The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food

By: Ben Hewitt

This book is about the people of Hardwick, VT who are striving to make their food system more local. He sort of picks up where Michael Pollan leaves off in the Omnivore's Dilemma and tries to decide what a healthy food system actually looks like. Hardwick has recently gotten some publicity over a handful of "agrepreneurs" who settled in the small town and have been shaking things up in the way people eat. In the end the author doesn't really come to any major conclusions but the discussion throughout the book is very interesting. I personally think the book could have used a little better editing in some of the phrases he uses (sometimes several unusual phrases very close together for example) but I enjoyed his writing style and recommend this book to anyone interested in the local food "movement". If you haven't read The Omnivore's Dilemma, I highly recommend reading that first. Not because this is a sequel or anything but because Hewitt writes as if the reader already knows how and why the current food system in America is broken. If I cracked this book as a primer to local food, I doubt I would have finished it because he does not discuss the problems as much as the possible solutions. The reader should know the problem before reading this book.