Food

Abstract

In recent decades, a growing portion of the world’s population has adopted a diet in which increasing calories come from foods high in fat, sugar, and salt that is highly processed by industrial food companies. These ultra-processed products have become the primary determinants of the rising burden of diet-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, now the world’s leading killers. This chapter shows how food retailers, restaurant and fast food chains, food manufacturers, and agricultural producers have changed in response to changes in capitalism to make the ultra-processed diet the global norm. The agricultural production for these products is also a leading cause of climate change. The chapter further describes an emerging yet uncoordinated popular response that includes farmers and food workers, consumer cooperatives, local governments, and food justice activists that are seeking alternatives strategies for making healthy food affordable to all.