More-with-Less Cookbook: Recipes and suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world's limited food resources

By Doris Longacre

This is a new edition of Herald Press's all-time best-selling cookbook, helping thousands of families establish a climate of joy and concern for others at mealtime.

The late author's introductory chapters have been edited and revised for today's cooks. Statistics and nutritional information have been updated to reflect current American and Canadian eating habits, health issues, and diet guidelines. The new U.S. food chart "My Plate" was slipped in at the last minute and placed alongside Canada's Food Guide.

But the message has changed little from the one that Doris Janzen Longacre promoted in 1976, when the first edition of this cookbook was released. In many ways she was ahead of her time in advocating for people to eat more whole grains and more vegetables and fruits, with less meat, saturated fat, and sugars.

This book is part of the World Community Cookbook series that is published in cooperation with Mennonite Central Committee, a worldwide ministry of relief, development, and peace.

"Mennonites are widely recognized as good cooks. But Mennonites are also a people who care about the world’s hungry."—Doris Janzen Longacre

• Language: English
• Publisher: Herald Press
• Release date: Sep 26, 2003
• ISBN: 9780836197815

Doris Longacre

Doris Janzen Longacre home economist, theologian, and advocate for the world's hungry, wrote the More-with-Less cookbook, which as sold nearly one-million copies, and Living More-with-Less.

Book preview

A WORLD COMMUNITY COOKBOOK

More-with-Less

•••••••••••••••••••••••••

Doris Janzen Longacre

Commissioned by Mennonite Centrai Committee,

in response to world food needs.

Foreword by

Mary Emma Showalter Eby

Foreword to Updated Edition by

Malinda Elizabeth Berry

Updated Edition

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Longacre, Doris Janzen

More-with-less cookbook / Doris Janzen Longacre: foreword to the Anniversary edition by Mary Beth Lind. —25th anniversary ed.

      p. cm.

Commissioned by Mennonite Central Committee, Akron Pennsylvania.

ISBN 0-8361-9103-X

      1. Cookery. Mennonite. I. Title.

TX715 L822 2000

641.5’66—dc21

00-33473

Bible text, unless indicated otherwise, is from the Revised Standard Version Bible, © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

Quotations identified NEB are from the New English Bible, © The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, 1961, 1970. Reprinted by permission.

Bible verses marked The Living Bible are from The Living Bible, © 1971 owned by assignment by Illinois Regional Bank N.A. (as trustee), and used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.

Photographs: front cover, pp. 276, 288, Ken Hiebert; back cover, p. 18, Matthew Lester/MCC;

pp. 17, 27, Melissa Engle/MCC; p. 24, Salwar Ibrahim/MCC; p. 28, Chris Clinton/Getty Images/Lifesize;

p. 44, Brandon Thiessen/MCC; p. 51, John Robinson/MCC; pp. 53ff, Thinkstock; p. 316, MCC.

Spiral edition inside front cover, Steve Lovegrove/Getty Images/iStockphoto; inside back cover, Melissa Engle/MCC.

MORE-WITH-LESS (First Edition)

Copyright © 1976 by Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa. 15683

Forty-seven printings (642,500 copies). More than 847,000 worldwide,

including Bantam Press, British, and German editions.

Design by Ken Hiebert

MORE-WITH-LESS (25th Anniversary Edition)

Copyright © 2000 by Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa. 15683

Design by Ken Hiebert, Merrill R. Miller, Julie Kauffman

MORE-WITH-LESS (Updated Edition)

Copyright © 2011 by Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Va. 22802

Published simultaneously in Canada by Herald Press,

Waterloo, Ont. N2L 6H7. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-33473

International Standard Book Number: 978-0-8361-9103-5 (spiral edition)

International Standard Book Number: 978-0-8361-9263-6 (paperback edition)

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Ken Hiebert, Merrill R. Miller, Julie Kauffman

15 14 13 12 11     5 4 3 2 1

To order or request information, please call 1-800-245-7894 or visit www.heraldpress.com.

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A full stomach says:

A ripe guava has worms.

An empty stomach says:

Let me see.

—Creole proverb

An empty sack cannot stand up.

A starving belly

doesn’t listen to explanations.

—Creole proverb

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Foreword to Updated Edition

Doris Janzen was such a nice person! my mother remarked. We were having one of our weekly phone conversations, and I had mentioned Doris Janzen Longacre. I was living in New York and had discovered that the more-with-less message of Men- nonites was connecting with a wider group of people who promoted justice in everyday living.

