The banquet is in the first bite.

Instead of eating exclusively from the sun, humanity now began to sip petroleum.

People forget that eating represents their most profound engagement with the natural world. Through agriculture is how we change the world, more than anything else we do.

Eating is a political act.

The other thing that soy contributes to, of course, is hydrogenated oil. This is the main oil. This is the fast-food oil.

Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life-the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids-is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.

I get letters from classes all the time. Say it's assigned in someone's 8th grade class, and the teacher asks everyone to write a letter to me about their impressions and what they learned. So, it's incredibly gratifying to hear.