Hungry City: How Food Shapes our Lives by Carolyn Steel
Filed under: Food History, Food Industry, Food Science
This is not a gastro-book. Neither is it an escapist holiday page-turner about the joys of food. It’s much better than that. It is a thorough, well-researched, broad-reaching and entertaining essay about how we in Britain have come to have our current relationship with food. This relationship is carefully characterised with a wide range of sources as disconnected, lazy and at times purely nonsensical.
In order to get there, the author takes us through the history books drawing relationships between how we eat (and have eaten) and a myriad of factors such as our predominant mode of production, the architecture of our kitchens, fashion and even our attitude to waste.
It is clear from this well-constructed argument that the author feels not only that there is something fundamentally sick at the heart of our current relationship with food but that just as the Thames Embankment was built under Victoria’s reign to rid the capital of ’the great stench’ via enormous sewer pipes, so we can do something to remedy our current predicament.
She talks of ‘vertical food cultures’ such as in Italy where, although with influences across history and world cultures has a core food tradition which makes home cookery and professional cheffing bind together into one self-perpetuating whole. We have mostly lost this according to the sats in the book and having followed the American model of dining out and getting our the food to ‘perform’ and seemingly ‘offer the world in every mouthful’, we have become an obese, bite-sized, MTV-attention-spanned society who widely admit we cannot recognise basic ingredients - let alone cook.
In among the thorough study is peppered numerous food facts including that the French invented the restaurant (not really a surprise and does explain a lot about Parisians) and that the now ubiquitous tomato didn’t make an appearance in Italian cookery at all until the 17th century when it was imported from Peru as an ornamental fruit
This is more than an academic manifesto for foodies who will no doubt when reading it sagely nod their heads in agreement about obesity statistics and feel quietly smug about the fact that they know exactly where their meat is sourced from - most of the time; it is well-informed, well-thought out and well written. I challenge anyone to read it and not learn something surprising about how we got to where we are through numerous wars and industrialisation. If not just food facts then maybe something of how disconnected we have all become as a culture, not just from our food but from each other.
Carolyn Steel is not the first to say it but change does start with us. If Jamie Oliver was even half as informed on the subjects covered here - I reckon he’d be dangerous enough to initiate some real change.
Fighting the Banana Wars and other Fairtrade Battles, by Harriet Lamb
Fair Trade has been around for a few years now and for most of us has had to share voice in the public domain with the competing virtues of organic, carbon-neutral, free-range and non-GM amongst others. If you want to know what it stands for, where it started, how it’s doing and what you can do to help, this is a book for you.
In it, Harriet Lamb - director of the Fair Trade Foundation - talks us first-hand through the journey of the movement from the banana fields of Central America to meetings with M&S via the successful launch of the first bar of Green and Blacks’ Maya Gold. It is a detailed diary of what she and the movement have had to face to get as far as they have done. There are some heart-rending accounts in here, of farmers who have either been made infertile by the pesticides they have been forced to use or have seen hideous deformation of their newly-born children. It s truly upsetting to read that something as simple as buying your bananas from Sainsbury’s instead of ASDA can have such a direct impact on the livelihood of others. And we’re talking about aspects of their lives which we would take for granted like basic health and water supply. One can’t help but feel that if we in the Western world knew of a group of countries who could dramatically improve on our welfare and levels of poverty with such simple acts as changing which brand they supported, wars would be waged without a second’s hesitation.
So, what can we do as consumers? Well Harriet has devoted a section at the back of the book to this - a concise ten step guide. I suspect that for those who choose to buy this book, those will be the most well-thumbed leaves. It’s simple, practical and empowering. Within a day of picking up this book (and not being a follower or dedicated supporter of the FT label), I had put to my company the idea of stocking FT coffee and tea in our kitchens and meeting rooms. After all, why not?
But should we change our habits? After all, doesn’t the market naturally find a happy medium where the consumer and the producer are both happy? And besides, we often want to put the best on our tables, in our mixing bowls and into our children’s packed lunches. It used to be that fair trade coffee was only drunk by the brave and those first bars of FT chocolate were as granular as the soil they came from (though I must confess I only know this by reputation as rumour was enough to put me off) but now this excuse is less valid. The supply and consumption of FT products have risen dramatically over the last decade so they must be doing something right.
