Food Writing in Books

The past 20 years has seen a sharp incline in the number of books critiquing the quality of our food supply, focusing in particular on its production, distribution, and consumption as well as on the forces that dictate dietary advice. Since 2000, much of the debate within such food writing has focused on a few key issues—namely, local food versus the multinational food industry, or Big Food; the causes of and solutions to obesity; the safety and environmental impact of genetically modified foods; nutritionism and dietary advice; and how best to achieve food justice. Such contemporary debates about food inevitably reflect the tension between the local and the global, the natural and the technological, as well as the private and the public that atomize culture ...