About the Author
Last edited by OrangeClouds115, June 15, 2009
Jill Richardson's roots as a food activist began when she graduated college and took a job in Washington, D.C. For the first time in her life, eating - something so basic you do it three times every day - was nearly impossible! With no car and living in a poor neighborhood in Virginia that was not near a Metro station, Jill suddenly found it nearly impossible to afford and obtain healthy food, a luxury she had taken for granted her entire life. Her neighborhood's grocery stores sold low quality produce that rotted quickly - but still charged high prices for it! The buses that might have served as transportation to more distant grocery stores were inconsistant, making trips to those stores a several-hour-long ordeal. And while friends would occasionally drive Jill to Costco or Trader Joes, within days after those trips the perishable (healthy) food was all gone, and what remained was junk. So junk became Jill's diet.
After finding a new job and relocating to Madison, WI, Jill first sought to learn more about nutrition, settling on a mostly plant-based diet of whole foods. And yet, even with more money and a new car, eating well continued to be a challenge in today's busy world (particularly in a job that required 50% travel). Obesity is seen as a great problem in our society today, and we often view it as a problem of individual choice - but how will we ever fix it if we make it so difficult for individuals to make the right choices? Jill's personal interest in eating well turned political when she was assigned to work in a cardiac ICU, helping the doctors and nurses use a new software system. The patients all suffered from a health problem that healthy lifestyle choices (including diet) could mitigate or prevent. Why was this happening to Americans now, Jill wondered. Why didn't it happen before? And how do we solve the problem?
Since then, Jill has embarked on a journey that took her across America and united her with a growing movement of sustainable food activists. The sustainable food movement is unlike other, related movements because it views the food system as a whole and seeks holistic solutions in which everybody wins together (rather than advocating for a single issue like hunger, environmentalism, or animal rights without regard to the rest of the food system). Because food is not yet widely viewed as a political issue and because would-be food activists do not have a readily available source of information about current political issues that they can take action on, Jill founded a blog called La Vida Locavore and she wrote Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. The book aims to give readers an overview of the problems in our solution, plus a vision of what a sustainable food system would look like from the soil on up, and then provide specific policy recommendations that are timely and possible to achieve now. Because policies and politics change every day, Jill updates her blog frequently, telling readers how they can get involved in the latest issues, including those described in the book (as well as new issues that arose after her book's publication).
Recipe for America is Jill's first book. She lives with her three cats in San Diego, CA.
(Photo credit: Bart Nagel Photography)
