Diet for a large planet : industrial Britain, food systems, and world ecology / Chris Otter.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Meat -- Wheat -- Sugar -- Risk -- Violence -- Metabolism -- Bodies -- Earth -- Acceleration.

"In this magisterial study, Chris Otter traces Britain's transition to a diet rich in animal proteins and refined carbohydrates like wheat and sugar, a diet that required more acreage than that of Britain itself and that, if followed everywhere, would soon deplete the planet's resources-as the title announces, this was truly a "diet for a large planet." From the late 1700s to the end of World War II, Otter accounts for the structures, practices, and ideologies generated by Britain's nutrition transition. He shows how Britain was the first nation to undergo the population explosion, urbanization, and industrialization we associate with modernity, and how it managed the unprecedented problem of how to feed its growing population. Its radical solution would be to outsource its food production, leading away from a locally produced, plant-based diet to one reliant on global markets, international trade networks, and enormous agro-food systems that would have planetary effects on famine, war, the world economy, and the wider earth-system. Not only did this phase in Britain's history make the consumption of meat, white bread, sugar, and butter a coveted diet, linked to development, luxury, and power--it also opened up a new phase in economic history, one whose dramatic effects endure to this day, whether in terms of health problems, eating disorders, or the seemingly endless world food crisis"--