Raj Patel's Stuffed and Starved

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Recommended: Problems of food shortage

In Raj Patel’s novel Stuffed and Starved, Patel goes through every aspect of the food production process by taking the experiences of all the people involved in food production from around the world. Patel concludes by eventually blaming both big corporations and governments for their critical role in undermining local, cultural, and sustainable foodways and in so doing causing the key food-related problems of today such as starvation and obesity. In this book of facts and serious crime, Patel's Stuffed and Starved is a general but available analysis of global food struggles that has a goal of enlightening and motivating the general Western public that there is something critically wrong with our food system.
In his book there are a few main points discussed by Patel. One of them is that he focuses in on the huge food corporations and describes how they act as bottlenecks in the global food distribution system. What he means by bottlenecks is that there is a massive number of producers and consumers, but between the producers and consumers are only a few dominating processors and distributors that dominate their section of the food industry (21). Patel also tells us that we want to think that we make our own choices when we decide what to eat, but it is actually the complete opposite. A second purpose of the book is to determine the epidemics of starvation and obesity, and how they are connected. Patel claims that the people who are stuffed – by that he means obese – are actually starving because they are eating empty calories that make them fat, but don’t provide any nutrition.
The idea of the family farm has been destroyed by large food corporations. As discussed in class, industrial farming typically leads to the mass produ...

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...he slow food movement are in five different chapters (Gupta). I think that this lessened the impact that could have been made if they were all in the same chapter. Another thing that was left out was the food System in China. Otherwise, it was a great book and should be read by everyone who wants to gain more knowledge of the food system and how it operates.

Works Cited

"FarmAid." Page Not Found-Farm Aid. N.p., Feb. 2010. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
Gupta, A. "Stuffed & Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System." War Resisters League. N.p., Dec. 2009. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.
"Institute for Responsible Technology." - 10 Reasons to Avoid GMO's. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
Planes, Alex. "InvestorCenter." DailyFinance.com. N.p., 8 June 2013. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
Toews, Jacob C. "The Disappearing Family Farm." The Disappearing Family Farm. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.

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