The Industrial Diet: The Degradation of Food and the Struggle for Healthy Eating. By Anthony Winson (original) (raw)

Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d’études du développement

ISSN: 0225-5189 (Print) 2158-9100 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcjd20

The industrial diet: the degradation of food and the struggle for healthy eating, by Anthony Winson

Marylynn Steckley

To cite this article: Marylynn Steckley (2015) The industrial diet: the degradation of food and the struggle for healthy eating, by Anthony Winson, Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d’études du développement, 36:3, 420-421, DOI: 10.1080/02255189.2015.1045840

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2015.1045840

Published online: 01 Jul 2015.

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The industrial diet: the degradation of food and the struggle for healthy eating, by Anthony Winson, Vancouver, UBC Press and NYU Press, 2013, 352 pp., ISBN 978-0-7748-2552-8 (paperback)

Over the past two decades an extensive body of non-fiction literature on food and agricultural commodities has explored a wide range of topics related to agro-food systems. Scholars have enriched this literature by exploring the impacts of industrial agriculture on peasant producers; the influence of food marketing on diets; the meatification of diets; and the increasing volatility of food prices associated with the financialisation of food (Akram-Lodhi 2013; Weis 2013; Clapp 2012; Bello 2009; Patel 2007). One of the most notorious contradictions of the global food system is outrageous dietary inequality: we now live in a world where the number of overweight people has surpassed the number of hungry. Yet amid recent scholarly attention to food systems, the question of how agrarian change has impacted human nutrition has remained surprisingly peripheral. The Industrial Diet tackles this question. Winson offers a sharp historical analysis of the profound nutritional degradation of diets over time, from the advent of agriculture to the far-reaching transformation of diets in the contemporary Global Food Regime. Winson draws from over two decades of grounded field research and a critical examination of scholarship in agrarian political economy, nutrition, archaeology and critical sociology to inform this engaging examination of the industrial diet.

At a broad level, Winson attributes the persistent nutritional degradation of foods to three key forces: reductions in the biological diversity of foods available for consumption; adulterations of whole foods through the addition of fats, salt and sugars; and the speeding up of food production and transformation. For example, Winson illustrates that flour milling innovations in the late nineteenth century resulted in enormous reductions in levels of calcium, B vitamins and iron in wheat flour; technological transformations to extract the bran from rice contributed to a high incidence of beriberi and pellagra in the early twentieth century; and industrial livestock production since WWII has been associated with the rising content of saturated fats in beef and the increased prevalence of obesity and pulmonary diseases. Yet, while The Industrial Diet focuses on dietary transformations and the nutritional degradation of food, Winson also takes seriously the structural forces (that is, state policies and social hierarchies) that have shaped diets historically, emphasising that as class inequality has become much more marked with the progression of capitalism, so too has dietary inequality. Winson’s exploration of the political economy of dietary and nutritional change is perhaps ambitious in scope, yet he has managed to craft an accessible, rigorous book that makes a compelling case that the dietary deficiencies of the industrial diet are rooted in class inequality, and the final product is reminiscent of Sidney Mintz’ Sweetness and Sugar (1986). Although a significant share of The Industrial Diet is devoted to exploring the “American Diet”, Winson also pays particular attention to the globalisation of the American Diet and its early impacts in the Global South, making this book highly relevant for scholars in development studies, especially those interested in food systems and global health.

This book is organised into four parts. Winson begins Part 1 by introducing his concept of “dietary regimes”, a theoretical contribution that complements the food regimes approach by interrogating the way that massive transformations of global food provisioning has spurred profound dietary change. In Part 2, Winson chronologically examines the forces that have contributed to dietary transformation over time. This analysis extends to the Paleolithic era, and gives some attention to the dietary transformations spurred by the Columbian Exchange, but the bulk of this evaluation traces dietary change in the capitalist era. In Part 3, Winson explores the transformation of food environments since WWII, illustrating how the spatial colonisation of foodscapes by supermarkets, fast food chains and food retailers calls into question the

notion that consumers enjoy “freedom” of dietary choice. Part 4 is focused on the globalisation of the American Diet in the neoliberal era, and Winson offers compelling evidence that the degradation of diets in the Global South is occurring much more rapidly that it did in the Global North. Unsurprisingly, the health consequences - cancer, pulmonary diseases, diabetes and obesity - are also revealing themselves more quickly.

One important contribution of The Industrial Diet, and in my mind a subject that deserved more attention, is the significance of ideology and cultural values on consumer food choices. Although Winson pays considerable attention to how North American consumer preferences have been shaped by food marketing, the relationship between cultural values and dietary choices in the Global South remains underexplored. Future research might explore how desires to Westernise in many developing countries might influence dietary aspirations, food choices and nutrition.

For scholars, this book is both an excellent resource that helps unpack the roots, complexities and trajectory of the industrial diet and a launching pad for further research on the nutritional and health impacts of the industrial diet of the Global South. Yet, the Industrial Diet is also highly relevant beyond academia; it is a wellspring of critical information on dietary change from which food justice movements, nutritionists and students will undoubtedly benefit. My own notes from this book litter both my desk and my fridge, a reflection of the versatility of one of Winson’s core messages: changing the contemporary food system will require both individual action and structural change. With that in mind, I recommend this book to scholars, activists and concerned eaters alike.

References

Akram-Lodhi, Haroon. 2013. Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Bello, Walden. 2009. The Food Wars. London: Verso.
Clapp, Jennifer. 2012. Food. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Mintz, Sidney Wilfred. 1986. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Viking.
Patel, Raj. 2007. Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System. London: Portobello Books.
Weis, Tony. 2013. The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock. New York: Zed Books.

Marylynn Steckley
Geography and Migration and Ethnic Relations, Western University
Email: marylynn.steckley@gmail.ca
© 2015, Marylynn Steckley
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2015.1045840

Hidden hunger: gender and the politics of smarter foods, by Aya Hirata Kimura, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2013, 240 pp., ISBN 978-0-8014-7859-8 (paperback)

This important study of food insecurity examines how the global articulates with the local, how expertise limits the possibilities of action and how the positivist nutritional sciences shape bodies in the Global South. Aya Hirata Kimura, a sociologist in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Hawai’i-Manoa, unpacks the sociopolitical underpinnings of a new “food problem” that