Examination of the effects that a single global market has on the food we eat, and the corresponding implications for public health. From nutrition to antibiotics, from heart disease to food poisoning, it shows that what matters now is not just what we eat but how it has been produced, distributed and processed.
- Diet and health - diseases and food
- policy responses to diet and disease
- this food wars business
- the consumer culture war
- the quality war - putting public and environmental health together?
- food democracy or food control?
- the future(s)
Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy, City University, London. He is co-editor (with Erik Millstone) of The Atlas of Food (Earthscan, 2003) and co-author (with Yiannis Gabriel) of The Unmanageable Consumer (Sage, 1995).
Michael Heasman is a writer and researcher on food and health, and Visiting Research Fellow, City University, London. He is co-author (with Julian Mellentin) of The Functional Foods Revolution (Earthscan, 2001) and co-author (with Ben Fine and Judith Wright) of Consumption in the Age of Affluence (Routledge, 1996).
"Lang and Heaseman's book 'offers a panorama' of the modern-day, global food industry to impress on policy makers, decision-makers in the industry, and the public that there are alternatives to the current practices which deliver much unhealthy food and at times leave food shortages in places. At the core of their recommended alternatives is a 'new conception of health [...] linking human and ecological health.' A professor and researcher respectively at London's City University, Lang and Heasman have a comprehensive grasp of the structure and workings of the food industry that goes beyond the perspectives and policies of any particular government or region. With this impressive grasp, they are able to propose workable alternatives to problems such as obesity, diabetes, and starvation caused mainly by shortsighted practices and ends of major institutions in the food industry."
– The Midwest Book Review