In The Food Matters Cookbook: 500 Revolutionary Recipes for Better Living, Mark Bittman offers over 500 recipes for fresh, delicious dishes that rely largely on fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Fish, meat, and poultry are treated as garnishes and for those who prefer to avoid meat, there are plenty of vegetarian recipes.
The book also discusses why food matters to our health and to that of the planet. There's information on what ingredients are best and how to buy seasonally, responsibly, and sustainably, whether you're shopping for tomatoes or grass fed beef.
Bio
Mark Bittman
Mark Bittman is a bestselling cookbook author, journalist and television personality.
Although Mark Bittman never formally trained as a chef, his pursuits as a curious and tenacious foodie have made him a casual culinary master. His weekly New York Times food column, The Minimalist, meshes accessible and inexpensive ingredients with "anyone-can" cooking techniques to produce exceedingly delicious dishes. Bittman's funny, friendly attitude and trademark informal approach to food-craft extend to his blockbuster TV programs (which retain delays and mishaps that other producers would edit out), his blog, Bitten, and ambitious cookbooks, like How to Cook Everything and The Best Recipes in the World.
After a decade as the "Minimalist," Bittman has emerged a respected spokesperson on all things edible: He's concerned about the ecological and health impacts of our modern diet, which he characterizes as overwhelmingly meat-centered and hooked on fast food. His criticism has the world listening: His revolutionary How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is a bestseller, and his memorable talk at the 2007 EG Conference (available now on TED.com) delivered a stinging condemnation of the way we eat now. A subsequent New York Times article pursued the same argument.
Bittman is currently at work on a new book, Food Matters, which explores the link between our eating habits and the environment, offering an accessible plan for a planet-friendly diet.
Theory or practice of eating only plants. The vegetarian diet includes grains, vegetables, fruits, and nuts; it excludes meat, poultry, and fish, but some vegetarians eat dairy products (lactovegetarians), egg products (ovovegetarians), or both (ovolactovegetarians). Those who eat no animal products (including honey) are called vegans. Motivations vary and include ethics (both unwillingness to kill animals and abhorrence of modern methods of raising animals for meat), self-denial or religious taboo, ecology (including concern about the wastefulness and environmental costs of beef farming), and health. Vegetarians point to the many health benefits of their diet, including low rates of heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, and obesity. While obtaining sufficient protein is seldom a problem in affluent societies, vegetarians must be careful to consume enough iron and, especially for vegans, calcium and vitamins D and B12. The most influential early proponent of vegetarianism was Pythagoras, in the 6th century BC. Many Hindu sects and most Buddhists are vegetarian, and much of the world eats hardly any meat because it is unavailable. The Enlightenment led to a humane concern for animals; in the 19th century Britain became a major centre of vegetarianism, and vegetarian movements soon arose in Germany, the U.S., and other countries.
Alcatar, I hope your right about this not becoming a problem for many years and that might be the case. I think that the only way that is going to happen though, if the west is able to keep the rest of the world poor enough that they can afford large amounts of meat. Which I do not think should or is going to happen. It is shown, as he stated, that as people become more affluent their diets change. If you add the, what, 2.5 billion in India and China to the projected population growth and have them all eating meat, those numbers become hard to meet.
You also have the environmental issues surrounding food production. If you remember Russia's wheat supply got hammered by drought and fire. This caused wheat bans there and is expected to effect global markets on bread and meat. If the prediction on climate change are correct and we continue to convert forest to farm land it will speed up the change then we should except more crop shortages. Also, more farm land means greater excess in nutrients in run off water. This increases dead zones in the oceans and seas which lowers production of that source of food.
I really do hope your right and I am just paranoid because I love meat. It is the only, somewhat healthy and easy way for me to get the calorie intake I need.
With Indian land being able to produce enough crops (with the rest of the world's crops) after being developed, for a projected 12 billion people, I am confident this crisis will not be seen within my life time. However of course, water is an issue as in the growing human population and the point made in this video and by the many students in the USA making the same point is IMPORTANT and I'm glad it's being made.
I am confident however that Indian soil on it's own, with it's government concentrating on improving it's own infrastructure and production capabilities (despite barring foreign influence from easily entering the nation commercially), will produce all we need to keep the western meat/food market similar to it's current state.
No need to fear such an issue for many years to come. But a very important point to be made and alternative solutions must be kept at hand.
Also, I greatly respect the students in the USA for making the point by becoming vegetarians to politically emphasise and highlight that it is an issue to be taken seriously.
Sadly the slides aren't shown in the video though, although they don't seem that important anyway.
Edit: Now I've gone and bought his two latest best-selling books because I need to learn how to cook anyhow. The world is listening, sir.
I do hope ingredients include German and other European majors though!!!
member. 
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