Earlier that week I had flipped through a Tools for Social Change catalog from Syracuse Cultural Workers and found a poster that boldly proclaimed, Do justice. Learn from the world community. Cherish the natural order. Nurture people. Nonconform freely. The words were written by Doris Janzen Longacre and reprinted by permission of Mennonite Publishing Network. While the bold statements actually appeared in Longacre’s other book, Living More with Less, it was this book—a collection of recipes—in which Longacre laid the foundation for thinking differently about food.

I sat down and took another look at More-with-Less Cookbook. My copy was a Christmas present from my parents the year I started working on my master’s degree in peace studies at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. That Christmas I skipped past all the introductory material and went straight for Alice and Willard Roth’s Whole Wheat Pineapple Muffins. Now, several years later, I made my way back to the beginning and read Longacre’s ethical analysis of the world’s food system.

I was reading with the eyes of a trained theologian who in junior high loved my home economics classes and wondered why my parents had planted grass in the backyard where a garden used to be. Balancing nostalgia with my own experience of difficult choices, I understood that Christian ideals must always be in conversation with real life. When the conversation is deep and authentic, I believe it can lead to renewal in our communities.

In the seven years since that phone conversation with my mother, I have been studying and writing about Doris Janzen Longacre’s work. It’s an exciting time to be learning more, because so many people are searching for meaningful ground to stand on in our tumultuous, globalized world. In More-with-Less Cookbook and Living More with Less, Longacre’s voice resonates with prophetic witness and pastoral concern for her neighbors both in North America and around the world. We are in a time when her witness is leading to community renewal, the primary ingredient of prophetic faith.

Prophetic Faith

When I speak of prophetic faith, I have something particular in mind.

First, as ethicist Robin Lovin describes it, prophetic faith avoids both sentimentality and despair by trusting life’s meaning and goodness in the face of real struggle and injustice.¹

Second, according to theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, prophetic faith carefully discerns and clearly denounces violence and injustice. But it must also speak to the way religion can distort itself to ignore injustice or even make it sacred.²

Third, Reinhold Niebuhr writes that prophetic faith is made up of two related acts: our expressions of gratitude for creation and our expressions of contrition for sinful actions. These two acts, he explains, are the best and only foundation for moral action in the world.³

The pages in this book are full of invitations to prophetic faith and moral action, the ingredients of a truly free and visionary nonconformity. It begins with basic choices about how we organize our households.

I write as one of the More-with- Less Generation raised on Simple Granola, Tangy Tuna Mac, Oyako Donburi, Liza’s Tomato Sauce, Rice and Eggs, and homemade play- dough. I thank Doris Janzen Longacre for handing us two things:

First, this book that symbolizes a beautiful heritage calling us to a prophetic faith that asks tough questions and answers them with our living.

Second, a metaphorical egg. In Living More with Less Longacre writes, Once an egg yolk breaks into the white, there’s no way to remove every tiny gold fleck. Just so, once you walk into a supermarket or pull up to a gas pump, you are part of the economic and political sphere. She continues, Gathering up the fragments of our waste—recycling, conserving, sharing—is a logical and authentic beginning. Such actions are the firstfruits of the harvest of justice. They are the promise of more to come.⁴

Let us sing songs of gratitude and hope even as we utter prayers from hearts broken by injustice.

Let us carry baskets filled with eggs and taste justice on our lips.

Let us be more with less.

—Malinda Elizabeth Berry

Instructor in Theological Studies

Bethany Theological Seminary

---

Notes

1. Robin Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr, Abingdon Pillars of Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 11.

2. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Community in Christianity, Buddhist-Christian Studies 11 (1991), 227.

3. See Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941).

4. Doris Janzen Longacre, Living More with Less: 30th Anniversary Edition, ed. Valerie Weaver-Zercher Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2010), 43.

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Foreword to First Edition, 1976

Why another cookbook when the market is flooded? Paradoxically cookbooks are best sellers despite the fact that convenience foods and eating out have become big business. Put a cookbook on the market with a unique and creative idea, an attractive format, and explicit directions for using the reci-pes and it sells.

The More-with-Less Cook-book has all the earmarks of a best seller. First of all, it is a creative idea. It was born from the compulsion that someone, somehow must prod us over-fed North Americans to do something about our over-abundance in relation to the world food crisis. It implores us to begin today on a program of responsible eating. Secondly, the book demonstrates clearly how we may enjoy more while eating less. There is a way of wasting less, eating less, and spending less which gives not less but more, the author says.

