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The End of Food
by
Paul Roberts
Paul Roberts, the best-selling author of The End of Oil, turns his attention to the modern food economy and finds that the system entrusted to meet our most basic need is failing. In this carefully researched, vivid narrative, Roberts lays out the stark economic realities behind modern food and shows how our system of making, marketing, and moving what we eat is growing ...more
Hardcover, 416 pages
Published
June 4th 2008
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
(first published March 21st 2008)
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Eating. A simple pleasure we take for granted. Well, not anymore thanks to this book.
In treating food as a commodity, we have opened a Pandora's box of sorts. Our global food economy is literally on the brink of disaster. Disaster that can not only cause our food prices to rise, but cause thousands more to starve and die.
Never happen in the year 2008, you say? According to the scientists, that scenario is very possible. As the pressure to increase production and profit...more
In treating food as a commodity, we have opened a Pandora's box of sorts. Our global food economy is literally on the brink of disaster. Disaster that can not only cause our food prices to rise, but cause thousands more to starve and die.
Never happen in the year 2008, you say? According to the scientists, that scenario is very possible. As the pressure to increase production and profit...more
view all 12 comments
A very good book, better written than many. It would have more power if the author wasn't making a career out of "The end of ___" as titles for books. It forces him to make things seem more dire than they are, and when things ACTUALLY ARE quite dire, his authority is easier to question. b/c he’s cultivated a livelihood writing about doomsday scenarios, he’s hard to read objectively.
but there is a LOT of good info and research in this book. HE makes the good point that for a...more
but there is a LOT of good info and research in this book. HE makes the good point that for a...more
This is a scary look at the current and future consequences of modern food production and the global market. The footnotes take up fourty pages in themselves. This author has read and digested and documented everythign there is out there on the current statistics, problems, and trends in food production. He discusses disease, land overuse, global trade, food production methods and dangers, genetic engineering, marketing that promotes over-processing of foodstuffs, and just about every other aspe...more
The End of Food offers a deeper look at the global food system than any previous book I have read. At times it reminded me of Confessions of an Economic Hitman and The Omnivore's Dilemma combined into one. Mixing solid writing with a behind the scenes look at the geo-political systems that control our food, Paul Roberts describes the harsh reality of the food system being pushed to the edge. With detailed citations and succinct analysis, Roberts fills in the details where The Omnivore's Dilemma...more
Most people do not think about food security, meaning the balance of what and how food gets from the producer to the grocery store to your home. Mr. Roberts explains that while we have become accustomed to a food industry which efficiently delivers food we have chosen this with a cost that is not sustainable. We are causing more problems with just in time food delivery as well as negatively influencing farmers lifestyles when they miss a deadline or loose their crop to natural causes. At the sam...more
Don’t read it. I can sum it up in one word: DOOM.
This book explores the current system of food production as it has moved from the western world and is currently moving into the developing world. As food has become more available, food production has become more specialized and more cutthroat. Profit margins keep getting cut all along the chain so that it becomes necessary to produce more volume of higher value products which leads to pushing the system well past its tolerances fo...more
This book explores the current system of food production as it has moved from the western world and is currently moving into the developing world. As food has become more available, food production has become more specialized and more cutthroat. Profit margins keep getting cut all along the chain so that it becomes necessary to produce more volume of higher value products which leads to pushing the system well past its tolerances fo...more
Very similar to Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, Roberts is very heavy on the facts. This book is over 300 pages of hard to digest facts which point out the obvious flaws in the food industry. By having so many facts in his book there is a blatant disregard for the reader. He doesn't take into account that there are over three hundred pages and through out them he berates the food industry for all of its flaws. An industry that is under the weight of a nation that is at three hundred million a...more
This is an excellent book for anyone who is curious about the advantages and shortcomings of our present day food system. Roberts really did his research when writing this book. The book includes narratives from people involved in the food production industry from all parts of the world including; France, Japan, Kenya, Canada, China and the US. Roberts paints a grim picture of today's industrial food system. Explained in the book in detail is how subsidies by various governments undercut and oft...more
To boil down my opinion to a blurb: This book is a bit too technical to be so sensationalist...
But of course, this is unfair to a book that is so exhaustively researched and in many ways well-presented for a reader that is not afraid to wade through a bit of technical writing. I would be more likely to recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma or In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, or Plan B 3.0 by Lester Brown to most of my friends simply due to the comparative ease of reading those books...more
But of course, this is unfair to a book that is so exhaustively researched and in many ways well-presented for a reader that is not afraid to wade through a bit of technical writing. I would be more likely to recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma or In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, or Plan B 3.0 by Lester Brown to most of my friends simply due to the comparative ease of reading those books...more
This was tricky to rate. The information was well-presented and very important, but this was not a book I "liked". It was a book that made me think, and worry, and question-- but it was dry at times and relied a lot on "what-if" situations. Roberts carefully navigated the boundary of shock reporting and delivered a fairly balanced view of current and future food supply issues. You will be terrified, angry, sad and maybe a little grossed-out, but you should read this book.
