April 14, 2005—According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 75 million Americans fell sick last year from the food they ate.

To explain why our food system is in crisis, Oberlin alumnus Christopher D. Cook '90 has written the riveting and timely Diet for a Dead Planet: How the Food Industry Is Killing Us, which "helps us rethink the very ethical and environmental principles that ought to guide our approach to food," says Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends. "In short, Cook is imploring us to think more deeply about our most basic connections to the earth. He raises the big questions and steers us to some possible answers."

On Monday, April 25, Cook will present a free, public talk titled "Fixing Food: Recipes for Disaster and Change" at 7:30 p.m. in the Hallock Auditorium of the College's Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies.

Cook will examine agribusiness today, the many environmental and public health crises caused by the food industry, and the challenges and prospects for change. He will also read from Diet for a Dead Planet: How the Food Industry Is Killing Us and will be available after the talk for a book signing.

Cook has written for Harper's, Mother Jones, The Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, The Nation and others. He has also worked as a daily newspaper reporter for the Oakland Tribune and United Press International, and as news editor for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. His 1998 report on welfare programs sending recipients into dangerous meatpacking plants won an Aronson Award. In 2000 he was a finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and the Livingston Award.