This cookbook is not just another collection of favorite recipes. It is more. The recipe section, which includes about two-thirds of the total space, features recipes of a special kind. The author’s call for low-cost, low-fat, low-sugar, and less expensive protein recipes within the Mennonite constituency brought in thousands of responses. She and her assistants selected and tested those which appear in the twelve recipe chapters.

O God,

We’ve wasted

       we’ve complained we’ve grumbled.

We’ve misused our resources

We’ve confused

our needs

       with our wants.

For these sins

Father, forgive us.

Help us

reset our priorities

       according to Your will.

Amen.

—Norma Johnson

Lobatse, Botswana

As one would expect, in a collection of recipes based on economy of money, time, and energy as well as foods related to good health, the emphasis is away from expensive packaged goods to dishes prepared from simple, basic ingredients. The book includes many recipes for meat extender dishes such as soups, stews, and casseroles using vegetable proteins. It places less emphasis on the roasting and broiling of chunk meats. It encourages eating more nutrition-rich fruits and vegetables and less rich, sugary desserts.

The author’s years of living abroad, plus worldwide travel on the part of numerous contributors, is reflected in the international recipes that are included. These add variety to the menu, contributing color, flavor, and nutritional value at low cost.

The one-third of the book not devoted to recipes contains valuable information which required many hours of research on the part of the author. Useful tables detail daily food requirements, the nutritive content of commonly used foods, and the comparative costs of foods. Suggestions for careful shopping appear along with suggested menus.

The More-with-Less Cookbook includes a number of unique features. Interspersed throughout the text are inspirational inserts and interesting personal remarks about certain recipes. Options for changing recipes allow the cook to be creative while stirring up her own. Recipes that merit the Time Saving label are identified with a large TS in bold face type. Each chapter contains a special feature, Gather Up the Fragments, a clever way of presenting ideas for using leftovers.

This cookbook will appeal most to young homemakers whose lifestyles are open to change, and whose desire for variety and creativity will lend enchantment for trying new recipes. Perhaps this is as it should be since they are most responsible for the food habits for the next generation. The More-with-Less Cookbook will best reach its goal of helping Christians respond in a caring-sharing way in a world with limited food resources when placed in full view of family members rather than simply adding it to the collection on the kitchen shelf. It can constantly remind your family of its central theme, There is a way that gives not less but more. More joy, more peace, less guilt; more physical stamina, less overweight and obesity; more to share and less to hoard for ourselves.

—Mary Emma Showalter Eby

Author,

Mennonite Community

Cookbook

Acknowledgments by Author, 1976

This book is not a personal production, but a blend of the gifts and ideas of many. Therefore the list of acknowledgements is long.

Special thanks to:

—Karin and Walton Hackman, former neighbors, who first said, Someone should write a cookbook.

—Hundreds of men and women who responded to Mennonite Central Committee’s call for recipes.

—William T. Snyder, Edgar Stoesz, and other Mennonite Central Committee staff persons for warm encouragement and helpful criticism.

—Marjorie Ruth for competent secretarial assistance and typing the manuscript.

—Bonnie Zook for directing the recipe-testing procedure and other staff assistance.

—Helen Janzen, former supervisor of home economics for the Depart-ment of Education in Manitoba, for reading and critiquing the manuscript.

—Kenton K. Brubaker, professor of biology, Eastern Mennonite Col-lege, and David Leaman, assistant professor of medicine, Hershey Medical Center, for reading and critiquing Part One of the manuscript.

—Don Ziegler and Sarah Ann Eby for editing the manuscript.

—My husband, Paul, and our daughters, Cara Sue and Marta Joy, for their wealth of good ideas and cheerful willingness to try new dishes month after month.

—The following home economists and their families who voluntarily tested the recipes:

Ruth Alderfer, Hatfield, Pa.

Linda Baer, Hagerstown, Md.

Ann Dumper, Grantham, Pa.

Beth Frey, Conestoga, Pa.

Carol Friesen, Fresno, Calif.

Sandy Goritz, Boiling Springs, Pa.

Karen Harvey, Leola, Pa.

Mary Jane Hershey,

Harleysville, Pa.

Alta Hertzler, Goshen, Ind.

Kathy Histand, Sellersvllle, Pa.

Betty Hochstetler, Elkhart, Ind.

Nancy Horning, Leola, Pa.

Louetta Hurst, Lancaster, Pa.

Margaret Ingold, Goshen, Ind.

