We no longer trust what we eat. We lurch instead from food scare
to food scare while farming is in crisis around the world. A
handful of retailers and food manufacturers exert unprecedented
control over what we eat and where we buy it. We have come to
depend on processed food that is routinely adulterated.
In a series of undercover investigations tracking some of the
most popular foods we eat at home, Felicity Lawrence travels from
farms and factories to packhouses and lorry depots across the
world. She discovers why beef waste ends up in chicken, why a third
of apples are thrown away, why all wines taste the same. She meets
the hidden armies of migrant workers exploited throughout Britain
on whom our supermarkets depend. And she shows how obesity,
blighted town centres, motorways clogged with juggernauts,
environmentally ravaged fields in Europe and starving smallholders
in Africa are all intricately related aspects of our newly
globalized, industrialized system of 21st-century food
production.