Sitopia: How Food Can Change the World

"Okay. So, again, another seemingly simple idea: let’s look at things through food. Now, I’m obsessed with food. I like cooking. I love eating. And this is really, really interesting, very wide-ranging. It looks at the world through the prism of food, covering everything from land use to philosophy, culture, and many contemporary issues like, for example, obesity. A lot of information, from a writer whose sense of humour comes through. Thank god. Because, again, in this book there are times when you think, ‘hang on a minute,’ and you have to go back and have another think about what she’s just told you. But it’s got a smile on, as well as a slightly annoyed tone. Well, food governs everything, doesn’t it? I’m going to put this quite crudely, with apologies to Carolyn Steel who does this much better, but what you buy dictates how land is used – how intensively it’s used, what it’s used for and where that land is. Do you buy something that was grown here? Do you buy something that was grown far away? Your decisions about food influence so many things. So it really impacts on conservation. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Food is a problem in many ways for us at the moment – it makes us fat and unhealthy. But the way some of it is grown, particularly in Western societies, can fuel climate change. As everything! Even as someone who works in farming and food, this book makes you realise how food cuts across everything. It has really interesting things about the philosophy of food, and how other civilisations looked at food. I found it such an interesting book."