Well-known food journalist, cookbook author, and columnist Mark Bittman has recently come out with a new book that he believes is his most important work.

Bittman’s new book, Animal, Vegetable, Junk, explores the history of food and farming. It exposes the heavy toll that industrial agriculture and highly processed foods are taking on our health and environment. He debunks the myth that “cheap” foods grown in vast monocultures with toxic inputs will “feed the world” and reveals the disastrous consequences of free market capitalism on food and farming.

The Guardian writes: 

“In a sweeping deconstruction of the history of food, spanning the past 10,000 years of organized agriculture, Bittman takes in everything from Mesopotamian irrigation to the Irish famine to the growth of McDonald’s to posit the rise of uniformity and convenience in food has mostly benefited large companies, fueled societal inequities and ravaged human health and the environment.”

Read: Mark Bittman’s Warning: The True Costs of Our Cheap Food and the American Diet