Living Green: A Compact, Nutritious Meal For The Mind

Despite being a short (150 pages, minus end material), quick and engaging read, “Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainability” (Freedom Press) is no collection of empty, though green, calories for the mind.

Surprisingly dense with information, given its compactness, Greg Horn’s new book provides an excellent starting point for anyone who’s curious to learn what the ever-growing buzz about green living is all about. Yet it’s also deep and detailed enough to make a valuable addition to the veteran enviro’s bookshelf as well.

As the former CEO of General Nutrition Centers (GNC), Horn already possessed credentials enough to write a book about healthier, greener living. Yet it was the sudden onset of sick building syndrome – a heightened sensitivity to synthetic chemicals of all kinds – that drove Horn deeper into an examination of how potentially toxic our modern lifestyles are, and how to eliminate as many of those risks as possible for maximum health and sustainability.

“Like many people who start down this path, my initial interest in sustainability was sparked by a desire to improve my own health,” writes Horn, now CEO of Garden of Life, an organic nutrition company. “I had literally changed my life. Once I began feeling better, it dawned on me that the ripple effect of a healthy lifestyle is far-reaching – onto the fields of organic farms and into the atmosphere we all breathe.

I wanted to do more and to think bigger. Like you, I had good intentions. This book is about acting on those good intentions.”

“Living Green” lives up to that goal, offering advice in three easy-to-follow sections: sustainable health, sustainable home, sustainable future. The recommendations throughout are reasonable, rarely costly, and usually easy to implement. Horn doesn’t urge readers to become strict vegans or live completely off the grid. While such choices are admirable, he says, different choices will work better for different people. What matters is for all of us to make an effort to live more sustainably, and to continually try to improve even more.

“Living Green” ends with a handy resource guide to everything from sources for sustainable seafood and organic-cotton children’s clothes to green architects and sustainable communities. Like the main part of the book itself, the end section will prove to be a valuable resource for everyone from green neophytes to long-time devotees of sustainable living. And the friendly, readable style throughout will leave readers eager to see what Horn might write about next.