A Review of The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food by Wayne Roberts

Deciding which foods to put into our bodies is no longer an easy task.

With increasing attention being paid to issues of climate change and pesticide exposure, food safety and security is a topic of growing concern. Despite the multitude of options available in local supermarkets, mass-produced and mass-marketed corporate food products often dominate the “selection”, making it hard for consumers to realize how much freedom they actually have when it comes to which foods they choose.

In his latest book, The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food, Toronto-based food guru Wayne Roberts aims to open up the conversation about food choices by breaking down the different elements of the global food order and revealing the interconnectedness of our world food system. Roberts offers his reader timely insight and clarity into the debates surrounding world food, effectively exposing the systematic flaws in the current industrialized food order as well as presenting to his audience exciting and sustainable food alternatives, inspiring readers and consumers alike, with the revitalized possibility of choice.

Roberts begins by highlighting the fact that we are working with “a $6.4 trillion a year food economy that sells a necessity of life and impoverishes more people than any economic sector”. The first step Roberts takes in opening up the conversation about food is to take his reader through a fast yet informative history of what he calls the modernist food system. Explaining how the current modernist system was birthed by the rise of industrialism, global trade and imperialism, Roberts outlines how the abundance of cheap food has simultaneously gained prominence in the global food market and contributed to the impoverishment of citizens in the global South.

As corporate led food production increased, the economic inequalities between the global North and global South were exacerbated through further marginalization of southern farmers and rising dominance of agribusinesses. The mid-twentieth century Green Revolution was seen as the answer to the problem of world hunger, but rather than examining the systematic flaws that were behind world hunger and poverty, the proposed solution was to simply increase yield and production via heavy machinery and pesticide use.

These tactics, however, failed, because as Roberts points out, the root problem of hunger is rarely connected with the amount of food available across the globe; it continues to stem from the issue of who holds access to food. Food, Roberts explains, is a social justice issue. Any sustainable food system, he explains, must therefore focus on peoples’ rights rather than just revenue.

With its strong emphasis on economic growth and profit, the modernist food mentality of the 1940s and 1950s, made food production “one of the world’s dirtiest industries” today, rooted with deep inequalities and environmental violations. The food industry has become a system that is dominated by agribusinesses and thus, there is an increasing emphasis on bottom-line profits rather than providing food for local people and communities. As the waistlines of the privileged North widen from cheap food and the healthcare systems suffer the burden, citizens of the global South struggle to keep up with demand and compete within a system that favours corporate revenues over community well being, says Roberts.

Unfortunately, this emphasis on profit and production has not subsided, and North America is subsequently embedded within a cheap food system that disadvantages farmers, perpetuates global economic inequalities, and causes environmental damage to the very life support systems that sustain food production. We are reaching a crisis situation with world food that only stands to be exacerbated by a changing climate.

It is easy to see the passion that Roberts holds for the food movement. Although his review of the political history of food is biting, the optimism expressed toward alternative food potentials is both informative and inspiring. Roberts’ book serves as both a warning towards the hazards of falling into an industrial food trap, as well as a handbook that enlightens readers to the incredible possibilities in waking up to their cheap food addictions and deciding to make meaningful changes in the way they see and consume food.

Some of Roberts’ examples of alternative food systems are taken from Cuba’s organic urban agriculture model and Brazil’s Zero Hunger program, which are both working to empower citizens by increasing food sovereignty and the right to access food. The issue of food sovereignty is at the heart of Roberts’ alternative food system, which he terms a Fusion style food system. A Fusion food system, explains Roberts, is one that advocates for viewing food as a public good rather than a tradable commodity. Food sovereignty, says Roberts, “resonates with the lived experience of ordinary people. It registers as a customary right that people can actually taste. East and west, north and south, social history shows that the most passionate rebellions of the most humble people have always come when customary rights seem in jeopardy”.

Roberts’ No-Nonsense Guide to World Food is as much an overview of the global food system as it is a call for action and change in the way we view and consume food. Roberts’ encourages his readers to make careful decisions about the foods they buy. The information packed into this compact and succinct book would provide any reader with much to digest. Roberts’ exploration into the history of food and the interconnectedness between food production, obesity and poverty in the global South, challenges the reader to rethink his or her assumptions about where our food comes from and how it is produced. His advocacy for a more equitable fusion-style food system, based on equality and food sovereignty, incites many moral and ethical debates, and reminds us about the power of choice.

The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food
By Wayne Roberts
Paperback: 192 pages, $16.00, 2008
Publisher: Between the Lines (Canada) / New Internationalist Publications Inc.