Author(s): Christopher D. Cook

Popular Science/Environment

If we are what we eat, then, as Chris Cook contends in this powerful look at the food industry, we are not in good shape. Mad Cow disease, bird flu epidemics, tainted meat scandals, and Mercury-laced fish - we are evidently surrounded by unsafe food. The planet itself is at risk from today's farming practices. "Diet for a Dead Planet", now available in paperback, takes us beyond Fast Food Nation to explain why our entire food system is in crisis. Corporate control of farms and supermarkets, unsustainable drives to increase agribusiness productivity and profits, misplaced subsidies for exports, and anaemic regulation have all combined to produce a grim harvest. Food, our most basic necessity, has become a force behind a staggering array of social, economic, and environmental epidemics. Yet there is another way. Cook argues cogently for a whole new way of looking at what we eat - one that places healthy, sustainably-produced food at the top of the menu for a change.