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Let Them Eat Junk

Let Them Eat Junk

Robert Albritton

(2009)

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Book Details

Abstract

This book to analyses the food industry from a Marxist perspective.

Let The Eat Junk argues that the capitalist system, far from delivering on the promise of cheap, nutritious food for all, has created a world where 25% of the world population are over-fed and 25% are hungry. This malnourishment of 50% of the world's population is explained systematically, a refreshing change from accounts that focus on cultural factors and individual greed. Robert Albritton details the economic relations and connections that have put us in a situation of simultaneous oversupply and undersupply of food.

This explosive book provides yet more evidence that the human cost of capitalism is much bigger than those in power will admit.
'Pulls no punches in its analysis of the contradictions of 21st Century food systems'
Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, author of Food Politics (2003)
'Albritton speaks a language that has gone unheard for too long. Karl Marx felt that capitalism's focus on short-term profit was a recipe for disaster when it came to agriculture. Now Albritton shows that, in many ways, the old man was right'
Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist
'Marx understood the dynamics of the current food crisis over a century ago. Robert Albritton has written a fine primer, bridging the best thinking of the nineteenth century to the urgent needs of the twenty-first'
Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover Cover
Contents v
Preface viii
Part I: Introduction 1
1. Introduction 2
General introduction 3
A framework for understanding capitalism 10
Part II: Understanding 17
2. The Management of Agriculture and Food by Capital's Deep Structures 18
Capital's profit orientation 26
Capital, time and speed 30
Capital, space and homogenization 33
Capital and workers 37
Capital and underconsumption 41
Capital, oligopoly and globalization 43
Capital and subjectivity 46
Conclusions 49
3. The Phase of Consumerism and the US Roots of the Current Agriculture and Food Regimes 51
Consumerism's profit orientation: petroleum, cars, suburbs and television 56
Consumerism, time, and speed: unchecked toxicity and life on the run 61
Consumerism, space and homogenization, suburbanization and monocultures 64
Consumerism and workers: hiding the health costs of hazardous working conditions and low wages 66
Consumerism and underconsumption: new forms of debt expansion and advertising 68
Consumerism, oligopoly and globalization: a command economy of corporations 71
Consumerism and subjectivity: the politics of fear 72
Conclusions 76
Part III: The Historical Analysis of the US-Centred Global Food Regime 79
4. The Food Regime and Consumer's Health 80
Capitalist agriculture 81
The case of tobacco 84
The global food regime: a story of irrationality 87
The obesity \"epidemic 91
Sugar 95
Meatification and fat consumption 101
Hunger and starvation 105
Salt 108
Soy 109
Pesticides 110
Food additives 113
Microorganisms 114
Loss of nutrients 115
Genetically modified organisms 118
Supermarkets 119
Fast food chains 120
Conclusions 122
5. The Health of Agriculture and Food Workers 124
Workers in the US agricultural and food systems 125
Workers in the agricultural and food systems of developing countries 133
Conclusions 144
6. Agriculture, Food Provisioning and the Environment 146
Peak oil and biofuels 147
Global warming 154
Land and deforestation 156
Fresh water 158
The oceans 159
Species loss 160
Genetically modified organisms 161
Waste 163
Conclusions 164
7. Food, Marketing and Choice in the United States 165
Choice and the case of tobacco 167
Marketing 171
Marketing to children 172
Choosing junk foods 177
Consumer sovereignty 178
Conclusions 180
8. Corporate Power, Food and Liberal Democracy 182
Corporations and government 185
Corporations and the legal system 189
Corporations and science 190
Conclusions 197
Part IV: Conclusions 199
9. Agriculture, Food and the Fight for Democracy, Social Justice, Health and Sustainability 200
Capitalism's food failures 201
Movements for change 203
Toward a more effective and accountable public sector 204
More accountable corporations 205
Making markets democractically accountable 208
Conclusions 210
Notes 212
Bibliography 238
Index 251