And Both Were Young

And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'Engle

A girl goes off to boarding school in Switzerland. She has trouble fitting in. She is seen as not good at sports, though she is good at drawing. With the help of a teacher, she gradually becomes more happy at school. She also meets a boy who she likes. Later some mystery man comes and claims to be the father of the boy. She has a plan to try to verify and ends up getting hurt. They later discover the man was a con artist and the boy's parents died in the holocaust.

The girl has been secretly training in skiing with the aid of the boy and the teacher that befriended her. She enters a ski contest (to the chagrin of the PE teacher.) She fails to win because she stopped to help a fallen classmate, but gets the grand trophy anyway. She sees her father friends with the teacher she liked - but he says it is too soon after her mother died for him to get serious. 

It is a nice boarding school story that has conflict, but does not get too extreme.

Pandora's Lunchbox

Processed food is bad for you, but it is cheap and convenient. Whole plants are much better for you than than fortified processed foods. That pretty much sums up Pandora's Lunchbox. However, the journey is worth the read. The book covers a lot of the "underbelly" of food production. Food processors attempt to make food that is quick to prepare and has a long shelf life. Unfortunately, this often makes it taste horrible and not very nutritious. Thus, they add additional chemical flavors and vitamins to make up for the loss. (Thus, we get chicken with added "Chicken flavor") The processing reduces a lot of the benefit that we may not fully know about. (The vitamin does not work in isolation, but with many other components.) It can also lead to oddities such as the "melting chicken nugget".

With all the negative implications of processed food, why do we consume it? Companies spend millions of dollars marketing the processed junk to us. However, these same companies will often sell healthier, less processed foods. Alas, people are more driven towards the "cheap fix" rather than something that takes more effort to prepare. And companies are eager to make a buck. Cost ends up becoming a huge part of the equation. The government provides "raw" food for school lunches. However, schools find it cheaper to divert this to processors and then buy back the less nutritious processed food. The processed food is also physically and chemically modified to last longer, thus allowing it to last longer, potentially saving cost and reducing waste in the short term. The cost is only felt in long term when the increased health care expenses and worse quality of life are present. The book even provides an anecdote where swearing off processed food helped a family - a child had his mental condition improve and the father lost weight. The mother (who initiated the plan) felt jealous that it did not help her lose weight, but felt better and continued it on. Eating less processed foods required a sacrifice of time, but paid off dividends in health.