Global Food

In Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, Vandana Shiva explores the devastating effects of commercial agriculture and genetic engineering on the food we eat, the farmers who grow it, and the soil that sustains it. This prescient critique and call to action covers some of the most pressing topics of this ongoing dialogue, from the destruction of local food cultures and the privatization of plant life, to unsustainable industrial fish farming and safety concerns about corporately engineered foods.

Certain businesses are legendary, exerting immense influence in their field. Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is one of those places. Over the years, the flagship deli has expanded into a community of more than a dozen businesses, including a wildly successful mail order operation, restaurants, bakery, coffee roastery, creamery, candy maker, and events space—transforming Ann Arbor into a destination for food lovers.

Where Am I Eating? shows how what we eat affects the lives of the people who produce our food, and explores the global food economy including workers' rights, the global food crisis, fair trade, and immigration. Where Am I Eating? does not argue for or against the globalization of food but personalizes it by observing the hope and opportunity, and sometimes the lack thereof, that the global food economy gives to the world's poorest producers.

As late as the 1960s, tacos were virtually unknown outside Mexico and the American Southwest. Within fifty years the United States had shipped taco shells everywhere from Alaska to Australia, Morocco to Mongolia. But how did this tasty hand-held food - and Mexican food more broadly - become so ubiquitous? In Planet Taco, Jeffrey Pilcher traces the historical origins and evolution of Mexico's national cuisine, explores its incarnation as a Mexican American fast-food, shows how surfers became global pioneers of Mexican food, and how Corona beer conquered the world.

Most books about the environmental crisis are densely academic, depressingly doom-laden, and crammed with impersonal statistics. We Are the Weather is different--accessible, immediate, and with a single clear solution that individual readers can put into practice straight away. A significant proportion of global carbon emissions come from farming meat. Giving up meat is incredibly hard and nobody is perfect--but just cutting back is much easier and still has a huge positive effect on the environment.

Michael P. Hoffmann, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, and Danielle L. Eiseman offer an eye-opening journey through a complete menu of before-dinner drinks and salads; main courses and sides; and coffee and dessert. Along the way they examine the escalating changes occurring to the flavors of spices and teas, the yields of wheat, the vitamins in rice, and the price of vanilla. Their story is rounded out with a primer on the global food system, the causes and impacts of climate change, and what we can all do. 

What is the role and importance of nutrition in the development, management and recovery from Covid-19? This book takes us through findings that NNEdPRO Global Institute's Covid-19 international task force members have provided our medical community through and beyond the pandemic. As with all aspects of COVID-19, ongoing research yields more new information each day and it is difficult to keep pace with novel findings. Nonetheless there are core topics worthy of continued discussion in the context of nutrition in healthcare.

Moscow takes us on deep dives (sometimes literally) with fisherfolk, farmers, scientists, community activists, historians, hunters, and more, bringing back stories of the communities, workers, and environments involved—some thriving, some in jeopardy, all interconnected with food.

Tracing a new labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from across the globe, "We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now" is an urgent, illuminating look at globalization as seen through the eyes of workers-activists: small farmers, fast-food servers, retail workers, hotel housekeepers, home-healthcare aides, airport workers, and adjunct professors who are fighting for respect, safety, and a living wage. Drawing on interviews with activists in many US cities and countries around the world.

Despite exponential growth in the fishing industry, the global wild fish catch reached a plateau and stagnated. As numerous scientific reports showed, many fish stocks around the world collapsed, creating a genuine global overfishing crisis. Analyzing the ramifications of overfishing for the United States by investigating how fishers, seafood processors, retailers, government officials, and others have worked together to respond to the crisis, historian Mansel G. Blackford examines how these players took steps to make fishing in some American waters sustainable.

For more than 10,000 years, humans have been fascinated by a seemingly innocuous plant with bright-colored fruits that bite back when bitten. Ancient New World cultures from Mexico to South America combined these pungent pods with every conceivable meat and vegetable. In Chile Peppers: A Global History, Dave DeWitt, a world expert on chiles, travels from New Mexico across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia chronicling the history, mystery, and mythology of chiles around the world and their abundant uses in 70 mouth-tingling recipes.

Andrew Zimmern, the host of The Travel Channel’s hit series Bizarre Foods, has an extraordinarily well-earned reputation for traveling far and wide to seek out and sample anything and everything that’s consumed as food globally. Having eaten his way around the world over the course of four seasons of Bizarre Foods, Zimmern has now launched Bizarre Worlds, a new series on the Travel Channel, and this, his first book, a chronicle of his journeys as he not only tastes the “taboo treats” of the world, but delves deep into the cultures and lifestyles of locales.