Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System by Raj Patel
The hidden complexities and terrifying simplicities of a planet squeezing itself dry in order to make half its citizens obese and the other half malnourished. This work is for lovers of Fast Food Nation, No Logo and Not on the Label, and of Supersize Me and Jamie's Dinners. We have so much choice over what we eat today because rural communities the world over have had their choices taken away. To understand how our supermarket shopping makes us complicit in a system that routinely denies freedom to the world's poorest, and how we ourselves are poisoned by these choices, we need to think about the way our food comes to us. Stuffed and Starved takes a long and wide view of food production, to show how we all suffer the consequences of a food system cooked to a corporate recipe. This is also the story of the fight against the unthinking commerce that brings it to us. In the wrecked paddy fields of India, in the soy deserts of Brazil, in the maize ejidos of Mexico, the supermarket aisles of California, French McDonald's and Italian kitchens, there's a worldwide resistance against unhealthy control of the food system.