While we always like to remain upbeat and positive, there is a time and a place for also examining underlying realities and asking hard questions. This book by Susan George has been shining a spotlight on many of the flaws inherent in our global food system for well over 40 years and while it may not make for particularly festive reading, it would make a good gift for someone who is interested in food from more than merely a degustationary perspective!

“How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger” is a book that was written in 1976, with several reprints throughout the years. The author argues that world hunger exists because food is grown for profit, and is treated as a weapon, and after reading her book, I can’t help but agree.

(a book review by Rhiannon Thompson)

While occasionally she forays into political and economic technicalities that had me whipping out Google, sometimes due to the dated nature of when it was written and sometimes due to… well, the specific nature of politics and economics, her book was engaging and informative.

She mentions early on in the book that she intended the book to start discussions and inspire further research, as well as expecting the book to be controversial. Although I found little shock factor in the book, I must note that this was written over 40 years ago, so there is a bit more awareness surrounding world hunger and the unrelenting, disgusting greed of the wealthy elite.

Her book also touches on the useless, and almost patronising, solutions to the food crisis, which we have seen play out time and time again throughout the years since the book was published.

Though this book was written a while ago, it gives a great baseline for newcomers into the food waste industry, carefully and thoughtfully explaining her views on many topics, while still being interesting enough to keep reading. Her style can be brusque, but not undeservedly so. You feel her attachment and passion for the topic of world hunger, her desire to start the conversation and, indeed, rip open people hiding their greed under the guise of helping.

The most poignant part of the book, for me, is the foreword she writes at the beginning of the 1986 reprint. She admits her data is old, laments the lack of change in the industry and opens up about her guilt and frustration- concerning the mistakes she has made and her growing fatigue at having to keep up the fight. She writes like she cares.

I leave you with this, a quote that scratched at something deep within my tired, little brain, “Hunger may have been the human race’s constant companion, and ‘the poor may always be with us’, but in the twentieth century, one cannot take this fatalistic view of the destiny of millions of fellow creatures. Their condition is not inevitable but caused by identifiable forces within the province of rational, human control.”.