Not as entertaining or as engaging as Michael Pollan or Joanna Blythman this is an interesting, if Amero-centric, look at food and the food industry as it stands and it's race to the bottom.
This was an interesting book to read while Ireland had another food crisis, where industrial grade (read cheap) oil was added to pig feed (loaded with dioxins), potentially causing a lot of problems for purchasers, producers and farmers. Much of this type of thing was discussed in this book and...more
This was an interesting book to read while Ireland had another food crisis, where industrial grade (read cheap) oil was added to pig feed (loaded with dioxins), potentially causing a lot of problems for purchasers, producers and farmers. Much of this type of thing was discussed in this book and...more
This book started out strong, but its focus kept broadening. This had the effect of dilluting my attention. It does contain some very important information and it does attempt to be comprehensive, but comes off dense and disorganized. About 3/4 of the way through I found, like other readers, I had to take it in short spurts of a few pages at a time. Also, I found a few arguments where my point of view departs from that of the author, so I can't take the book as a wholesale truth. For insta...more
Read this book. Please. Deep and sobering messages delivered in this book. I almost feel compelled to make sure everyone of my elected officials from the local level up to the my congressional representatives has read this and is thinking about this extremely complicated issue.
To quote from Roberts (p. 268) "What is becoming clearer by the week is that the food challenges of the future-a rising population, degrading soils, declining quantities of energy and water, climatic instab...more
To quote from Roberts (p. 268) "What is becoming clearer by the week is that the food challenges of the future-a rising population, degrading soils, declining quantities of energy and water, climatic instab...more
In this lucid yet expansive tome, Paul Roberts probes all the ills and externalities pushing our global food system to the brink of collapse. The pressure to constantly reduce the bottom line in industrial food production has generated unprecedented risks: environmental degredation from exhaustive water, pesticide and fertilizer use, the rise of food-borne illnesses (hits home during this current swine flu epidemic), and an increasingly obsese First World while sub-Saharan Africa can't get enoug...more
Without outright stating what diet would be a better option, my own conclusion after reading this book is that it is the most convincing evidence for vegetarianism. One piece of evidence talked about in this book is that it takes 100 tons of water to grow 1 ton of grain. If 20 lbs of grain is required to make 1 lb. of a cow, or 9 lbs. of grain to make 1 lb. of beef, it takes at least 900 lbs (900/6 = 150 gallons) of water to get a pound of beef. If irrigation is only 60% efficient, that's 60 ...more
Overall it wasn't a bad book, but it's certainly much longer (and longer winded) than it really needed to be. They could have easily filtered out a lot material that was not very interesting, but somewhat redundant and even irrelevant at times.
My other complaint was in the way the material was presented. The author does us a service by presenting multiple sides of an argument, but sometimes in a very negative fashion. For example, the book describes how some generally accepted ben...more
My other complaint was in the way the material was presented. The author does us a service by presenting multiple sides of an argument, but sometimes in a very negative fashion. For example, the book describes how some generally accepted ben...more
This is somewhat of a repeat of Michael Pollan's excellent books on food production and consumption, but with more focus on international food markets, politics, and food distribution. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more had I not already read two of Pollan's books. Still, it is good to be reminded that we should not take our food supply for granted, and neither should we be surprised by food-borne illnesses. I was particularly interested in a long section on "value-added foods," w...more
Paul Roberts presents an in-depth discussion of the global food system. After a comprehensive and balanced assessment of politics, environment, obesity, hunger, sustainable systems, food-borne pathogens, climate change, business, profit margins, and supply chains he concludes that our food system is poised for a global crisis. We are unable to sustain the system as it is currently and it certainly cannot support another several billion people in the future. What we need is a complete remake o...more
As you'll see from my recent reading lists, I've been reading several books on food and sustainability. By the time I got around to The End of Food, much of the information in it seemed very familiar, given that I've also spent some of my reading time during each of the past several years on the subject. In fact, I more or less skimmed the book, since it needed to go back to the library. But I would recommend it to someone who is just getting started on this subject. Perhaps you saw the document...more
It's pretty clear, after reading this book, that the biggest threat society faces is most likely not terrorism or extremism. It's food safety. The problems Roberts describes are so huge and intractable, I'm not sure how they will ever be solved. He;s fairly hopeful, but then doom-and-gloom books with no shred of hope are a difficult sell. Issues like global warming, disease, hunger, employment are all inextricably linked to the food industrial complex -- they all either exacerbate the problem of...more
416
This book is an overview of the way the world grows and buys food. I don't know that much about agriculture. We had a garden growing up, more it seems to torment me then to provide any type of sustenance. But real live off of what you plant never. And I don't think I would know how to kill and clean a chicken let alone anything bigger like a pig or cow. So in the end I'm pretty much dependent on the industrial agriculture.
