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Pelican Books #36
Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them
Once famous mostly for being brown and bland, British food has changed remarkably in the last half century. As we have become wealthier and more discerning, our food has Europeanized (pizza is children's favourite food) and internationalized (we eat the world's cuisines), yet our food culture remains fragmented, a mix of mass 'ultra-processed' substances alongside food as varied and good as anywhere else on the planet.
This book takes stock of the UK food system: where it comes from, what we eat, its impact, fragilities and strengths. It is a book on the politics of food. It argues that the Brexit vote will force us to review our food system. Such an opportunity is sorely needed. After a brief frenzy of concern following the financial shock of 2008, the UK government has slumped once more into a vague hope that the food system will keep going on as before. Food, they said, just required a burst of agri-technology and more exports to pay for our massive imports.
Feeding Britain argues that this and other approaches are short-sighted, against the public interest, and possibly even strategic folly. Setting a new course for UK food is no easy task but it is a process, this book urges, that needs to begin now.
This book takes stock of the UK food system: where it comes from, what we eat, its impact, fragilities and strengths. It is a book on the politics of food. It argues that the Brexit vote will force us to review our food system. Such an opportunity is sorely needed. After a brief frenzy of concern following the financial shock of 2008, the UK government has slumped once more into a vague hope that the food system will keep going on as before. Food, they said, just required a burst of agri-technology and more exports to pay for our massive imports.
Feeding Britain argues that this and other approaches are short-sighted, against the public interest, and possibly even strategic folly. Setting a new course for UK food is no easy task but it is a process, this book urges, that needs to begin now.
400 pages, Hardcover
Published March 26, 2020
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634 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 7, 2024
A comprehensive look into Britain's food system, and the role that an honest review of and response to the nation's food failings could deliver progress across spheres including (but not limited to) ecological sustainability, social health, and national security.
The book is absolutely loaded with data and references - to a point that can make it difficult to digest (haha), and occasionally detract from the flow of the argument being presented.
The many issues presented are drawn from Britain, but have global relevance, and make sobering reading when illustrating the social, environmental, and ethical implications of our globalised food system in its current form.
While not an easy read, it provides a fantastic overview of just how far-reaching the impacts of our daily meals can be - and the capacity we have to make better decisions.
The book is absolutely loaded with data and references - to a point that can make it difficult to digest (haha), and occasionally detract from the flow of the argument being presented.
The many issues presented are drawn from Britain, but have global relevance, and make sobering reading when illustrating the social, environmental, and ethical implications of our globalised food system in its current form.
While not an easy read, it provides a fantastic overview of just how far-reaching the impacts of our daily meals can be - and the capacity we have to make better decisions.
February 14, 2026
Really interesting topic which needs to be higher up the agenda of everyone. However, the book wasn’t structured well and it spent too long on sharing stats about the problems we are facing. After a while it was just a bit depressing. It also started straying in to other societal issues (which I appreciate are related) rather than just focusing on food - felt like the book had a bit of scope creep.
Personally I don’t really think it explored the solutions enough and was a relatively short section at the end.
Personally I don’t really think it explored the solutions enough and was a relatively short section at the end.
April 1, 2025
Feeding Britain is a useful book, it brought me up to date with many of the policies, commissions and bodies working in the area of food over the last century or more. Quite a bit of this I had not come across before.
Like many of the books related to issues of sustainability. If you are just looking at food this book fullfills this role quite well. If your looking at the broader issue of sustainable agriculture, it probably is too focused on the current marketplace.
One of the best points the book makes is that the UK food policy is still very much an imperial food policy. This makes sense and I really had not thought about that, it gets back to how easy it is to ignore the role of “free markets” and globalisation in maintaining old dynamics without needing the gunships or redcoats.
I found the discussion of value added at each stage of the food chain good. Parallel to this I found the control by the large multiples deeply disturbing.
The discussion of health in relation to food was very much ageless after having just finished Orwell’s “Down and out in Paris and London”.
There is not a single mention of the Irish or highland famines in the mid nineteen century which I would have thought would have made sense in a book talking about food. The export of grain, meat and dairy particularly was significant from Ireland through the early 19th Century. This fits well with the whole Imperial nature of the UK food supply. It also seems to contradict the findings of the Defra report which he mentions which claimed that the UK was largely self sufficient in food up to the mid nineteenth century. Obviously outside the home counties they did not get the memo.
