Full Description
The global health crisis has been debated in political arenas, written about in best-selling manifestos, and exposed in Oscar-nominated documentaries. Yet, despite all the media attention, there are few studies that look seriously at its underlying cause - the rise of the industrial diet.
The Industrial Diet chronicles the long-term developments that transformed food into edible commodities that far too often fail to nourish us. Tracing the industrial diet's history from its roots in the nineteenth century through to present-day globalism, Anthony Winson looks at the role of technology, population growth, and political and economic factors in the constitution and transformation of mass dietary regimes and provides new evidence linking broad-based dietary changes with negative health effects. With its focus on the degradation of food and the emergent struggle for healthful eating, this book encourages us to reflect on the state of our food environments and create realistic and innovative strategies that can lead to a healthier future.
Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Food Environments from Palaeolithic Times
1 Between Producers and Eaters: A Dietary Regime Approach
2 Discordant Diets, Unhealthy People
3 From Neolithic to Capitalist Diets
Part 2: The Beginnings of the Industrial Diet, 1870-1949
4 From Patent Flour to Wheaties
5 Pushing Product for Profit: Early Branding
Part 3: The Intensification of the Industrial Diet, 1940-80
6 Speeding Up the Making of Food
7 The Simplification of Whole Food
8 Adulteration and the Rise of Pseudo Foods
9 The Spatial Colonization of the Industrial Diet: The Supermarket
10 Meals Away from Home: The Health Burden of Restaurant Chains
Part 4: Globalization and Resistance in the Neo-Liberal Era
11 The Industrial Diet Goes Global
12 Transformative Food Movements and the Struggle for Healthy Eating
13 Case Studies of a Transformative Food Movement
14 Towards a Sustainable and Ethical Health-Based Dietary Regime
Notes, Index
