Two scientists, Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood, who devise a compound they call Herakleophorbia IV which, when fed to animals, causes them to grow in size. Bensington and Redwood hope this will solve the problem of world hunger. They hire a married couple, the Skinners, to help maintain their experimental farm consisting of giant chickens and other huge animals.

Unfortunately the Skinners accidentally allow the compound to end up in the local food chain. Soon the countryside is plagued with giant rats, wasps and other vermin have eaten the "food." A civil engineer named Cossar organizes the locals to hunt down and destroy the mutants.

But England's troubles aren't over yet. Although Cossar's party destroyed the wasps and rats, it turns out that a young boy named Albert Caddles ate some of the "food" and has grown gigantic, as do Cossar's sons. It becomes known as "boomfood" and is recklessly consumed by a variety of people for fun, who all become giants. Initially it seems as though England will tolerate them, but the rate at which they consume food, and the amount they must eat, soon has the normal-sized humans worried about their own dietary needs. Dissent begins to grow between the two groups...

Not one of H.G. Wells' best remembered novels, The Food of the Gods is nonetheless a fun cautionary tale.