Much of this grain exported to Ireland was fed to horses and a major agricultural industry in Ireland was supply horses (and men) to the imperial armies. The book misses the significance of this historical area of agricultural output, i.e energy crops. There is mention of current crops such as Rape seed and other biomass products In the past and probably in the future a very important part of farm income will be supplying locomotive power to farms and transport via animals. This is part of the reason that food for humans could be ramped up when internal combustions engines allowed the replacement of horses. I think people don’t think enough about what income streams were available to mixed farms in the past. The discussion of CAP and subsidies tend to make us think of farms as only being food producers.
Similarly, the role of farms and animals for the production of fibre is not mentioned. This is very important as we look towards using less plastic and farm in a holistic fashion. At the moment the equation in the book is grain fed to animals yields much less energy than the grain inputs. In the past whole industries relied on materials from Animals. It is perhaps likely that meat in the future will increasingly be just one small output of mixed farms.
Similarly the glaring problem of pets is only mentioned as a symptom of unhealthy food, i.e pets are getting too fat. They are not mentioned as consumers of food in any significant way. Many households I know have several pets and these consume significant amounts of grain and meat. It is not uncommon to see people cooking extra to share food with pets. Indeed, before world war 2 the British killed over ¾ million cats and dogs in the understanding that the food would not be there for them.
I would advise anyone reading this to read Orwell’s Down and out in Paris and London before it. Most of Orwell’s book is about him trying to find food and the complete lethargy after a few days without. There is huge vulnerability for individuals in a world where there is no food security. I think before you get into the statistics you need to really think about what it is like to not have easy access to work and food.
Books like Tim Langs are needed. It was good to be reminded of just how messed up the system is. I’ve learnt to hate Tesco even more.
Like many of the books related to issues of sustainability. If you are just looking at food this book fullfills this role quite well. If your looking at the broader issue of sustainable agriculture, it probably is too focused on the current marketplace.
One of the best points the book makes is that the UK food policy is still very much an imperial food policy. This makes sense and I really had not thought about that, it gets back to how easy it is to ignore the role of “free markets” and globalisation in maintaining old dynamics without needing the gunships or redcoats.
I found the discussion of value added at each stage of the food chain good. Parallel to this I found the control by the large multiples deeply disturbing.
The discussion of health in relation to food was very much ageless after having just finished Orwell’s “Down and out in Paris and London”.
There is not a single mention of the Irish or highland famines in the mid nineteen century which I would have thought would have made sense in a book talking about food. The export of grain, meat and dairy particularly was significant from Ireland through the early 19th Century. This fits well with the whole Imperial nature of the UK food supply. It also seems to contradict the findings of the Defra report which he mentions which claimed that the UK was largely self sufficient in food up to the mid nineteenth century. Obviously outside the home counties they did not get the memo.
Much of this grain exported to Ireland was fed to horses and a major agricultural industry in Ireland was supply horses (and men) to the imperial armies. The book misses the significance of this historical area of agricultural output, i.e energy crops. There is mention of current crops such as Rape seed and other biomass products In the past and probably in the future a very important part of farm income will be supplying locomotive power to farms and transport via animals. This is part of the reason that food for humans could be ramped up when internal combustions engines allowed the replacement of horses. I think people don’t think enough about what income streams were available to mixed farms in the past. The discussion of CAP and subsidies tend to make us think of farms as only being food producers.
Similarly, the role of farms and animals for the production of fibre is not mentioned. This is very important as we look towards using less plastic and farm in a holistic fashion. At the moment the equation in the book is grain fed to animals yields much less energy than the grain inputs. In the past whole industries relied on materials from Animals. It is perhaps likely that meat in the future will increasingly be just one small output of mixed farms.
Similarly the glaring problem of pets is only mentioned as a symptom of unhealthy food, i.e pets are getting too fat. They are not mentioned as consumers of food in any significant way. Many households I know have several pets and these consume significant amounts of grain and meat. It is not uncommon to see people cooking extra to share food with pets. Indeed, before world war 2 the British killed over ¾ million cats and dogs in the understanding that the food would not be there for them.
I would advise anyone reading this to read Orwell’s Down and out in Paris and London before it. Most of Orwell’s book is about him trying to find food and the complete lethargy after a few days without. There is huge vulnerability for individuals in a world where there is no food security. I think before you get into the statistics you need to really think about what it is like to not have easy access to work and food.
