What we grow determines how we eat, and what we eat determines how we live and die. These simple but overlooked truths drive the work of the longtime food writer Mark Bittman, whose new book, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal, takes an ambitious look at the flaws of the industrialized food system and the politics of transforming it. On Episode 29 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Bittman about the difficulty of eating ethically, the way food connects to nearly every other important issue of our time, and how change starts less with what we buy or cook than how we vote—and organize.

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