like him are struggling to reset the country's table for everyone."
?Joan Dye Gussow, author of This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader
"Closing the Food Gap reveals the chasm between the two food systems of America?the one for the poor and the one for everyone else. Speaking from his decades of political activism, Mark Winne offers compelling solutions for making local, organic, and highly nutritious food available to everyone. It's heartening to find a book that successfully blends a passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor."
?Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder – the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace
"By combining stories of his deep personal experience as an activist with keen insight into strategies for addressing food injustice, Winne himself fills a gap in the growing literature on good food, why it matters, and how to ensure everyone everywhere has access to it. Plus, the book is a fun read. Winne's stories made me want to meet him down at the local farmer's market, and then join him afterward for a cold beer."
?Anna Lappe, co-founder of the Small Planet Institute and author of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen
"Winne's passion for justice and commitment to sustainability make this book essential reading for those who want to help make the vision of healthy abundance for all an American dream come true."
?Janet Poppendieck, author of Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement
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| Customer Reviews:
 Lost me at the last chapter September 16, 2008
I've had the privilege of attending a food policy workshop at which Mr. Winne was the guest speaker. The man has a lot of experience in a wide range of food policy issues. As another "overeducated white guy" (his words), he's dedicated much of his life to improving the food security of those who need help most. Through much of the book, he reiterates time and again how meaningful change must come from within - it can't be forced on a community from an outside source. He honestly shares his successes and failures in a variety of efforts - bringing grocery stores back into underserved neighborhoods, establishing farmer's markets and community gardens, growing CSAs, working with food pantries, even changing bus routes so people from underserved areas can reach the serves they need (food and other services as well). I found his narrative informative and engaging. Best of all, it was real - "We did this, it worked. We did that, it didn't." This was not a "in theory only" book.
What really bothered me, and why I am only giving this book three stars, is how at the end of the book he turned his back on every lesson he's learned and called for top-down, big money, legislative efforts to enforce change. The blew me out of the water. I know Mr. Winne has a very socialist viewpoint, but, dang, from his own experience he should know that simple handouts never solve anything except for in the short term, and federal bureaucracy is very slow to respond to the needs of the people and inevitably does do at higher costs than local programs. He says this himself earlier in the book. I was really disappointed.
Read the book, learn from his successes and failures - there is a lot of good material here - just be aware that it ends in contradictions.
 Points well taken April 4, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Winne has authored a brilliant treatise on the real issues surrounding food insecurity in The US. With tremendous real world experience, Winne puts a human face on the problems of poverty and the serious costs all of us pay for merely throwing money and food at the problem OR worse yet - ignoring the poor. I read this book, got angry and more importantly got inspired to make a difference in Northern Illinois. READ this book, talk to your friends about it and take home how interconnected poverty, food insecurity, diet-related disease, and escalating healthcare costs really are. THANKS Mark Winne
Read this Book! February 5, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
The other two reviewers who give Mr. Winne a five star rating are telling the truth. He has written a truly readable and practical book that is accessible, and yet is is not a simpleton's introduction to the world of hunger and food insecurity in America. We are presented the challenge of preventing hunger from existing in this rich nation and Mark Winne, from years of experience in the field, shows us some of the steps we need to take.
Read this book.
Clarion call for sane, systemic changes January 10, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Mark Winne's book is a must read for those concerned about the growing poverty, hunger, and income inequality in America today. The personalized account of his journey from a comfortable, middle-class upbringing in New Jersey to community organizing in the gritty, underserved neighborhoods of Hartford, Connecticut is witty and informative, demonstrating why he has become a leader in this nation's food security movement.
Winne's claim that our current "food system is racist, classist, and sexist" is supported by his well-documented experience in Hartford. He doesn't let any of the powers that be off the hook, from "the mean-spirited ideologues" who have, at times, dammed the federal assistance pipeline to corporate junk food purveyors who he says should be tried and sentenced "to eat nothing but their own food for twenty-five years to life" and even to food bankers who "will do virtually anything to appease [their corporate] donors." His clarion call for bolstering sane, systemic changes in local food structures - like farmers' markets, community gardens, and community supported agriculture - rings true.
A fresh and engaging perspective on food justice December 17, 2007
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
Having read almost every book out there on food policy (and having written my own), I can safely say that Closing the Food Gap has something unique and important to offer. The author has been in the trenches and speaks from first-hand experience, which is rare to find among writers on this topic. Even though I am familiar with the many of book's issues, I thoroughly enjoyed the personal, accessible style and poignant story-telling. If you are looking for an introduction to food justice issues in the U.S., then this is the perfect doorway in. Winne takes us into a world where there are no easy solutions. But by the end, we are convinced that we must find a way to fix the deep injustices in our food system. What makes this book a critical contribution is its elegant argument for access to affordable and sustainable food for everyone. Even if you think you've read other books like it, you really haven't. Read this book and then pass it on.
Michele Simon, author, Appetite for Profit: How the food industry undermines our health and how to fight back
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