Powerful ideas from top nonfiction
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 5,500+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Food Fix summary
Mark Hyman
How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet – One Bite at a Time
Listen to the first key idea
Key idea 1 of 8
4.5 (125 ratings)
26 mins
8 key ideas
Audio & text
What is Food Fix about?
Food Fix (2020) shows us how the world's gravest problems, like chronic disease, inequality, and climate collapse, can all be traced back to our food and the way we produce it. Here, American physician Mark Hyman describes what we should do next, setting out the path to healthy eating and regenerative farming.
About the Author
Dr. Mark Hyman is an American physician and best-selling author. He is the founder and medical director of The UltraWellness Center. Dr. Hyman was also a columnist for the Huffington Post and a regular contributor to the daytime talk show Katie, presented by Katie Couric.
Table of Contents
Key idea 1 of 8
The gravest problems we face as a species can be linked to one thing: our food.
Sometimes it feels like the world is coming to an end. Scroll through any news feed, and you’ll be confronted with emerging crises, rising death rates, and new conflicts. There’s a new famine. Cancer deaths are increasing. The polar ice caps are melting. Bees are dying out.
If you were asked why there seems to be so much alarming news, “food” probably wouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind. And yet, food is at the heart of it all.
The key message here is: The gravest problems we face as a species can be linked to one thing: our food.
Let’s consider some of the most severe crises facing us and the planet.
First, our health. Shockingly, our diet is the main cause of death, disability, and suffering in the world. Over the last 40 years, our eating habits have changed beyond recognition. We eat more and more ultra-processed and sugary foods, and these have contributed to a rapid increase in heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. These diseases now kill nearly 50 million people a year. They are more than twice as deadly as infections. This health crisis was entirely preventable, but it has already cost us trillions of dollars.
Second: inequality. Children raised on ultra-processed and sugary foods suffer from malnutrition. This stunts their intellectual development, and thus they may grow up underachieving, driven into poverty, homelessness, and crime. Bad food makes the whole cycle of inequality exponentially worse.
Third, let’s look at communities in the developing world. They suffer disruption from big agribusinesses and from corporations that the author labels Big Food. These behemoths drive people from their land and destroy their homes and traditions, all the while encouraging harmful dietary and farming habits.
Last but not least, the way we produce food is endangering the planet. Big agribusiness is the single biggest contributor to climate change. It clears precious CO2-absorbing habitat and destroys healthy soils. It does more damage to the climate than all of our fossil fuel companies combined. Intensive farming methods also soak the earth in dangerous fertilizers and pesticides, killing vast amounts of our wildlife and creating huge “dead zones” in the oceans.
Traditionally, we have considered these problems separately, putting “bad diet” in one box and “climate change” in another. But they all have one focal point: food. So to solve them, we need to take a broad, holistic approach. Before we define it, let’s consider these problems in more detail.
Want to see all full key ideas from Food Fix?
Key ideas in Food Fix
More knowledge in less time
Read or listen
Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.
Find your next read
Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.
Shortcasts New
We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.
Who should read Food Fix
- Anyone interested in eating and living well
- Environmentalists and climate activists
- Farmers looking to transition to sustainable agriculture
Categories with Food Fix
Books like Food Fix
What our members say
Sven O.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Thi Viet Quynh N.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Jonathan A.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Renee D.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
Start growing with Blinkist now
25 Million
Downloads on all platforms
4.7 Stars
Average ratings on iOS and Google Play
91%
Of Blinkist members create a better reading habit*
*Based on survey data from Blinkist customers