Debbie Jennings, Grantham, Pa.

Sheila Jones, York, Pa.

Marlene Kaufman, Mt.

Gretna, Pa.

Kate Kooker, Ardmore, Pa.

Louise Leatherman, Akron, Pa.

Ellen Longacre, Bally, Pa.

Mary Martin, Hagerstown, Md.

Jean Miller, Akron, Pa.

Mary Jo Oswald, Hagerstown, Md.

LaVonne Platt, Newton, Kan.

Doris Risser, Harrisonburg, Va.

JoAnn Siegrist, Lancaster, Pa.

June Suderman, Hillsboro, Kan.

Sharon Swartzendruber, Pekin, Ill.

Lois Weaver, Lansdale, Pa.

Erma Weaver, Manheim, Pa.

Lucy Weber, Mohnton, Pa.

Olive Wyse, Goshen, Ind.

Lillian Yoder, Goshen, Ind.

Bonnie Zook, Leola, Pa.

Catherine Mumaw, Goshen

College Home Economics

Department, and students

of Goshen College foods

classes

—these persons for additional special testing:

students in Goshen College

Peace Society who arranged

for alternate cafeteria meals

Ruth Detweiler, Akron, Pa.

Marian Franz, Washington, D.C.

Miriam LeFever, East

Petersburg, Pa.

Kamala Platt, Newton, Kan.

Gladys Stoesz, Akron, Pa.

Don and Priscilla Ziegler,

Lancaster, Pa.

Dedicated to

Helene Claassen Janzen

and

Edna Mowere Longacre

••••••••••••••••••••••••••

two cooks who are

traditional but creative

thrifty but generous

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Preface by Author, 1976

Mennonites are widely recognized as good cooks. But Mennonites are also a people who care about the world’s hungry.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a worldwide ministry of Ana-baptist churches engaged in relief, development, and peace, in 1974 called for a major focus on the world food crisis by Mennonites. MCC has long provided leadership in working at long-range solutions by broadening and strengthening rural development and family planning programs around the world.

In addition, for the first time in its history, MCC has asked each constit-uent household to look at its lifestyle, particularly food habits. Noting the relationship between North American overconsumption and world need, a goal has been set to eat and spend 10 percent less.

In Mennonite communities across North America, people are responding with a kind of holy frustration. We want to use less, they say. How do we begin? How do we maintain motivation in our affluent society? How do we help each other? From questions like these the idea of compiling a cookbook was born.

Mennonite and Brethren in Christ periodicals carried the request for recipes, hints, and inspirational material. Within weeks, letters from men and women, from students and grandparents filled my box. Thou-sands of recipes arrived from around the world.

Those with whom I counseled agreed that every recipe used should first be tested. More than thirty home economists tried the recipes and evaluated them in their homes. I searched out resources on nutrition and world food supply.

We are prepared with all our hearts to share our possessions, gold, and all that we have, however little it may be;

to sweat and labor to meet the needs of the poor, as the Spirit and Word of the Lord and true brotherly love teach and imply.

—Menno Simons

All the recipes I received were carefully read. Over a thousand were tested. Many were adjusted according to suggestions from testers. Some are a composite of similar recipes. Many excellent recipes could not be used because of limited space.

Although the book is finished, the holy frustration goes on. Do not approach this book as a set of answers for responsible change. At its best, it tells us that Mennonites—a people who care about the hungry—are on a search. We are looking for ways to live more simply and joyfully, ways that grow out of our tradition but take their shape from living faith and the demands of our hungry world.

There is not just one way to respond, nor is there a single answer to the world’s food problem. It may not be within our capacity to effect an answer. But it is within our capacity to search for a faithful response.

—Doris Janzen Longacre

Doris Janzen Longacre was associated with IMennonite Central Committee (MCC) and its worldwide ministries in the name of Christ. Doris grew up in Elbing, Kansas, and Tucson, Arizona. She attended Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, received her BA in home economics from Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana, in 1961, and studied at Goshen Biblical Seminary.

She served as dietitian of Hesston College from 1961-1963, as MCC hostess of the Language Study Center in Vietnam from 1964-1967, and in another MCC assignment in Indonesia in 1971-1972.

Doris was chairperson of the Akron Mennonite Church from 1973-1976, member of the Board of Overseers of Goshen Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana, 1976-1979, and a frequent speaker and workshop leader at church conferences in Canada and the United States.

