The Industrial Diet by Anthony Winson

Abstract

Anthony Winson, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph, has written or co-authored several books that explore agriculture, food and the food system in both North and Central America. These books include: Coffee and Democracy in Modern Costa Rica (1989), The Intimate Commodity (1993), and Contingent Work, Disrupted Lives: Labour and Community in the New Rural Economy (2002, with Belinda Leach). His most recent book builds on his previous analysis of the food industry by exploring the political, social, economic and technological factors that shape and influence the human diet—and have led to the proliferation of a nutritionally compromised human diet at a global scale. The Industrial Diet: The degradation of food and the struggle for healthy eating is a book best suited to an educated—though not necessarily academic—audience. Anybody with an interest in the current food industry, human health, diet and nutrition, or in the fascinating history of the food system, will find something of interest.