Books like Tim Langs are needed. It was good to be reminded of just how messed up the system is. I’ve learnt to hate Tesco even more.
December 12, 2022
I’ve had this book open for a couple of years, picking it up with renewed determination every six months or so, but getting bogged down and letting it slip again. In the end I decided to use an audible credit to get through the last third.
There’s a lot to unpack here. To be fair, you’ve got to be really interested in food policy to get through it, so you’ll already know whether or not this book is for you. At times it feels like a never-ending lesson. There isn’t a great deal of light relief, and many of the statistics quoted are provided without context (for example, we might learn that x million litres of water are lost from our pipes each year, but we won’t be told what that amount is in comparison to the amount of water that isn’t lost).
At the heart of the book are tricky and complex questions with no simple answers. Is it the job of government to feed everyone? Is it an act of aggression to outsource water table depletion to other countries by buying their food? Is our food provision something we should “leave to Tesco” to sort out, or something that government policy should carefully control? When considering how to regulate farming, should we prioritise ecological sensitivity or productivity? Do we care about animal and food worker welfare enough to embrace more expensive methods of production? Is it more ecologically damaging to eat locally-bred pork or flown-in avocados?
Tim is an absolute authority on this subject, and I respect his knowledge and views. I don’t share his rose-tinted approach to government regulation, or his obvious disdain of “colonial” free market economics (especially after the Covid PPE shambles demonstrated that the government couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery) but I do appreciate that leaving everything to the market may not be the best solution for a complex and inter-dependant eco system.
I found several points that he made to be worth a good pub argument. I would have gladly debated half a dozen written assumptions if given the opportunity, but to get through a book this thick with only a few angry Green Ink margin notes made a pleasant change.
There’s a lot to unpack here. To be fair, you’ve got to be really interested in food policy to get through it, so you’ll already know whether or not this book is for you. At times it feels like a never-ending lesson. There isn’t a great deal of light relief, and many of the statistics quoted are provided without context (for example, we might learn that x million litres of water are lost from our pipes each year, but we won’t be told what that amount is in comparison to the amount of water that isn’t lost).
At the heart of the book are tricky and complex questions with no simple answers. Is it the job of government to feed everyone? Is it an act of aggression to outsource water table depletion to other countries by buying their food? Is our food provision something we should “leave to Tesco” to sort out, or something that government policy should carefully control? When considering how to regulate farming, should we prioritise ecological sensitivity or productivity? Do we care about animal and food worker welfare enough to embrace more expensive methods of production? Is it more ecologically damaging to eat locally-bred pork or flown-in avocados?
Tim is an absolute authority on this subject, and I respect his knowledge and views. I don’t share his rose-tinted approach to government regulation, or his obvious disdain of “colonial” free market economics (especially after the Covid PPE shambles demonstrated that the government couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery) but I do appreciate that leaving everything to the market may not be the best solution for a complex and inter-dependant eco system.
I found several points that he made to be worth a good pub argument. I would have gladly debated half a dozen written assumptions if given the opportunity, but to get through a book this thick with only a few angry Green Ink margin notes made a pleasant change.
July 28, 2021
This took me a good couple of months to work my way through slowly, that's what happens when you read a book about something you don't know much about. Before Brexit reared it's ugly head I wouldn't have thought about reading a book on this subject, but I've read enough about the precarious nature of the UK's food supply chains over the last few years that I was interested in getting a better grounding on the issues involved.
I'm probably not the only person feeling like this. The author points out that we have an "imperial arrogance" where we assume the world will fill our supermarket shelves, and a "leave it all to Tesco et al" faith in the market and neither of these are sustainable. I found lots of interesting snippets of history in the book, for example, ignored 1936 warnings that Britain needed to be more sustainable before war food rationing, and the way towns were built where they were because they were surrounded by fertile farmland that has now been swallowed by housing. There is loads of interesting background here.
In the conclusions here the author writes that change can't be left to individuals - pointing out that no matter how good our own diets are (however you define good) it's no good if everyone else is cancelling you out: "The Great Food Transformation requires change to happen collectively, across the population, allowing for diversity. This process will require enormous effort and goodwill. That Brexit walked the country into this realization is perhaps a good thing.". (I don't think he's right convinced Brexit is a good thing, just that it's made large looming problems more visible than they were.)
