BOOK REVIEW
ENDING HUNGER
The quest to Feed the World Without Destroying it AUTHOR: ANTHONY WARNER PUBLISHER: ONEWORLD PUBLICATIONS, 2021 HARDBACK: £16.99 Review by Ursula Arens RD Ursula has a degree in dietetics and currently works as a freelance writer in Nutrition and Dietetics She enjoys the gifts of Aspergers.
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Many dietitians will know Anthony Warner as the prone-to-expletives ‘angry chef’ blogger, throwing acid science onto dietary fad bubbles. His latest book is perfect for dietitians who want to highlight the big issues surrounding environmental sustainability. Anthony eviscerates fuzzy foodie concepts from wellness promoters. With stones of facts and data, he crushes unproven wishclaims that promote books or cures or products or influencer scores. And now, in his third book, Warner warns that we cannot continue to produce food in ways that threaten the finite resources of our terrestrial environment. Weaving environmental sustainability metrics into food production and dietary choices is confusing and complicated, and can result in 100 shades of grey rather than binary decisions. The problems and themes are global, and Anthony shows no mercy in his spotlights of confused, selfish and hypocritical behaviours and demands made by us, the well-fed (actually, very overfed) affluent consumers. We want cheaper foods and better foods and environmentally sustainable foods that make us feel virtuous. The reality check that Anthony starts with is the threat of hunger. He shares private observation of hunger within his family. But not-enough-food has been the daily concern for most people over history, and readers are reminded of the bleak predictions of Thomas Malthus in 1798, that starvation would always be the rate-limiting step to societal development. And being very hungry is still the daily anxiety of a billion undernourished people today. But past human skill and genius now allows us abundance of delicious and varied foods
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at ever lower prices (proportionate to earnings). Anthony rightly reminds us to pay tribute to Nobel prize winner Norman Borlaug, who developed strong short wheat that was higher yielding and allowed mechanised harvesting. Interesting fact: 20% of global calories now come from the single plant, wheat. But what future tools are in the pipeline to feed ever-growing populations in environmentally sustainable ways? ORGANIC PRODUCTION IS NOT THE ANSWER
By any calculation, reducing unit yields will not feed the predicted two billion additional mouths by 2050. Anthony states a bit unfairly that there are no significant nutritional differences between organic and conventional crops, but that is not the main issue. Cocktail effects of pesticides are impossible to research because pesticide safety assessments are by single product, and usually ignored in affluent consumer consideration of organic choice. And insects. We all ‘like’ bees because they ‘give’ us honey, but the well documented ecological collapse of insect populations is very alarming; these tiny creatures form the ecological base for all mammal life, and no itchy buzzy critters means no birds and bees (literally and metaphorically). While organic food supply is niche, covering only 1.4% of global farm