A final question then; should you read this book? If you want to hear about fair trade, international relations or what the supermarkets are up to with farmers in developing nations from someone who has been at the heart of the action for over a decade, yes. It is quite detailed and at times either sad, stressful or a little dry - so for the rest of us doesn’t really represent holiday reading.
I think Harriet would much rather that you actively looked for the Fair Trade logo the next time you’re in the supermarket and gave it a go. You never know, you might even like it. And if you still feel that this isn’t enough to help struggling farmers in the developing world, I’ll leave you with a pearl of wisdom from Victor Perezgrovas, a Mexican farmer who when explaining fair trade to his own brethren simply replied “Many little raindrops in the mountains make the mighty rivers flow”.
To hear a podcast of the full lecture which Harriet held at the LSE in Feb ‘09, please follow the link below. It’s 1:30 and features Fairtrade Businessman Adam Brett and his Father Dr Teddy Brett who is a well known figure at the university.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm#generated-subheading1
Planet Chicken: The Shameful Story of the Bird on Your Plate by Hattie Ellis
I’d like to start by saying that it’s a little ironic that the very first book I’m reviewing for the tastybooks site is one of the least appetizing reads of the year.
Planet Chicken is a well-informed look at the world of chicken farming. It takes us on a journey through the history of chickens from farm birds to their current state as ‘lumps of matter’, via cockfighting and the salmonella crisis of the 1980s. But this is not predominantly a history book, it is an issue book. The issue being that we humans as a race are eating so much chicken that the only way to sustain our habit at pricing point we have come to expect is by employing methods of intensive rearing so horrific, that if someone were to be caught on camera doing it to just one backyard bird, it could plausibly form the basis of an RSPCA fundraising video.
Having said this book is centred around an issue, the main prong of which concerns animal welfare, it does so while managing not to be a tub-thumping, vegan-shoe wearing, carnivore-hating pamphlet. By looking at the facts, the author takes us through the possible health implications for humans and the appealing alternative of eating less - but much much nicer - chicken.
If you are reading it, the chances are, you are making moves towards the organic and the free range already. Issues such as food miles, the state of our school dinners and genetic modification have more than likely already appeared on your radar over the last few years - which is why you will hopefully enjoy, or at least feel engaged by this book. It helps to fill in the gaps and along the way hands out a generous basket of chicken and egg related facts; from the history of cockfighting and its centrality to London street-naming, to what really constitutes a free range hen and who controls an industry which sees these birds ending up on our tables, in our sandwiches and deep fried, half masticated on our pavements.
Planet Chicken is a well-organised book, neatly separated into two halves. The first half, “What are we doing?” covers the grim reality. This is not for the feint hearted but as I have alluded to already, if you are reading it, you would probably rather not than remain in the dark anyway. The second is entitled “What can we do?” and gives a somewhat lighter and more hopeful side to proceedings. This technique of two halves serves two purposes. Firstly, it helps to create a balanced view about the life of chickens; by discussing on the one hand what we are doing to chickens through modern farming process and the positive action we can take on the other.
Secondly and - from a reader’s point of view, more importantly - it acts as a relief from the stream of unrelenting and gruesome imagery; broiler birds who cannot walk, the hot water bath which they are passed through to loosen their feathers before the rubber fingers pluck them and the battery hens who have had their beaks removed so as not to damage each other or fight their keepers. I must admit I had trouble picking it up at times during the first half, worried that I was going to be subject to another barrage of horror before bed time. Thankfully, once I passed over the brow of the hill, the view was more hopeful. Descriptions of chickens in the natural surroundings abound as do those of the quarter of a million Brits that keep them as hobby-fowl. Even the way farmers dye free range egg yolks darker by feeding them marigold petals, and descriptions of old-school cockfighting seemed lighter and somehow more innocent than our modern, mechanised acts of cruelty.
I changed my chicken buying habits within hours of reading the first few chapters of this book. As the author points out several times, with reference to various other food revolutions in recent history, if we can all change a little, then we can contribute to real progress.
Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall has written the foreword to this book and there clearly could not be a finer champion or higher endorsement. The baton which he has been running with, with notable success over the past few has been taken up and run with on fresh legs.