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U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan’s new book is about healthy eating
YOUNGSTOWN
When it comes to food, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan admits 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.”
The ideas in the book range from replacing run-down vacant homes with farms, particularly in urban areas that aren’t close to grocery stores, to families sitting together for meals of fresh, healthful foods.
“How do we fix our health problems? We’ve got to get back to the fundamentals,” Ryan said. “We have to get back to eating like my grandparents: food grown in a garden, and not fast food or processed food. We need to develop a new food system with fruits and vegetables, and locally grown foods that creates markets for farmers.”
There should be a garden at every school and a salad bar at every school cafeteria, he said.
“Kids don’t know how to cook,” Ryan said. “Some kids think tomatoes come from Giant Eagle.”
The congressman said the goal of his book is “to bring attention to long-term health-care solutions. If we made these national priorities, we’d have a healthier country. It’s a very, very serious problem. It’s a problem now, but I’m concerned about the nation’s health issues 20, 30 years from now.”
The book can be purchased online on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.
Ryan said he started thinking about this book shortly after finishing “A Mindful Nation.” It took about a year to write.
The book includes numerous recommendations on the back cover including one from former President Bill Clinton.