Review

Food for thought

Food With Latitude: a report exploring food project links across the North-South divide
Anna Watson and Sally Hiscock
Sustain, 2002. £20.00

Sustain is seeking to make a virtue out of linking community food projects in the UK, focused on food poverty, with similar projects in developing countries in the Southern hemisphere aimed at combating food insecurity.

The problem is that food poverty in the UK is about having to spend an excessive proportion of disposable income on readily accessible processed and junk foods that, because of their fat, sugar, salt and additive content, cause what amounts to chronic food poisoning, whereas food insecurity is about preventing subnutrition from an intermittent and inadequate intake of essential macro and micro nutrients. Ostensibly there is not much in common here and the idea of linking the two seems rather contrived.

This is not to say food poverty in the UK is unimportant. Far from it – it is second only to child poverty as a cause for scandal in the fourth largest economy on the planet.

One solution to food poverty is the community food project of which there are many varieties. Many examples of projects are included in the excellent appendix – well worth reading in its own right.