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Capitalism's Calories (Book Review)

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The Morning Star - Oct 22, 2007

Culture

Capitalism's calories;

"Stuffed and Starved" by Raj Patel
(Portobello Books, 16.99). 

John Green looks at obesity in the West, starvation in the 
Third World and the stranglehold that multinationals have on our diet

By John Green

Have you ever thought that there may be a direct connection between
increasing obesity in the industrialised countries and poverty and
starvation in the rest of the world?

That both are the direct result of capitalism and transnational
corporations is perhaps not such a surprise, but Raj Patel explains
just how this relationship comes about.

Patel has an interesting background. He has degrees from three of the
world's top universities and is, at present, a researcher at the
University of Kwa Zulu in South Africa.

He is also a gamekeeper turned poacher. After working for the World
Bank and as a consultant to the UN, he is now an avid campaigner for
the other side and has been tear-gassed while demonstrating for the
rights of small food producers.

Naomi Klein gives his book the accolade of "one of the most dazzling
books I've read in a long time. The product of a brilliant mind and a
gift to a world hungering for justice." She is absolutely right. It
is a must-read for anyone keen to understand how the present system
of food production and distribution grinds down the poorest in the
word while making the rich richer - all seen from a Marxist perspective.

He writes with an easy flowing eloquency, but also an urgency and
commitment rare in an academic writer.

He shows how the corporations not only sell us our food, but also
determine what we eat or don't eat. There are hundreds of apple
varieties in the world, so why is it that we only find four on the
supermarket shelves? Because these varieties are pretty, keep well
when waxed, are bland in taste and don't bruise easily in transport.
Whereas breakfast cereals - highly processed with large profit-
margins - are offered in more than a dozen varieties, all with high
salt and sugar content and not good for us.

In other words, our choices are determined by their convenience to
the big wholesalers and retailers.

The rich countries and multinationals are also determining what food
is grown and sold in all countries of the world.

Today, food eaten by India's poorest is worse for the first time
since independence in 1947.

Thousands of Mexican farmers were forced off their land and into the
overcrowded cities by the import dumping of cheap, state-subsidised
US maize, under a bilateral trade agreement. And those Mexicans who
live closer to the US border tend to be more obese than their
compatriots.

Tens of thousands of small farmers slave on coffee and tea
plantations for the West's pleasure. In Kenya, they grow roses or
beans for our supermarket shelves, while they themselves go hungry.

Agriculture has become divorced from urban living and it needs to
become re-embedded in society.

Throughout the world, farmer suicide rates have risen, but this
hardly registers in our newspapers or in our consciousness.

In 2005 in the US, 35.1 million people didn't know where their next
meal was coming from, whereas there were more diet-related diseases
such as diabetes and more food in the US than ever before.

On the other hand, 70 per cent of antibiotics produced in the US are
used in the livestock industry and 60 per cent of US grain is fed to
animals.

But poverty in the US is often masked - the poor are often not
skeletally thin, but actually overweight because they have been
persuaded to eat cheap junk food which gives energy but not nourishment.

Patel shows how the big food retailers have taken governments
captive. The US refused a visa to the French environmentalist Jose
Bove after being leaned on by McDonalds - and they are not alone in
using such measures to gag protest.

Patel argues, convincingly, that, to change ourselves, we need to
change the world and to change the world we need to change ourselves.
Both are necessary, both are difficult.

He also argues the need for trade union input as a vital factor in
combating poverty wages and exploitation. We can't expect
supermarkets to act ethically, he says, when their loyalty is to
their shareholders and profits are the determining factor.

The fair trade movement is laudable, but it is rather like throwing
crumbs to the starving in terms of seriously addressing the problem.

One of the book's guiding themes is that, wherever and whenever the
wounds of the current food order have been inflicted, people have
organised and fought back. That is the positive message in a book
that otherwise paints a daunting picture.

Copyright 2007 People's Press Printing Society Ltd.
All Rights Reserved


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