Diet for a Large Planet

The British diet, like British dentistry, is a familiar punchline. But Otter shows that it is much more than this. He argues that Britain's dietary transformation remade bodies and geographies, and the outsourcing of its nutritional needs paved the way for the global food system. Fast, filling, simultaneously nutritious and unhealthy, Britain's appetite for meat, wheat, sugar, and dairy presaged the era of 'Big Food' as well as cheap food. If looking back is the key to looking forward with any optimism, Otter's brilliant and pioneering account is an urgent as well as timely intervention. --Philip Howell, co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History Diet for a Large Planet arranges an impressive array of evidence from diverse sources into a powerful analysis of how Britain forged the modern world of food systems and their consequent effects upon human and environmental well-being. Few, if any, books link human and environmental health together in such a sustained and creative way. Otter is clearly a scholar of immense ambition, erudition, and passion. --Matthew Klingle, author of Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle Diet for a Large Planet is a brilliant, bold book that forces us to rethink the short- and long-term global implications of changes in what British people ate and how they thought about food in the nineteenth century. Professor Christopher Otter masterfully weaves together scientific, technological, political, cultural, and economic histories into a magnificent study of the making of the modern, global food system. This book is a satisfying if filling meal that will appeal to the tastes of anyone interested in the history of food, environment, industry, consumption and global capitalism. --Erika Rappaport, author of A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World