Doris lived in Akron, Pennsylvania, and was married to Paul Longacre. Their two daughters, now adults, are Cara Longacre Hurst and Marta van Zanten.

Just prior to the completion of her second book on simple living, Living More with Less, Doris passed away after a thirty-nine-month battle with cancer.

She said, "I have always liked to cook, particularly experimenting, developing a recipe. I seldom make a recipe twice the same way. I also find satisfaction in cooking and serving foods from other cultures."

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Preface to Updated Edition

by Editor

In this updated edition of More-with-Less Cookbook, Doris Janzen Lon- gacre’s introductory chapters (pp. 12-13) have been edited and revised for today’s cooks.

Statistics and nutritional information have been updated to reflect current American and Canadian eating habits, health issues, and diet guidelines. For example, nutritionists today do not emphasize getting adequate protein as much as eating from a rainbow of nutrient-dense foods, especially fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

The message has changed little from the one that Doris Janzen Longacre promoted in 1976, when the first edition of this cookbook was released. In many ways she was ahead of her time in advocating for people to eat more whole grains and more vegetables and fruits, with less meat, saturated fat, and sugars.

Note: Quotes in shaded areas are from the 25th Anniversary Edition of the More-with-Less Cookbook.

—Mary Clemens Meyer

Substitutions

* May not yield pefect results in products of fine texture such as light cakes; generally acceptable in breads, many cookies and moist cakes.

Commercial Container Sizes

When recipes in other books call for commercially canned or frozen foods and you want to use home-preserved food, use this chart to determine quantity needed.

You have heard it said that because of hunger in Third World countries we should not overeat.

But I say unto you that the abuse of your body, mind, and soul is never justified.

You have heard it said conserve for the sake of the crisis because of limited amounts available to use.

But I say unto you the only wise use is that which brings glory to God.

Let not your hearts be troubled by this kingdom but let your bodies and energies be dedicated in service to God and man.

Surely you will find the future kingdom already being fulfilled in your life.

—Martin Penner, Recife, Brazil

Who Are the Mennonites?

Mennonites are a Christian faith group that began in the sixteenth century. Currently there are over one million members worldwide. Mennonite beliefs and practices vary widely but following Jesus in daily life is a central value, along with peacemaking.

Menno Simons was an early prominent leader and eventually his follow-ers became known as Mennonites. Many Mennonites endorse and try to live out more with less approaches in all of life, believing that is one way we follow Jesus. For more on Mennonites, visit www.thirdway.com/menno.

Since meeting IMennonites in the pages of More-with-Less, I have served four terms with IMennonite Central Committee, become a Mennonite, studied in Mennonite seminaries, written for Mennonite periodicals, pastored Mennonite congregations. I still use the cookbook. I still measure my rice according to directions on page 125. I still see the future reign of God already being fulfilled in our lives as we dedicate our bodies and energies in service.

—Carol Rose, Wichita, Kansas

More

With Less

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Less with More

The bright sun shines unblinkingly. Wind sweeps the land. No rain. Old people shake their heads. Little children and women move to the food camps. Already there are more than 200,000 in camps. We all pray for rain.

In the towns and cities people stand in line. As sugar, cornmeal, flour, and oil decrease, tensions in the lines increase. Lean years are upon us.

Teach us to care, O God,

In the Somali-Muslim way

Which does not hoard

Nor store for the future

But shares gladly

Regardless of how little.

—Bertha Beachy

Mogadishu,

Somali Democratic Republic

Cutting back sounds like a dismal prospect. Let’s splurge, just this once, appeals more to American and Canadian ears.

Put dismal thoughts aside then, because this book is not about cutting back. This book is about living joyfully, richly, and creatively.

When Mennonite Central Committee put out a call in church papers in 1974 to find out how people were cutting back, letters poured in. Simplifying meals to reduce food expenditures has been a joyous experiment, said one. We are in no way deprived of tasty, nutritious food, wrote another. A third recalled memorably delicious feasts.

When writing this book, I read the daily mail, searched through nutrition texts, and pored over the writings of world food supply experts. Pieces began to fall in place. There is a way, I discovered, of wasting less, eating less, and spending less that gives not less, but more. The gain is so great that the phrase cutting back doesn’t fit at all.

But before we can understand how much there is to gain, we need to look at world food supply and our own eating habits.

World Shortages

Imagine our planet as a giant puzzle color-coded according to food supply. Throughout history, the colors have shown hungry people somewhere. In the early seventies, however, the pieces put together made a new picture.

