HOW THE WORLD EATS

A sometimes contrarian philosophy of food and its creation and consumption.

By British philosopher and journalist Baggini’s account, there are food systems, and then there is the “sphere of human existence which they govern, guide and control.” This sphere he calls the “food world,” “an organic ecosystem, in which every part is connected to every other.” Within this ecosystem, more than a quarter of the people on Earth lack nutritious food in quantities sufficient to sustain them—though, as Baggini notes, a parallel if counterintuitive development is the rise in obesity rates in about equal number, and both hunger and obesity speak to “our broken food world.” In proposing repairs, Baggini is refreshingly adaptable, and though he risks courting purist rancor, he advocates a mixed diet that makes use of whatever is fresh and seasonal with whatever is available, which includes meat (“Is disgust at meat eating really a sign of more civilised society or simply a mark of one that has become detached from the realities of life and death?”). Baggini also adds wrinkles to accepted narratives: as gauged by the biodiversity of gut flora, one good measure of food health, the problem is not so much that the gatherers and hunters are better off than those settled in urban agricultural societies as that processed food, which we moderns tend to rely on, is a guaranteed detriment to a good “gut microbiome.” Baggini also suggests that organic production is good but not always possible, that food governance is a matter of national interest and thus not to be left to the “free market,” and that technology (including lab-grown meat) is not to be shunned in the quest to feed the world.

A provocative, intelligent survey of the many complexities, moral and practical, of bringing food to our plates.