It’s Saturday, when I try to bring order to my life, and I was just sorting out the teetering pile of books when I unearthed [amazon_link id=”0691163871″ target=”_blank” ]Hamburgers in Paradise: the stories behind the food we eat [/amazon_link]by Louise fresco. It’s a notably handsome book with lovely pictures, so already enticing. Paging through, it looks a fascinating read as well. Although billed as a cultural history, it looks at the dominant role of supermarkets in the way we shop, at genetic modification, at agriculture, poverty and economic development, at the slow food movement and the globalization of food supply.

[amazon_image id=”0691163871″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Hamburgers in Paradise: The Stories behind the Food We Eat[/amazon_image]

Now, I love food and prepare most of our meals from scratch, buying few ready-made items. Quality is important to me. Eating as a family, round a table, talking, is essential. Yet the slow food movement makes me uneasy, as it often seems to reject the productivity needed to feed everyone, and to embody an approach few can afford. Agricultural productivity needs to increase again. As it happens, I just spotted this tweet on exactly this subject:

On the other hand, the scandals of industrial food production – horse meat disguised as beef, the treatment of animals including stuffing them with antibiotics, obesity, the high-salt, high-fat, high-margin products etc – are unacceptable and probably unsustainable. We will soon be publishing a terrific book by David Fell on food policy and taxation in our Perspectives series. meanwhile, I’m going to read [amazon_link id=”B00XB19ZB0″ target=”_blank” ]Hamburgers in Paradise[/amazon_link] over the Christmas holiday. Fresco concludes: “Without food there is no evolution and no civilization. We are what we eat, literally. … What it means to be human is concentrated in food and our understanding of it. Inevitably, part of that is the consciousness that many have too little to eat, or cannot choose to have the things tah are associated with a decent meal.”