This book has made more sense to me than anything I’ve read before about diet. Although the author doesn’t use this analogy, it makes the large-scale food processing industry look a lot like the tobacco industry: huge corporations in the business of finding out how to make a product that sells, not one that is healthy.

Michael Pollan writes descriptively of how these corporations shaped the public’s perception of what food is from whole things like rice, apples and spinach, to nutrients, like Vitamin C, anti-oxidants, and Omega-3 oils. When people’s idea of what food is changed, they started eating to fill what they thought their bodies needed, like less oils and more carbohydrates, or more Vitamin C to stave off colds. These dietary fads continue, and often fade as they are seen to not have the advertised effect.

The trouble with this kind of thinking is that, while we might have an idea as how certain nutrients might be good or bad for us, real food doesn’t just deliver single nutrients; it’s instead comprised of hundreds of micro-nutrients that possibly interact with each other and our bodies.

This book is a must-read; it’s changing the way we look at food and how we choose what we eat. Haven’t been able to give up ice cream, though.

Okay, this one is probably over-constructed, but it is solid, and it does work. The inside is lined with a plastic bin we had made at Tap Plastics. It’s filled with The World’s Best Cat Litter, which is made from corn, so it doesn’t get into our cats’ digestive systems, and is biodegradable.

The most important component, and the hardest to find, turned out to be the fan. We found this 12-volt exhaust fan at EcoVantageEnergy.com, and it was the thing that made sure that no cat box odors drifted back into the house. It only uses 5.5 watts, so running it continuously isn’t a problem.