Our diet of destruction

History shows that empires rise and fall, however, and that the fall when it comes tends to be fast. Food empires are likely to be no different. We are now entering a period of rapid transition. The postwar food system, dependent on prodigious quantities of crude oil for its production, has not only pushed us to our biological limits but is hitting the environmental buffers. After half a century in which they shaped the nature of global diets with the disposal of their agricultural surplus, the Americans have done a sudden about-turn. With the price of oil constantly breaking new records, they want their surplus back to keep their cars on the road. The US government has started pouring subsidies into the production of ethanol from corn. Grain prices have been soaring. The standard commodity parts are no longer cheap, but we are left with the legacy of the old economic order, with diets that were created out of excess.

Guardian