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Dear Reader,
Ravenous: How to Get Ourselves and Our Planet into Shape is a book with a mission: to help anyone with a stake in the food system (which is every single one of us) understand how it actually works, why it is making us sick and destroying our environment, and what we can do to change it. It is intended to be a pacy, entertaining read.
It is the most important work of my life.
The food system is one of the most productive and destructive industries on Earth. Globally, we now produce 50% more calories than we need to feed ourselves. But the same system that feeds us is beginning to kill us. Diet-related disease has become the biggest cause of avoidable illness and death in the developed world – much bigger than smoking. By 2035, the NHS is projected to spend more on treating type 2 diabetes – just one of the illnesses caused by bad diet – than it does on all cancers today.
Even if it didn’t make us ill, the food system would still be life-threatening. It is the biggest cause of deforestation, drought, water pollution and biodiversity collapse and the second biggest cause of climate change, after energy. The damage it does to the environment is so severe that it actually threatens our food security, with freak weather events, depleted soil and disappearing pollinators all beginning to take their toll on global harvests.
It is hard to get politicians and the media to take these dangers seriously. They are too busy fighting culture wars over whether it’s offensive to suggest people eat turnips in February. I recently left my role at Defra in order to be able to speak frankly about this madness.
Ravenous is intended to change the way people (including politicians) see the food system; to get beyond the daily news cycle and examine how the machinery of production and consumption really works. It offers a blueprint for change, with actions that every one of us can take to build a better food system.
Henry
@HenryDimbleby
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