Stuffed and starved : markets, power and the hidden battle for the world food system

For those with enough money - and that's most of us in wealthier countries - life is good. We can eat almost anything we want, regardless of where it comes from, what season it is or how much it costs. The world is our dish, laden with more foods than we've ever seen in history and more calories than we know what to do with. A continent away, there are more bloated bellies, but this time from malnutrition - seemingly due to a scarcity of food. But these two contrasting worlds are linked, deeply and inextricably. In a timely look at the entire global food chain, Stuffed and Starved asks us to think about the way our food comes to us, to understand how our supermarket shopping makes us complicit in denying freedom to the world's poorest and to recognize how we ourselves are poisoned by our choices. Raj Patel, an author uniquely qualified to take a long, broad view of world food production, looks at food systems - the machine most of us don't even know exists - and the web made up of corporations, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, farmers' groups, government agencies and corporate lobbyists. From farm to fork, Patel travels to rural collectives in Brazil, investigates the all-powerful distribution networks, serves up the specific journeys of coffee, soy and high-fructose corn syrup, and visits the kitchens of fast-food restaurants. What he uncovers is the shocking story of commercial greed and helpless hunger that is a key ingredient in everything we eat. Stuffed and Starved is one of the most shocking investigations into the "haves" feeding off the "have-nots" and a compelling look at how we all suffer the consequences of a food system cooked to a corporate recipe. How Can Starving People Also Be Obese? Why Does Everything Have Soy In It? How Do Petrochemicals And Biofuels Control The Price Of Food? It's A Perverse Fact Of Modern Life: There Are More Starving People In The World Than Ever Before (800 Million) While There Are Also More People Overweight (1 Billion). To Find Out How We Got To This Point And What We Can Do About It, Raj Patel Launched A Comprehensive Investigation Into The Global Food Network. It Took Him From The Colossal Supermarkets Of California To India's Wrecked Paddy–fields And Africa's Bankrupt Coffee Farms, While Along The Way He Ate Genetically Engineered Soy Beans And Dodged Flying Objects In The Protestor–packed Streets Of South Korea. What He Found Was Shocking, From The False Choices Given Us By Supermarkets To A Global Epidemic Of Farmer Suicides, And Real Reasons For Famine In Asia And Africa. Yet He Also Found Great Cause For Hope—in International Resistance Movements Working To Create A More Democratic, Sustainable And Joyful Food System. Going Beyond Ethical Consumerism, Patel Explains, From Seed To Store To Plate, The Steps To Regain Control Of The Global Food Economy, Stop The Exploitation Of Both Farmers And Consumers, And Rebalance Global Sustenance. From The Trade Paperback Edition. Here's a book that takes Jamie's Dinners, Supersize Me, mangoes in the Arctic Circle and McFatties, and puts them in a blender to make an intoxicating cocktail. Stuffed and Starved takes us into the supermarket aisles and reveals the stories behind the products in our trolleys, some of them very dark indeed. Raj Patel's definitive account of the global food system ranges across GM crops, history and export issues, rising levels of obesity and other health crises. It's a mad world where we encounter Coca Cola "cosmeceuticals" that promise to improve complexion and breast size, where Nestlé owns Jenny Craig - and Unilever, home of Ben and Jerry's icecream, owns Slimfast. It is also a positive story of resistance in the paddy fields of India, the maize ejidos of Mexico and the Italian Slow Food kitchens, to name but a few. This is a groundbreaking look and the people and products of the New Food Order Explains the political and economic reasons behind the simultaneous hunger and obesity epidemics worldwide, and describes what is being done to eliminate these disparities