'***** With the origins and politics of food such a hot topic at the moment, Patel ensures you are well informed'

'Patel's anecdotes illustrate a careful argument... His plea is for a healthier world [and] one that is more just.'

`Ambitious assessment of the true cost of the global food market - social, environmental, political and, above all, human'

This is one book above all I'd love to see at the top of the bestseller lists. A clear, hard-headed analysis

Patel writes with a precision and clarity that make his unavoidably bulky suitcase of statistics accessible

`One of the most dazzling books I have read in a very long time. The product of a brilliant mind, and a gift to a world hungering for justice.'

`If you want to know the real cost of the food on your plate, read this book.'

`An important and radical contribution to the literature on the food we eat and the world in which we live.'

`This is the kind of book from which you emerge enlightened, surprised, angry and determined.'

Talks about the hidden complexities and terrifying simplicities of a planet squeezing itself dry in order to make half its citizens obese and the other half malnourished.

2008-06-19 Back down to Earth

Everytime someone shoves me in the frozen food aisle at Sainsbury's, or I see a picture Gordon Brown smiling, or another 200 or 2000 troops get sent to Iraq - I think, "Screw it! I'm just going to stop contributing to this intoxicating globalised society and just go be a farmer for the rest of my life!" Well, it turns out you're just as subject to the banal horrors of Corporatism in overalls as you are in a business suit. This is good to realise, and encourages me to be a different/better kind of consumer in real life, not just in my dream world. Thanks Raj.