Book Review: Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet
Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet
by Stuart Gillespie
James Joughin
The opening sentence of Stuart Gillespie’s Food Fight pulls no punches: ‘Food is life but our food system is killing us’. It sets the tone for where we are going for the rest of the book. ‘Designed in a different century for a different purpose – to mass-produce cheap calories to prevent famine – (the food system is) now generating obesity, ill health and premature death. We need to transform it …’ It is a familiar story, but Gillespie has the evidence, and with the narrative he spins, it is hard to argue.
Gillespie is a nutritionist, and he brings a nutritionist perspective. With his long career in global institutions like the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), his book has authority and credibility. He lays out very clearly how malnutrition in all its forms has become by far the biggest cause of ill health on the planet, affecting one in three people. Much of the book is about what he calls ‘the double burden of malnutrition’, the coexistence of under nutrition with overweight and obesity, and how we got into this extraordinary situation, not just in Britain but all over the planet.
The material I liked was in the chapters on the political economy of the food system. Gillespie is good on how big corporate players dominate our markets, and how the more power is concentrated in ‘Big Food’ the less likely we are to have a diverse supply of affordable, accessible, healthy foods. He discusses in some depth how corporations influence policy and regulation, using tactics similar to what happened in the tobacco industry: what he calls the ‘dark arts’ of political interference. These include lobbying, delaying regulation, front groups, camouflage, and shaping public narratives to protect profits.
Gillespie has a whole chapter on policy interference, where he outlines how corporations block, delay or weaken public interest food policy. He details the mechanisms of corporate influence (lobbying, meetings with ministers, delaying marketing restrictions), and he covers the interplay between corporate agendas and government action (or inaction). Very pertinently, in light of its rise to the top of the food agenda right now, he has a useful section on how ultra-processed foods have become pervasive and harmful. This is followed by a chapter on how governments are predisposed not to act, beset by policy inertia, lack of imagination and vision, corporate capture, and the inability to escape the demands of the short-term political horizon.
He does not have a lot to a say about climate change specifically, most obviously the pressing need to grapple with how and why the food system makes such a huge contribution to GHG emissions. The National Food Strategy (2021) says our food system accounts for a fifth of domestic emissions, with the figure rising to around 30% if we factor in the emissions produced by all the food we import, and there is international research which suggests that food-system emissions world-wide could amount to 34% of total global GHG emissions. To be fair, this is not what the book intends to do and Gillespie does clearly place climate change within the same frame as malnutrition and inequality, showing how the food system intersects with broader social and environmental problems.
The historical framing - particularly the links between postwar industrial agriculture, and today’s ultra-processed food economy - is one of the book’s most persuasive features, making his arguments harder to dismiss as purely ideological. Particularly compelling is his comparison of ‘Big Food’ tactics with those revealed in the long history of ‘Big Tobacco’: he has concrete examples to make the case.
The book takes on a more sobering tone in the second half when Gillespie goes through the various ways in which he thinks some of these problems can be addressed. Part of the problem is that although he explores these in some depth, they still seem a little underwhelming in the face of the enormity of the task he has detailed in the earlier chapters. His analysis – a virtual call to arms - has pointed to the need more or less to dismantle the entire system - what he calls structural transformation - and so the familiar menu of actions (better governance, citizen mobilisation, and policy reform) seems a little insufficient. Nonetheless, his call for the various players in the system to harness the growing social and political will to propel us forward is surely useful. In a rousing finale, he insists that in a situation where the food system is controlled by powerful transnationals making mega profits from unhealthy food, government must show leadership. He explicitly calls on us - citizens and institutions - to organise.
Stuart was recently the main speaker at an event in Brighton organised by the soft left think tank, Compass. His message (brief summary here) resonated with the audience, not least as one of his positive examples of ‘cities driving change and getting results’ is Brighton itself, with its long-running food strategy and numerous, active and organised community groups. One of the other speakers at the event was Ali Ghanimi from the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership. Together, they were able to explore what is going in the town at a more granular level, and begin a dialogue with the audience about how we can make further progress in the real world: the first steps in ‘getting organised’.
Observers might have been struck how hard it is for citizens and community groups really to contest the power structure that Gillespie describes in his book, and he did acknowledge that it will be a serious challenge to force through the policy changes needed, to get a grip on the various levers of power that can make things happen.
Despite this, the book is a terrific entry point for readers who want to understand how the public health crisis and the related environmental damage have come about, derived as they are from the same political and economic structures. It is also a useful primer as to how to at least begin to put pressure on the authorities to change policy, and, as Gillespie argues, alter the structural incentives.
Taking this as a kicking off point, we here at Climate:Change in Brighton and Hove might want, as citizens and activists, to try to explore the nitty-gritty of how we might proceed, and I suggest, a first place to try to gain a toe hold is Brighton and Hove’s existing economic planning framework. There are multiple formal documents laying this out, to varying degrees of detail and with varying levels of engagement, but the Brighton & Hove Economic Plan, 2024–2027 must be the first port of call. There are also relevant council documents like the Brighton and Hove City Plan to 2041; the Brighton and Hove Circular Economy Route Map 2020 to 2035; the Greater Brighton Food Systems Investment Costings Project (2023), and several others.
It seems fair to say that at a local level, certainly in the pre-devolution era, if power is being exercised, it is only very gently. These documents talk about partnerships of course (e.g. Food Partnership involvement), some funding prioritisation (for food poverty & circular projects) and mention is made of procurement norms (council leadership by example). None of these is binding in any way, and there is no mention of targets or KPIs or any discussion of financial allocations against any part of the strategy, let alone sanctions for non-delivery or binding performance thresholds linked to funding. If serious action is going to happen locally, this is where we need to see some movement.
Here at Climate:Change we might want to investigate these areas further. We might want to explore food policy in Brighton and Hove with an explicitly economic perspective, and this might look at how the whole food system functions in the town: its contribution to GDP; its employment implications; its role in the hospitality industry; the significance of supermarkets, including competition issues; the food inequities in the city; the economics and carbon implications of home delivery; the local government regulatory framework; and the pricing of externalities (especially around waste). As we proceed in this work, we should be seeking to achieve a reinforcing of the existing and pioneering Food Strategy and we would hope to be able to draw in both Stuart Gillespie and Ali Ghanimi as we do it.
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James Joughin leads on food policy for Climate:Change
Perspective pieces are the responsibility of the authors, and do not commit Climate:Change in any way. Comments are welcome.