Description

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The British were once famous worldwide for being uninterested in food and our food being brown. This is no longer the case. UK food has changed remarkably in the last half century. Our food has Europeanised (pizza is children's favourite food) and internationalised (we eat the world's cuisines), yet the food culture is fragmented, a mix of mass 'ultra-processed' foods (high in salt, sugar and fat) alongside food as varied and good as anywhere on the planet. This is partly the effect of Europeanisation but mainly because the UK has got wealthier, allowing aspirations and tastes to flower.

This book takes stock of the UK food system: where it comes from, what we eat, its impact, its fragilities and strengths. It's a book on the politics of food. It argues that the UK's Brexit vote is an enforced opportunity to review our food system. This is sorely needed. A deep reflection by the UK state began after the shock of the Oil/Food Commodity price spike 2007-08 and the Great Recession. This policy was, alas, curtailed by the Coalition and Tory governments which both argued the food system should just keep going as it had been. The future, they said, lay in a burst of agri-technology and more exports to pay for the massive food imports.

Feeding Britain argues that this and other approaches are short-sighted, against the public interest, and possibly even strategically folly. Setting a new course for UK food is no easy task, however, but it's a process, this book will urges, that needs to begin.

About the Author

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Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy, City University of London, which he founded in 1994 and directed until 2016. For the last 25 years he has researched, written and lectured on the role of policy in shaping and responding to the food system, particularly in relation to health, environment, social justice, the political economy and consumer culture. He previously spent seven years as a hill farmer, an experience which has shaped his work ever since.

Praise For…

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Present discontents lend urgency to Lang's core message ... Security matters, and that includes food security. Lang has performed a public service.—Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times

Forceful, illuminating, an ambitious manifesto ... The advent of coronavirus has added timeliness to Lang's warning about the fragility of our food supply.—Martin Bentham, Evening Standard

When Lang says that "although not officially at war, the UK is, de facto, facing a wartime scale of food challenge", it's worth paying attention. We are in serious trouble ... It's a simple message, but in the white heat of a crisis, defined by queues outside supermarkets, a useful one.—Jay Rayner, The Observer

Lang practically invented food ethics in this country ... Feeding Britain tells us how we could build a better food system, and shows that it is possible.—Sophie Morris, The Independent

Feeding Britain is distinguished by the clarity and care with which it lays out urgent issues, most centrally that Britain does not produce enough food to feed itself.—Erica Wagner, Financial Times

It is dense with statistics for journalists and academics to harvest and will, I suspect, become the go-to book for anyone interested in what is now going to be a hot political issue.—Jamie Blackett, Daily Telegraph

For years, food policy expert Tim Lang has been an almost lone voice in the wilderness, arguing that UK food security needs to be improved. In his new, very timely book, Lang notes that most consumers think that "as long as there is food on the supermarket shelves, all is well in the world. It is not".—Bee Wilson, The Guardian