It’s Time To Stop the Great Food Heist Powered by Big Business. That Means Taxation, Regulation and Healthy School Meals

Our food system is killing us. Designed in a different century for a different purpose – to mass produce cheap calories to prevent famine – it is now a source of jeopardy, destroying more than it creates. A quarter of all adult deaths globally – more than 12 million every year – are due to poor diets.

Malnutrition in all its forms – undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity – is by far the biggest cause of ill-health, affecting one in three people on the planet. Ultra-processed foods are implicated in as many as one in seven premature deaths in some countries.

Every country is affected by malnutrition but it is the poorest, most marginalised people who are most likely to become malnourished, get sick and die too soon. Our food system is also sickening our planet – generating a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and driving a raft of environmental harms.

As economies grow, countries move from rural, low-productivity agricultural systems – focused on staples – to more diversified systems, including legumes and nutrient-rich foods, and on to commercialised systems, inundated with ultra-processed foods.