{"id":807,"date":"2025-12-12T16:37:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T16:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/?p=807"},"modified":"2025-12-19T16:14:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:14:49","slug":"my-approach-to-book-reviews-a-focus-on-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/?p=807","title":{"rendered":"My Approach to Book Reviews: A Focus on Food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-857 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/IMG_5159-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><em>Exploring Food, Culture, and the Human Experience<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about how the books we read shape the way we understand the world \u2014 not just intellectually, but emotionally, culturally, and even spiritually. As I continue exploring the big questions that connect food, people, history, and the future, I\u2019ve found myself wanting a single place to gather the themes and reflections that come from my reading journey. My hope is to link the books I\u2019ve read with my own evolving thoughts about them, and to build this into an ongoing series \u2014 a growing archive of insights and questions. I\u2019ll be expanding these categories over time, with guidance from my mentors, advisors, and of course, from you. If you have recommendations, or if a particular book has shaped your thinking in any of these areas, I would be so grateful to hear about it. As, above all, I&#8217;d love for this to be a space to engage in conversation with these books, and with you. Below are the themes I\u2019m most interested in exploring:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Travel<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Memoir<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Culture\/Anthropology <\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Food<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Food policy:<\/strong> global trade, regulation, subsidies, farm bills<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Food education<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Food history:<\/strong><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>ice age, discovery of farming, civilizations, trade, silk road, Columbian expansion, sugar, Europe boom industrial revolution, population growth, war, globalization<\/li>\n<li><strong>Food equity:\u00a0<\/strong>hunger and food insecurity<\/li>\n<li><strong>Human health:<\/strong> nutrition, noncommunicable disease, longevity, child health, school meals, youth<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Planetary health:<\/strong> seed preservation, sustainability, climate change, biodiversity, environment (pollution), water sustainability<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>The influence of war and peace:<\/strong> on agriculture and food systems<\/li>\n<li><strong>Gastrodiplomacy:<\/strong> &#8211; Artic to Antarctica &#8211; places that have \u201cno place\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Children:<\/strong> as our present and our future<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Space<\/strong>: growing food in space<\/li>\n<li><strong>Urban agriculture<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Controlled environment agriculture<\/strong>: hydroponics, aquaponics<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Food science and recipe development<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019m excited to see where this path leads \u2014 and to share the books, thoughts, and discoveries along the way. Thank you for being part of this journey with me.<\/p>\n<p>With gratitude,<\/p>\n<p>Earlene<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-856 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PHOTO-2025-12-12-13-07-07-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> This will be the main page that I will update with links to respective book reviews. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_sb_show_comment_boards":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[33,34,39,32,35,37,23,25,20,21,40,31,26,38,22,29,27,41,30,24,36,28],"class_list":["post-807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-antarctic","tag-anthropology","tag-aquaponics","tag-arctic","tag-children","tag-controlled-environment-agriculture","tag-culture","tag-food-equity","tag-food-history","tag-food-policy","tag-food-science","tag-gastrodiplomacy","tag-human-health","tag-hydroponics","tag-memoir","tag-peace","tag-planetary-health","tag-recipe-development","tag-space","tag-travel","tag-urban-agriculture","tag-war"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1073,"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions\/1073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/about.earlenecruz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}