Reading List
Tristram Stuart
Author and Food Waste Campaigner
Tristram Stuart is an English author and campaigner against food waste. His first book, The Bloodless Revolution, is a cultural history of vegetarianism from the seventeenth century onward. Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal exposed how much food is thrown away between farm and plate and won an IACP award for literary food writing. In 2009 he fed 5,000 people in Trafalgar Square with food that would otherwise have been discarded, and he founded the charity Feedback to take the campaign further. He won the international Sophie Prize in 2011.
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An Essay on the Principle of Population
by Thomas Malthus
“More than 200 years ago, in The Principle of Population, Malthus raised questions about what we should eat – and farm – and how our choices affect our fellow humans. Most people today remember him for being a prophet of doom and gloom, predicting that population growth would outstrip food production causing widespread famine.” — via Interview, December 2009
02
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Melincourt
by Thomas Love Peacock
“Twenty years after Malthus first published, the satirist Thomas Love Peacock wrote a novel called Melincourt to explore the contemporary situation and point out its inconsistencies and fundamental immorality.” — via Interview, December 2009
03
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Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches
by Marvin Harris
“No matter how extraordinary human behaviour – in our own culture or elsewhere – there’s always an explanation for it. That’s what Marvin Harris argues very persuasively in Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture. It really opened my eyes.” — via Interview, December 2009
04
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Collapse
by Jared Diamond
“Well that’s what Jared Diamond explores so brilliantly in Collapse. He builds on many of the ideas that Harris explores, looking at the historical and evolutionary results of surplus: it frees people from producing food, giving rise to social hierarchies including chiefs, priests, artisans and, of course, soldiers.” — via Interview, December 2009
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The Omnivore’s Dilemma
by Michael Pollan
“Just look at what’s on your plate and ask how it got there. That’s what Michael Pollan asks in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The great thing about him is that he presents himself as just an ordinary guy asking what he should eat. He’s engaging, funny, clever and practical too.” — via Interview, December 2009
