Event

‘Food Fight’: from plunder and profit to people and planet

This event hosted by UK think tank the Institute of Development Studies launches ‘Food Fight’ – a book that shines a light on the evolution of our global food system.

Join us for the launch of ‘Food Fight’ – a book by food and nutrition expert Stuart Gillespie that shines a light on the evolution of our global food system from its origins in colonial plunder through the last fifty years of neoliberalism, before concluding with a set of actions to put people and planet at its centre.

We’re enmeshed in a cascade of interlocking crises – health, climate, environment, poverty, inequity – at the heart of which sits our global food system. Designed in a different century for a different purpose – to mass-produce cheap calories to prevent famine – this system is now generating obesity, undernutrition, illness and early death.

A quarter of all adult deaths – over 12 million every year – are due to poor diets. Malnutrition in all its forms, is by far the biggest cause of ill-health, affecting one in three people on the planet. Every country is affected but it is the poorest, most marginalized people who are most likely to become malnourished, get sick and die too soon.

Our food system is also making the planet sick – generating one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions and driving a raft of environmental harms.

Corporate capture

Over the last fifty years of neoliberalism, our food system has become riven with power imbalances and captured by a handful of transnational corporations (Big Food) who seek to maximise profit at all costs.  These costs are monumental, as the most profitable (ultra-processed) products are also the most dangerous for people and planet. Companies don’t pay the price for these harms. We do. Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations – made to make money, not to nourish us.  Many are addictive. We are programmed to eat high-fat/sugar/salty foods to store energy for periods of scarcity – and we have an instinct to eat these types of foods whenever we can, wherever we find them. These traits are now a massive liability – our basic biology has effectively been hijacked and subverted for profit.

It’s not just the companies to blame.  More often than not, governments fail to act, to develop policies and legislation that determine how the system operates. Big Food also translates its huge commercial and financial power into political power by adapting a set of tactics used by the tobacco industry in the last century.  Food Fight delves into this corporate playbook to reveal the five ‘deadly Ds.’

The global food system therefore is not broken – it’s doing what it was designed to do. We don’t need to fix it – we need to change it. To transform it into one where the health of people and planet is prioritized above the relentless drive for profit. It’s too late for incremental change, yet more tweaking at the margins – we need a radical overhaul.

The way forward

The good news is we now know what’s happening and why, and we know enough to act at scale. After decades of food and nutrition policy, practice and research, we have a library of experience and insights from all over the world. We need to harness this new evidence and experience to propel us forward – into a new era, in which power is better balanced, in which plunder and profit gives way to people and planet.

Food Fight concludes with a roadmap and a call for action.

Speakers

Stuart Gillespie – Honorary Associate, Institute of Development Studies and non-resident Senior Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute

Nicholas Nisbett – Professor of Global Public Policy, Nutrition and Health Equity, Institute of Development Studies (IDS) (Chair)