Stuffed and Starved, Mexican Vegans, Tegra Little

So I always have 1001 books that I am reading at once. Here is the latest one on the radar by a brother of Indian descent Raj Patel called "Stuffed and Starved". So far it is ill and I recomend it to folks. Here's a clip from the intro:

An argument that I find myself making over and over is that although diet is a very personal thing, it can be understood sociologically. And not only can it be understood this way, you have to understand it this way if you're to make sense of facts like one which I start the book with: that the closer Mexican teenagers are to the US border, the more likely they are to be overweight.

The dynamics of consumption that have been imposed on Mexico by its more powerful northern neighbour are having some profound effects. Mohammed writes with this article, which announces that Mexico is the second-most overweight country in the world, after the US, and if trends continue, will soon outweigh the gringos. More than 71 percent of Mexican women and 66 percent of Mexican men are overweight, according to the latest national surveys.

Interesting, and repugnant, are the comments that the online readers of the Arizona star have appended to the article. It links up with another sociological phenomenon about obesity - newspaper reports are systematically more likely, as Abigail Saguy says, "Given that higher weights are inversely correlated with social class in heterogeneous and affluent societies such as the United States and that African American and Mexican American women are especially likely to be categorized as obese, blaming fat people for their weight may serve to justify and reinforce social inequities."

Can't get to this without a little sociology.

The website for the book is nice with a blog and several other features. Check it out at Starved and Stuffed He also has a personal website over at Raj Patel.

Again, in my quest for various ethnic plant centered meals I've come across Vegan Mexican food. Check them out cause I'm all about learning how to make a vegan mole sauce and eventually make a raw one. They are a segment of the Food Empowerment Project which looks to be doing great things.

Finally check out Tegra Little and how she is making raw foodism her life and living