U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan’s new book is about healthy eating

October 11, 2014 at 4:43p.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

When it comes to food, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan admits to having a “soft spot for chicken wings and ice cream.”

However, Ryan said he wants to share health-improvement concepts and techniques such as urban farming, improving the quality of food served in school cafeterias and educating students about food, and growing herb gardens in their windowsills.

He’s put his ideas in a new book, “The Real Food Revolution — Healthy Eating, Green Groceries and the Return of the American Family Farm.”

The book is published by Hays House, a Carlsbad, Calif., company, that also published Ryan’s previous book, “A Mindful Nation: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit,” two years ago. That book — about mindfulness, a meditative practice that focuses on “the present moment” instead of worrying about the past or the future — sold about 14,000 copies, said Ryan of Howland, D-13th, who’s seeking his seventh two-year term in Congress.

“As I was grappling with health issues and health-care costs, I kept coming back to the same theme: a lot of the chronic diseases we have are directly related to the foods we eat,” Ryan said about the new book.

In the book, Ryan writes: “I am not a purist. I am not an absolutist or an extremist. I love food, and lots of different kinds of food. I go on different diets and then I cheat. Every week I try to watch what I eat — to be good, so that at some point I can be bad. But I have, slowly and over time, moved myself in the direction of healthier eating. I have started to pay more attention.”