Rate this book

Foodopoly: The Battle Over The Future Of Food And Farming In America (2012)

by Wenonah Hauter(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

159558790X (ISBN13: 9781595587909)

languge

English

genre

Food & Cookbooks

publisher

New Press, The

review 1: I highly recommend Foodopoly to everyone who is passionate about American food, health, and life! This book is more than just 'food for thought'. It is grist for the mill of your mind and fuel for your courageous activism. Foodopoly will make your gut wrench and your heart stop. It ultimately leaves you with the call to action: "Eat AND Act your politics". As we know, the personal is political ... and nowhere is this more apparent than in the food we eat.Wenonah Hauter's long history of food activism is evident as she explores everything from the trends of Farm Bills to meat-packing plant labor policies to the health and environmental impacts of our food supply. Wenonah Hauter is the executive director of Food & Water Watch, and has witnessed, firsthand, several 'food revo... morelutions', both harmful and healthful. Foodopoly is her charge to all of us to not only vote with our dollar, but also to get our tax dollars out of the monopolized, privatized, chemicalized corporate food system by pushing for a food revolution on the political level. In this thorough and thought-provoking book, Wenonah Hauter delves into the vast intricacies of food in America, focusing on the political and economic policies that underpin it. Foodopoly is an informative, eye-opening read that will make you pause and think.Kudos to Wenonah Hauter for writing this very timely and important book!Rivera Sun, author of "Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars"
review 2: -Corporations, which should be carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters. –Pres. Grover ClevelandMoney really is the root of all evil.I picked up this book namely because I noticed an interesting trend on my last trip/stay back in the US. In the supermarket, next to the most unhealthy and processed foods would be an 'organic' doppelganger. So Oreos and next to them--organic Oreos. Velveeta Shells and Cheez and next to them, organic Velveeta Shells and Cheez. Da fuq is this, I asked myself, though living out of the country for years now has already brought the extreme brokenness of back-home American eating sharply into focus. The rampant food allergies that everyone seemed to have; the manic diet-fads; the laughable 'artisan' breads/meats/cheeses (called in other parts of the world simply 'bread, meat and cheese'.). Wenonah Hauter does a formidable job of addressing what exactly has screwed up the food industry in America today. You can call it lack of mass education; a deliberate misleading of the public, a slow change in consumer tastes (fashioned, not oddly, to run increasingly in tandem with the producers' tastes for making profit); a flagrant abuse of our most basic democratic principles, a drive to lower, lower, lower the cost of food production by sacrificing the integrity of the ingredients all the way back to their individual cells--the overuse of antibiotics to keep animals from dying in the horrid conditions they are kept; the desire to create genetically engineered food sources; the grossly questionable honor system that trusts the food industry to regulate itself (ha ha ha)--the antitrust laws that have enabled retailers and packers to consolidate, making it virtually impossible for small/mid scale farmers to break into the market (aka, 'get big or get out'); the misappropriation of the label 'organic' by major companies and retailers seeking to cash in on consumer concern; and at the bottom of this huge roiling mess, winking up with its little golden eyes is--$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.Sadly, the main lesson of Foodopoly is that food policy has, for decades now, been for sale to the highest bidder and the consumer no longer has the power to change these dangerous trends by 'voting with their forks,' as the author aptly puts it. Many of us (myself included) may have been under the happy delusion that if we simply buy 'good/healthy/green' products--if we pay that extra for something labeled 'free-range' or 'organic'--if we in the cities support our local farmers, we can with our dollars felicitate change--how is that possible, Hauter asks, when many of these 'organic' products are now being produced massively and under false pretenses, often by the very same companies mass-marketing the most unhealthy processed foods and pumping millions into officials who duly turn the other way? When the rural farmer who has no way to get his/her products to the consumer/urban farmer’s markets and no distributor willing to deal with such small scale? A modern day The Jungle. less

Download links for: Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America

Advertising