More people on the planet, more floods, more droughts, and a larger affluent population demanding rich diets had driven world food reserves to a precarious low. The world prices of wheat tripled between late 1972 and the end of 1973. Rice followed. Soybean prices doubled within two years.¹ Between 1972 and the end of 1973, petroleum, a vital resource to modern agriculture, quadrupled in price. Poorer countries, which imported both food and oil, suffered most.

For the first time, the world faced shortages in each of the four basic agriculture resources—land, water, energy, and fertilizer.² If all the food in the world were equally distributed, and each human received identical quantities, we would all be malnourished, wrote Georg A. Borgstrom, nutritionist and geographer of Michigan State University.³

From an almost overnight awareness of diminishing world food reserves came the 1974 term food crisis. In Canada and the United States, most of us grew up believing we were born into an era of abundance. The ability to buy something meant the right to have it. But Christian disciple- ship called us to turn around.

Canada and the United States: Five Times as Much

Overpopulation, rising fuel prices, and increased consumption of animal protein in more affluent societies still contribute to world food shortages. We are among the affluent.

The average American or Canadian today uses five times as much grain per person yearly as one of the billions living in poor countries. Each of us uses about 1,700 pounds of grain per year. Most of this we consume indirectly in meat, milk, eggs, and alcoholic beverages. But the average Asian eats less than 200 pounds a year, most of it directly as rice or wheat. It may surprise us to realize that in Europe, where people generally enjoy an adequate diet, each person consumes about half of what an American or Canadian eats.⁴

People who live on less than 200 pounds of grain a year are deficient in both calories and protein. But much of the amount we consume above European levels must be called excess, both for health’s sake and from a caring Christian stance. Global resources can never allow the rest of the world to approach the levels of consumption in Canada and the United States.

We have not always eaten this way, so possibly there is hope for change. Our grandparents, despite our reference to their meat ’n’ potatoes, and seven sweets and seven sours, did not eat nearly as heavily of meats or sweets as we do.

Here is an example of how rising affluence over the years changes our kitchen habits. My grandmother iced cakes only for birthdays. My mother iced most of her cakes, but thinly and only between the layers and on top—not on the sides. Until recently I stirred up an ample bowlful of frosting that covered everything and left plenty of finger-lickin’s.

But most of our excesses are more complicated than this, and they mesh into each other. We are overeating calories, protein, fats, sugar, and superprocessed foods. We are overcomplicating our lives.

Overspending Money and Resources

While it’s popular to complain about food prices, Americans and Cana-dians spend far less of their income on food than do most people in the world—and we’re spending less than ever before. In 2009, the average American family spent only 10 percent of its income on food, compared to 22 percent in 1949.⁵ In developing countries, by contrast, people spend from half to almost three-quarters of their income on food.

And yet the amount of dollars we spend on food is high. We are trained to look for convenience and variety, and are taken in by advertising and alluring packaging. The processed foods that take up two-thirds of our supermarkets are full of fats and sugars in addition to fillers, artificial flavors, and preservatives.

Instead of buying inexpensive rolled oats, we eat expensive and less nutritious dry cereal that is puffed, colored, sweetened, vitamin enriched, and cardboard packaged. Instead of cornmeal, we buy corn chips.

Our diet is also expensive because we get many of our daily calories from animal protein. Meat, milk, and eggs are nutritionally valuable, but expensive because of the resources required to produce them. We waste resources when we use more than we need.

Overeating Calories

You have only to stand on a street corner and watch the world go by to be assured that we overeat.

My husband and I were conscious of being surrounded by overweight bodies after returning to the United States from three years in Vietnam. People here looked cumbersome, ungainly, plodding. We missed the lithe grace of the Asians.

According to a 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 34 percent of adults and 17 percent of children and adolescents in the United States are obese.⁶ For those of us concerned about world hunger as well as our own health, being overweight has many implications.

Overeating wastes food. It wastes money and human resources when we require medical help because of obesity-related diseases. Insurance premiums go up, while life expectancy and job opportunities go down for overweight people. When we overeat calories, we get less with more.

Loneliness, anxiety boredom, and meaninglessness undoubtedly contribute to our high rate of obesity. But people in other parts of the world have their problems too. Somehow theirs do not result in national obesity. Our wrong diet must play a significant role.

Most Americans and Canadians have sedentary occupations. We live in comfort-controlled temperatures. Our calorie needs are therefore significantly lower than they were several decades ago. We have failed to adjust our eating habits to these conditions.

Our bodies still require