Fabio Parasecoli - Food

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

A complete list of the titles in this series appears at the back of this book.

Fabio Parasecoli

The MIT Press | Cambridge, Massachusetts | London, England

2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Chaparral Pro by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Parasecoli, Fabio, author.

Title: Food / Fabio Parasecoli.

Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2019. | Series: The MIT Press

essential knowledge series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018048623 | ISBN 9780262537315 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Food. | Nutrition. | Food supply. | Food security.

Classification: LCC TX353 .P355 2019 | DDC 641.3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048623

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The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers accessible, concise, beautifully produced pocket-size books on topics of current interest. Written by leading thinkers, the books in this series deliver expert overviews of subjects that range from the cultural and the historical to the scientific and the technical.

In todays era of instant information gratification, we have ready access to opinions, rationalizations, and superficial descriptions. Much harder to come by is the foundational knowledge that informs a principled understanding of the world. Essential Knowledge books fill that need. Synthesizing specialized subject matter for nonspecialists and engaging critical topics through fundamentals, each of these compact volumes offers readers a point of access to complex ideas.

Bruce Tidor

Professor of Biological Engineering and Computer Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Everybody eats. Inevitably, we think we are expertsand, in a way, we are. How does one start to write a book about food? We all experience food in different ways, and we tend to have strong feelings and ideas about it. Moreover, many consumers around the world share a growing feeling that something is wrong with what and how we eat. What can be done to improve such a ubiquitous aspect of everyday life?

The book youre reading is inevitably idiosyncratic, marked by my personal history, my interests, and my experiences as a journalist in foreign politics, as a food critic, and lately as a food studies scholar. My challenge has been to take an immense amount of informationoften very complicated and requiring knowledge in fields ranging from economics to politics, from agriculture to technologyand make it accessible and even enjoyable. Embracing the approach of MITs Essential Knowledge series, Ive opted for a footnote-light style without renouncing accuracy of information and without shying away from complicated arguments.

Born and raised in Italy, educated in Italy, China, and Germany, a world traveler for work and fun, and now a professor in New York City, one of the most interesting and inclusive (but also parochial) cities on Earth, I tried to keep the perspective of this book as global as possible. I offer cases and examples from all around the world and embrace the point of view of a we located in the Global North but remain open and sensitive to other ways of life and to different realities. By Global North, a term that Ill be using through the book, I refer to the most economically developed countries and regions located in the Northern Hemisphere, such as Canada, the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, as well as Australia and New Zealand in the Southern Hemisphere. By exclusion, the Global South denotes instead a very diverse array of countries, ranging from political superpowers, such as China and India, to other nations in Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. These are broad generalizations, which are unfortunately inevitable in a small book that deals with huge issues, but they nevertheless reflect the fundamental dynamics and divides that dominate the global economy, especially from the point of view of food production, distribution, and consumption.

I focus on topics that allow readers to understand their involvement in the complex and worldwide networks of food systems: from the familiar and the nearby to the foreign and the faraway. As climate change and political tensions have become global issues, affecting what and how we eat, we cannot pretend that what happens in remote locations and communities does not affect us, one way or another. I chose not to delve deeply into aspects of food such as its relevance in terms of cultural and social identity, its role in defining communities at all levels, its use as a political symbol, and its growing presence in the media, among others. These are all important phenomena that deserve attention and analysis, but they lie outside the scope of this book, which focuses instead on the functioning of food systems, their shortcomings, and what can be done to improve them.

My goal is to remind consumers that they are also citizens: their choices and purchases are not the only tools they have to influence what is produced and what reaches their tables. Many issues are much too complex and far-reaching to be affected only by personal decisions, made in the hope that markets respond to economic signals on the demand side. Real change requires coordinated efforts that involve stakeholders as diverse as individuals and communities of consumers and producers, activists, distributors, marketers, retailers, chefs, scientists and nutritionists, designers and engineers, financial institutions, transnational corporations, local and national authorities, and international organizations, just to mention a few. Voting with our wallets isnt enough: forms of collective and political action are necessary and urgent. I hope this book offers some tools to navigate the intricacies of the global food system, empowering readers to further their understanding of the factors that influenceand in some cases shapetheir food choices. I believe that awareness is a powerful weapon.

Voting with our wallets isnt enough: forms of collective and political action are necessary and urgent. I believe that awareness is a powerful weapon.

I want to start my acknowledgments by expressing the deepest appreciation for my family and friends, as their love through highs and lows and recent sorrows has never deserted me.

A special thank you to Doran Ricks for his support and encouragement during the writing process, as well as his company during well-deserved breaks.

I am indebted to Marion Nestle (New York University [NYU]), Sakiko Fukuda-Parr (The New School), and Nevin Cohen (City University of New York [CUNY]) for providing expert feedback on portions of the manuscript.

My gratitude goes to Mateusz Halawa, who read the manuscript through the eyes of the curious, smart, educated, but not necessarily expert reader that I tried to write for. His comments have been crucial to make the book clearer and more accessible.

I also want to thank my colleagues at NYU, The New School, the University of Gastronomic Sciences, and the Bologna Business School with whom I have often discussed the topics included in this book: Bea Banu, Christopher London, Ana Batista, Thomas Forster, Andy Smith, Kristin Reynolds, Joel Towers, Jonsara Ruth, Brian McGrath, Adam Brent, Carolin Mees, Rositsa Ilieva, Carolyn Dimitri, Mireya Loza, Krishnendu Ray, Jennifer Berg, Amy Bentley, Beth Weitzman, Domingo Piero, Lisa Sasson, Sonali McDermid, Stefani Bardin, Franco Fassio, Andrea Pieroni, Nicola Perullo, Simone Cinotto, Max Bergami, and Ludovica Leone.