Description

‘A visionary look at how quality food should replace money as the new world currency’ Tim Spector

‘Hugely ambitious and beautifully written…destined to become a modern classic’ Bee Wilson

How we search for, make and consume food has defined human history. It transforms our bodies and homes, our politics and our trade, our landscapes and our climate. But by forgetting our culinary heritage and relying on cheap, intensively produced food, we have drifted into a way of life that threatens our planet and ourselves.

What if there were a more sustainable way to eat and live? Drawing on many disciplines, as well as stories of the farmers, designers and economists who are remaking our relationship with food, this inspiring and deeply thoughtful book gives us a provocative and exhilarating vision for change, and points the way to a better future.

‘Utterly brilliant’ Thomasina Miers

WINNER OF THE 2021 GUILD FOOD OF WRITERS AWARD FOR BEST FOOD BOOK

*Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2020*

Publisher Review

The beauty of food is that it is so many things at once: necessity and treat, nature and artifice, the subject of science, philosophy, etiquette and art. The book is accordingly multiple in its themes, an all-you-can-eat buffet of thoughts and facts about food...a brave and ambitious book * Observer * Steel offsets the obviously weighty subject matter with a lightness of touch and twinkling eye for luminous details... an unambiguously essential read -- George Reynolds * Daily Telegraph * Essential reading! A visionary look at how quality food should replace money as the new world currency -- Tim Spector Steel's ideas have become a matter of urgency -- Clare Saxby * Times Literary Supplement * A vital call for us to rediscover the way that food binds us to each other and to the natural world, and in doing so find new ways of living -- Christopher Kissane * Guardian *