‘Our food system is killing us’: call to action against corporations that create both obesity and malnutrition
When some parts of our world can barely feed themselves while others are stuffing their faces with rubbish, how did the food chain get so twisted?
A mural in Manchester to footballer Marcus Rashford, who campaigned for free school meals in the UK. Photo: Nathan Stirk/Getty Images
Stuart Gillespie credits Ireland’s Great Famine with teaching him the relationship between food and power. As a college student in 1978, the Englishman was horrified to learn that large quantities of livestock, fish, oats and other comestibles had been exported to his country while over a million people starved to death. “The [potato] fungus was merely a symptom,” he realised. “The actual cause of the famine was the existence of a colonial power that exploited Irish tenant farmers who worked the land snatched by the English.”
Almost 50 years later, Gillespie feels well qualified to offer some food-related lessons of his own. He spent the first half of his career working for various United Nations agencies in South America and India, focusing on how to provide poor communities with proper nutrition. He then took up a senior role at the International Food Policy Research Institute, lobbying governments, challenging multinational companies and designing public health programmes. After all these experiences, he has reached a stark conclusion: something even more fundamental to the human race than sex is still controlled by unscrupulous business interests.
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