Stuffed and starved

Evelyn Ross reviews an uncomfortable examination of the world food situation by writer Raj Patel

by Evelyn Ross 6th May 2011

This book will make you angry. And if you still have any illusions that the majority of those who process and manufacture our food have our best interests at heart, then they will be dispelled. Today on this planet, 800 million people are hungry, and they are outnumbered by one billion people who are overweight. Raj Patel maintains that these are symptoms of the same problem. He describes in tragic and sometimes witty detail how ‘overweight and hungry people are linked by the chains of production that bring food from the fields to our plate’.