All in all it was a good read, and one I'll be returning to in order to pick out more details. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for anyone else to read but I'm glad I did. I've already forgotten a lot of what I've read but I'll feel better informed in future as a result of having read this.
I'm probably not the only person feeling like this. The author points out that we have an "imperial arrogance" where we assume the world will fill our supermarket shelves, and a "leave it all to Tesco et al" faith in the market and neither of these are sustainable. I found lots of interesting snippets of history in the book, for example, ignored 1936 warnings that Britain needed to be more sustainable before war food rationing, and the way towns were built where they were because they were surrounded by fertile farmland that has now been swallowed by housing. There is loads of interesting background here.
In the conclusions here the author writes that change can't be left to individuals - pointing out that no matter how good our own diets are (however you define good) it's no good if everyone else is cancelling you out: "The Great Food Transformation requires change to happen collectively, across the population, allowing for diversity. This process will require enormous effort and goodwill. That Brexit walked the country into this realization is perhaps a good thing.". (I don't think he's right convinced Brexit is a good thing, just that it's made large looming problems more visible than they were.)
All in all it was a good read, and one I'll be returning to in order to pick out more details. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for anyone else to read but I'm glad I did. I've already forgotten a lot of what I've read but I'll feel better informed in future as a result of having read this.
Read
April 21, 2023I respect Tim ending on a cautiously positive note but I think the optimism is misplaced; this system is beyond reforming, the only way out of the lock-ins he describes is a rationally planned economy controlled by workers. *Real, lasting* change can only be achieved when the profit motive and the class system are overthrown, along with the limitations of the nation-state. Anyway, I knew I would disagree with the conclusion xd I do still appreciate this very thorough summary of all the ways the British food system is f*cked
January 24, 2026
Hideously naive, economically illiterate and totally blinkered. The author is a typical academic who has no idea how the world actually works but has very strong views on how everything should work, if only he were ruler of the world. Tellingly, he relies heavily on desktop statistics and spends no time talking to (or even thinking about) the people and practical systems at work. He also includes zero price, productivity or efficiency analysis - he essentially follows the North Korean Juche philosophy and believes zero global trade is a good thing.
May 3, 2020
I picked this book, because this is something that has been on my mind since all the Brexit talk. This book doesn’t just talk about current day, it goes back to the 1930’s and how things were in the war. For me, I enjoy reading about how things have developed over the years, whether good or bad. Brilliantly written.
Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.
Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.
April 18, 2021
Quite an academic work about structural problems in the UK food supply industry, but both interesting and readable. Much of this is about policy - or lack of it - and how we are facing a crisis in food supply without realising it. Definitely some interesting and complex topics, raised and explained well.
May 4, 2021
This is the book I have been waiting for - it is dense and sometimes a hard read but it is so well written and researched based on decades of experience. What I would love to see is graphic version of this as it should be read and understood by everyone - especially our politicians
September 2, 2021
Not much fun, but then it wasn't written to be fun. Tim Lang is the ultimate authority on this most important of subjects. Anyone who lives in the UK and eats food should read it. And then elect politicians who actually care about this stuff.
May 12, 2024
An interesting and enlightening read highlighting the issues surrounding food security in the UK. However it's academic style makes it a dense tome and difficult to exhausting to engage with at times. Would defenatly recomend, but not as a light right or for someone with a passing interest
April 5, 2025
Feeding Britain diagonses the problem of food security, eating habits, and ecosystem erosion but dedicates very few and shallow solutions. Regardless, a good - if at times repetitive - series of explanation on the problems of globalised, highly processed food chain.
November 21, 2020
If you are in the UK and you want to get through 2021 you must read this book...
January 8, 2021
Dense - only for those who are already interested in the subject! But very insightful and with clear recommendations, rather than just articulating the problems.
March 29, 2021
Important topic - but I found this incredibly hard to read. Where was the editor?
April 6, 2021
Every politician and every person involved in the food industry should read this book.
April 27, 2021
Lots of interesting statistics that do a good job of illustrating our food insecurity. Ironically, though, the book was flabby and in desperate need of an editor.
December 3, 2022
Love the topic but thought it was unnecessarily filled with statistics making it hard to read a book that is really more about food policy than numbers
September 12, 2023
Confess I didn’t finish - although the content was super interesting, it felt chaotically structured and I couldn’t focus
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews