Stuffed And Starved: From Farm to Fork: The Hidden Battle For The World Food System - Softcover

"Compelling. At first glance, Raj is another depressing voice in the chorus. But in traveling the world researching the book, he also found hope in international social movements working to create more democratic, sustainable, and joyful food systems." --Mark Bittman, "New York Times" "For anyone attempting to make sense of the world food crisis, or understand the links between U.S. farm policy and the ability of the world's poor to feed themselves, "Stuffed and Starved" is indispensable." --Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma """Stuffed and Starved" remains a brilliant didactic account of the powerful interests (dis)organizing our food systems, and why, when food is an object of profit, there are no "modern" solutions to "modern" problems such as endemic hunger, ill-health and environmental degradation...Raj Patel's unique sensibility and intelligence in evaluating grassroots alternatives provide a road map to understanding and changing the world through re-centering food as a cultural anchor rather than a product, especially at this moment of environmental uncertainty." --Philip David McMichael, author of "Development and Social Change" "One of the most dazzling books I have read in a very long time. The product of a brilliant mind and a gift to a world hungering for justice." --Naomi Klein, author of "No Logo" "Patel's broad treatment helps the layman connect the dots, as well as hear the voices of those who occupy the lower rungs of the global food chain." --"Time Magazine" "A blistering indictment of the policies of multinational agribusiness conglomerates and charges that their drive for profit at any cost has left the developing world starving while wealthy countries like the United States are experiencing epidemic obesity rates and related health problems." --"Newsweek" "For Patel, it is a short step from Western consumers 'engorged and intoxicated' with cheap processed food to Me

We have so much choice over what we eat today because rural communities all over the world 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.