Stuffed And Starved Summary

In Raj Patel’s novel Stuffed and Starved, Patel goes through every aspect of the food production process by taking the experiences of all the people involved in food production from around the world. Patel concludes by eventually blaming both big corporations and governments for their critical role in undermining local, cultural, and sustainable foodways and in so doing causing the key food-related problems of today such as starvation and obesity. In this book of facts and serious crime, Patel's Stuffed and Starved is a general but available analysis of global food struggles that has a goal of enlightening and motivating the general Western public that there is something critically wrong with our food system.

In Michael Pollan’s essay “ An Ethic of Eating”, he talks about how ‘real’ food is disappearing from supermarkets and groceries and being replaced with “food-like substances.” He claims that the overly processed foods are taking over and that “ordinary foods” are becoming harder to find. He is also claiming that these “food-like substances” are confusing consumers into thinking that they are healthy for you and consumer should shop from the source, farmer’s markets.

The three contingencies of Patel’s plan include changing the governing laws of agribusiness, improving the conditions of and supporting rural areas, and changing the role of eating in society. Before much progress can be made, the ways in which businesses are required to operate must change. Without any new legislations to stand in their way, nothing will alter the ways in which they operate or the ways they look to further solidify their dominance. Next, rural growers simply need more help. In current conditions, they barely scrape by due to the increasing demands from their purchasers and the decreasing amounts of compensation collected. Contrary to the original perception, crop subsidies, most associated with corn, provide no help to these smaller farmers. They can’t compete with the mass-growers and their enormous swathes of land. It drives the rural farmers out of those particular markets, and it often prevents them from growing crops their land is most suitable for. Finally, Pollan pushes the idea that there must be a revamp of the meaning of food to consumers. As it stands, people view eating as a task rather than an enjoyable experience. This leads the consumer to think little of the food, especially in ways Michael Pollan insist they must think about the food. This anti-cooking architecture of society is, nonetheless, a self-perpetuating cycle of

It is very easy to be amazed at the variety of products that can be found in today's supermarkets, all over the world. The United States in particular is a society of consumers, and many in this country would expect no less than full shelves of everything from produce, to meats, to snacks, etc. However, what most consumers today fail to realize is that the variety seen in most supermarkets in this country is really not too varied at all. In fact, the point that Michael Pollan aims to make in the first chapter of his book is just that: everything comes from corn. The paragraphs below will detail this author's beliefs in relation to today's consumer market, and focus on the ways in which most of us consume the products we are offered (often without questioning anything). Pollan's point will be stressed in this paper as well; namely, that today's society is suffering from poor nutrition and a lack of variety, due to the fact that 'everything boils down to corn,' as Pollan states, as well as the relative lack of education about the places from which one's food comes.

Patel makes food out to be a bargaining chip, a good that can be used to control nations and suppress rebellions. He may not be so far off the mark. Food was used in U.S negotiations during the 1950’s and 60’s. Nations that were susceptible to Communism were manipulated into becoming dependent on the U.S market. America is not the only superpower that Patel takes aim at however. Britain used its influence to control the grain trade, encouraging India and others to sell their wheat stocks. This brought famine back to Asia, but provided cheap food for its factory workers and suppressed rebellion at home. The food system has been increasingly used as a weapon to control weaker nations, to keep people down, and to line the pockets of those who control it.

The book “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto”, by Michael Pollan, is one of the most informative and shocking books I have ever read. This book has three different parts, each discussing the different impacts the food we eat has on us. These different parts are as follows: part I, “The Age of Nutritionism,” part II, "The Western Diet and the Diseases of Civilization," and part III, "Getting Over Nutritionism." Throughout this book the author stresses how important food is to our everyday lives.

Food did not originate from every continent; some food had to be imported because some regions could not grow food as they did not develop agriculture. Diamond formulates this into a question about food origination and when it arose on certain continents (94). It is also stated that there are many global inequalities that Diamond calls the HAVES and HAVES–NOTS. This leads readers to think about Yali’s question regarding New Guiana. Many people had farm power and many did not until several years later or did not have farm power at all because of the environmental and ecological issues in that society like climate. This leads to an issue Diamond calls “to farm or not to farm.” This also raises another question about food production and why

Mill argues that all sources “of human suffering are in a great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and effort” (Mill 15). Through this statement, Mill and Singer’s perspectives realign. Singer states that “if we stopped feeding animals on grains and soybeans, the amount of food saved would-- if distributed to those who need it-- be more than enough to end hunger throughout the world” (Singer 220). Thus, the problem rests in the selfishness of affluent nations, who do not distribute their grain to poor nations. Singer furthermore argues that we could provide contraceptives to poor nations to slow their birth rates (Singer 241). By evenly distributing food and slowly the birth rate, human suffering caused by absolute poverty could cease to exist.

