Fork In Review

In this book, Tudge’s main concern is that those who have power and money behave as if farming is just another business to supply dividends to shareholders. He is one of many who have written about food and farming for the last couple of decades.

In the hospitality industry there is a thing called “accountants’ food” which simply means cutting costs to the bone, resulting in uninteresting food, and to hell with the widespread consequences. Then when the operation goes bankrupt, it’s all someone else’s fault. The problem is that in some cases chefs have been overruled by accountants who know almost nothing about commercial cookery. They only know about counting beans, not growing or cooking them.

The consequences of modern industrial agriculture have been written about and broadcasted for decades, but very large corporates which cause life-threatening consequences, if challenged, just reach for their lawyers. Then the voices of the complainants are silenced.

The causes of these problems are akin to “accountants’ food”; the shareholders and executives like to control agribusiness and the industrial food system, but know almost nothing about soil, climate, animal husbandry, cropping and other agricultural practises.  In fact, as above, this lack of knowledge means that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

This makes Tudge, a winning science writer, and probably most of his readers pretty angry. So, he wrote about how to solve the problem. For food production to be sustainable it needs to be practised on the basis of biology not just financial profiteering. Science needs to be deployed to enhance sustainable agricultural practices, not kidnapped for commerce by trashing the soil, crops and animals. If the commercial imperative is ruthlessly pushed by continuing to do things like allowing irrigation with no care about saline build-up, clearing forests and hedges, then in the long term, the corporates are going to lose, because there will be hardly any clean land from which to feed the population in the future. It’s hardly rocket science.

Tudge explains the shortcomings of vegetarianism, veganism and organic agriculture. We consumers need to understand that the purpose of farming is to feed people, and continue doing that over the long-term, not just generate profit.

He calls the solution Enlightened Agriculture, which is mixed farming using crop rotation which puts nutrients back into the soil, benign animal husbandry and wildlife conservation. Also a fair deal for farmers so they are not being ripped off as hapless price takers by very large manufacturers and supermarket chains.

Conversely, a romantic image of socialism is not the solution, suggested by the idyllic image of Constable’s famous painting The Hay Wain.

There have been about five decades of research on heart disease. In this book Teicholz has reviewed the literature and detailed the research on the diet-heart debate.

She set out how scientific belief rather than evidence, NGOs, food manufacturers, government agencies, and other organisations over-promised and under-delivered. All this has very likely contributed to the current global obesity epidemic.

The food industry promoted the shift from expensive animal fats to inexpensive hydrogenated vegetable oils and their trans-fatty acids, then replaced these vegetable oils with the next shift towards sugars. They did this without any evidence of any benefits or safety.

Saturated fats still remain somewhat maligned. Over the centuries scientists’ research has been fraught with error, self-deception, grandiosity, bias, self-interest, and outright fraud.  But this book is alarming.

Teicholz has done an excellent job in analysing how weak science, dominant personalities, vested interests and political expediency has contributed to continued obesity and poor health. “It seems now that what sustains it,” argues Teicholz, “is not so much science as generations of bias and habit.”

This book should be a warning about risks of continued bias, habit, and the hubris of  basing public policy development on untested belief instead of hard evidence.

We live in a man-made toxic environment and we may not know what chemicals we are exposed to every day. Many chemicals can set off an allergic reaction: car exhaust, industrial solvents, plasticizers, pesticides, herbicides, paint, new-car smell, laundry detergent, new carpet smells, cleaning agents, soaps and shampoos etc. They can have an accumulative effect and make us sick.

Somers also mentions that some US government agencies are not doing their jobs in keeping people safe from harmful chemicals produced by large companies which want to make a profit.

The content is well organised and easy to follow; Somers talks about a variety of problems, diet and digestion etc. Whilst her insight and advice is well researched, we have been aware of a lot of this information for a while.

However, in reading this book it is easy to receive the impression that if we simply follow her instructions and sign up with various websites, visit the right doctors at huge cost, all will be well. Also, some of the recommended medications come from companies which Somers is involved with. There’s a distinct impression that the reader is being directed towards an infomercial.

We live in a man-made toxic environment and we may not know what chemicals we are exposed to every day. Many chemicals can set off an allergic reaction: car exhaust, industrial solvents, plasticizers, pesticides, herbicides, paint, new-car smell, laundry detergent, new carpet smells, cleaning agents, soaps and shampoos etc. They can have an accumulative effect and make us sick.

Somers also mentions that some US government agencies are not doing their jobs in keeping people safe from harmful chemicals produced by large companies which want to make a profit.

The content is well organised and easy to follow; Somers talks about a variety of problems, diet and digestion etc. Whilst her insight and advice is well researched, we have been aware of a lot of this information for a while.