Water, right now, is already a big issu...more
This book is an overview of the way the world grows and buys food. I don't know that much about agriculture. We had a garden growing up, more it seems to torment me then to provide any type of sustenance. But real live off of what you plant never. And I don't think I would know how to kill and clean a chicken let alone anything bigger like a pig or cow. So in the end I'm pretty much dependent on the industrial agriculture.
Water, right now, is already a big issu...more
Roberts is generally fair in the weighing of pros and cons with each facet of the food system -- and the alternative models that propose to replace it. Just as one raises a mental objection, Roberts seems to address it in the next paragraph. Such moderation is difficult to find in many discussions of food politics, and readers on both ends of the spectrum of argument about what should be done to feed the planet will be able to find pertinent perspectives from the other side relayed clearly...more
Actually was looking for a different book when I picked this one up. This guy does an amazing job of taking an incredibly complex thing and explaining it in readable terms. Probably the best and most complete treatment that I've read of the problems with our modern food system. I would give it 5 stars, but I was also hoping for more insight on the ok well what can be done for the better/hope after the gloom and doom. And while he covers this a little bit, it's a very brief treatment. I gues...more
This was a great book. The author introduced a new way of looking at sustainable food systems. I really appreciated his stance on the locavore's view of sustainability. Food miles aren't necessarily the most important thing to consider when making food choices. The author questions what will do more damage to the earth: the carbon emissions produced when transporting organic food to the US, or the ill-effects that pesticide residues and synthethic fertilizers will create by purchasing more local...more
This book was informative, but really dense and very dry. It took me 6 months; I skimmed the last chapter. As I wrote my notes, I realized that I really did learn a lot, but I kept my rating at 2 stars because of the readability and redundancy.
Thoughts/Interesting bits:
-Check out the Sierra Club's "The True Cost of Food" website
-I think a food chem class would be very cool
-"Neither organic farming nor any of the other alternatives...can by themselves ho...more
Thoughts/Interesting bits:
-Check out the Sierra Club's "The True Cost of Food" website
-I think a food chem class would be very cool
-"Neither organic farming nor any of the other alternatives...can by themselves ho...more
Michael Pollan says it all much better. (Roberts cites most of the same big names in Food Science like Marion Nestle too.) The first chapter, which looks at human evolution in the context of food preferences is the most interesting. For instance, as our ancestors evolved into homo erectus we began shifting from a plant based diet to a meat based diet getting skillful at hunting very large game animals-subsequently we were very large then-6 feet or so and our brains got bigger and smarter (way la...more
"The End of Food" by Paul Roberts is an informative book about the global food market. Paul Roberts definitely did his work when it came to researching this book. Evidence of the research is found in the large "Notes" section in the back of the book.
This book made me think about where exactly the food on my table comes from and if it really is as safe to eat as I think it is. Fear and a bit of anxiety over the safety of my food is a side effect from reading this b...more
This book made me think about where exactly the food on my table comes from and if it really is as safe to eat as I think it is. Fear and a bit of anxiety over the safety of my food is a side effect from reading this b...more
This book should be required reading for all of humanity. In it, Paul Roberts discusses our crumbling food systems and economies. He thoroughly covers the history of our food systems, their current state, and where they are headed in the near future if our current eating habits continue. Roberts fills every chapter, with well-researched, easy to read narrative that encourages the reader to rethink food habits. He covers everything from food processing, the onset of fertilizer in agriculture,...more
Investigating the failing global food machine
Journalist Paul Roberts investigated the global food-delivery system and he reports that food product production and prices have advanced like the production and prices of other contemporary consumer goods. The economics of the food system push an ever-faster product cycle driven by supply-and-demand pressures. The infrastructure that delivers food to consumers uses ever-advancing technology. However, food itself is not an ordinary cons...more
Journalist Paul Roberts investigated the global food-delivery system and he reports that food product production and prices have advanced like the production and prices of other contemporary consumer goods. The economics of the food system push an ever-faster product cycle driven by supply-and-demand pressures. The infrastructure that delivers food to consumers uses ever-advancing technology. However, food itself is not an ordinary cons...more
Jennifer Keller
added it
I picked up this book on vacation. Not exactly light reading, but very informative. The author has certainly done his research! I skimmed quite a bit, as it was more info than I needed, but the parts I read were scary. I am very concerned about our food supply and what it's doing to our health. I wish he had provided more information on how concerned citizens can help affect change. A good percentage is gloom and doom...I found myself not sure what was safe to eat for days!
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