Firstly, Pollan explains how baffling the American supermarket can be. He mentions that food corporations process foods in such a way that it’s intended to catch the eyes of the consumers. For example, Pollan points out that when does eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast become a therapeutic procedure in which made him to argue that food inventions have distracted people from eating healthy. Pollan also acknowledges that he is not a nutritionist or a scientist but a journalist hoping to answer questions for himself and his family.

Jennifer Ayres exposes the necessity for moral and theological considerations of the food system in her book Good Food, although she warns us that the analysis of the global food system is enough to throw anyone into despair. Ayres provides us with an analysis of the global food system by evaluating the key players. She breaks her analysis up into several parts by looking at the effects the global food system has on people, communities, the environment, and finishes with an exploration into the ways in which the global food system has shaped our political policies. She shows us that whether we are consumers, farmers, laborers, or legislators, we all play a role in the global food system and “food demands our attention” (Ayres, 2013, p. 13).

Studies have shown that many people all over the world are unaware of where their food comes from. When an individual goes to consume a food product, he or she could be completely oblivious to the methods of manufacture, processing, packaging or transportation gone into the production of the food item. It is often said that ‘ignorance is bliss’ – perhaps this rings true in the case of food, its origins and its consumption as well. In such a scenario, eating well could seem like an unlikely prospect. The definition of ‘eating well’ in modern times seems to have gone from eating healthily, to eating ethically. The manner in which food is produced and consumed has changed more rapidly in the past fifty years than it has in the previous ten

With surging global population, climatic anomalies, and energy and water reserves approaching depletion - who or what agent will feed the planet? The multinational model of western culture seems eager to oblige in an industrialized response to these deficiencies. Yet, this system ignores the poorest that would ostensibly benefit most; the importation of the western archetype’s low cost, high volume, year-round abundance creates a schema so interdependent and thinly stretched that an outbreak of disease or other catastrophe would disrupt the ability of the system to respond to that stressor. In The End of Food, Paul Roberts, a reporter for Harper’s and author of The End of Oil, attempts to cut the food crisis into three digestible pieces for

People can not survive without consuming food which is a vital part of the human’s life; they get benefits from food which gives them strength and continues life. The demand increasing on food caused the growth of the number of the food industries who provide products for people. It’s common knowledge that the food industry is a business which seeks profits at first. According to the article “The Pleasures of Eating”, the author Wendell Berry who “is among the first public’s attention to industrialized farming and the ethical and environmental problems of our system of producing food”(36), says that the food industrialists persuade people to consume foods which are already processed, and “they will grow, deliver, and cook your food and beg you to eat ... Because they have found no profitable way to do so”(37). Wendell also claims that the food industry’s “overriding concerns are not quality and health, but volume and price”(39). Nowadays, many food

Jennifer Ayres exposes the necessity for moral and theological considerations of the food system in her book Good Food, although she warns us that the sheer size of the global food systems, and the drastic effects it has on all of us, is enough to throw anyone into despair. Ayres provides us with an analysis of food, evaluating the key players in the global food system. Ayres breaks her analysis of the global food system up into several parts. She looks at the effects the global food system has on people, communities, and the environment, and finishes with an exploration into the ways in which the global food system has shaped our political policies. She shows us that whether we are consumers, farmers, laborers, or legislators, we all play

According to Kutzner, author of world hunger, there is enough food to feed everyone in the world. With much of the world 's agriculture being produced out of developing countries, (Kutzner), the root causes of starvation is within the economic and political factors keeping countries in poverty. Although natural catastrophes and environmental problems for food production have contributed to the food security issue in third world countries such as Ethiopia and Malawi, the Famine crisis in these countries is man-made, and is ultimately the result of issues including government policies on food markets and exports. In analyzing the root causes of food insecurity in the two developing countries Ethiopia and Malawi, I will be focusing on man-made famine from a socioeconomic theoretical lens, focusing on factors such as population, employment, and poverty. I have come to the hypothesis that famine in these two countries is made-made due to the policies that keep these countries from modernizing. I predict that due to the current economic conditions, the issue will not be resolved any time soon.