Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives
Steel, CarolynPublisher: Chatto & Windus
Year Published: 2008
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX8076
Hungry City details the transformation of the food industry and it's not so benevolent impact on humanity. Obesity, diabetes and heart disease are the by-products of a system that is characterized by over consumption in one part of the world and starvation in others. Output and the complex international infrastructure that supports are controlled by profit. Steel also documents how production of food is controlled by fewer companies accountable to no one but themselves. Her examples include the following: 90% of milk in the United States comes from one breed of cow; the same proportion of commercial eggs from a single breed of hen; British supermarkets have reduced the 2000 varieties of apples down to two. The food chain becomes vulnerable to disease, contamination or terrorism. As well as a guide to the the history of the food chain from farm to plate to landfill it is also a warning on the waste and destruction of our current food systems.