In Diet for a Large Planet: Industrial Britain, Food Systems, and World Ecology, an impressive feat of scholarly work, Chris Otter goes back to the roots of the current environmental and health problems that have accompanied dietary changes in the West, focusing on the transformations in British diets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Apart from the extensive array of sources, the greatest asset of his book lies in Otter's thorough survey of the breadth of technological, metabolic, and environmental transformations that produced the “large planet” diet, while never losing sight of its social and political consequences (2). By paying close attention to the way evolutions in British diets reshaped technological and ecological landscapes throughout the globe, and to the impact it had on British and colonial bodies, Otter offers what might be considered one of the most accomplished examples of food history. He goes beyond the merely quantitative or cultural dimensions of eating to analyze the political and material dimensions of the widespread reconfigurations of food systems that developed from the beginning of the nineteenth century.
After an introduction providing the reader with the roots of the large planet diet—as Britain gradually opened its gates to food imports—Otter focuses in the first three chapters on the rise of the “meat-wheat-sugar complex” (11). In each chapter, he not only describes how these three commodities became central to the British diet but also traces the technological and environmental transformations that rendered their hegemony possible. This is undoubtedly one the greatest strengths of the book: not content with simply recording statistical surges in meat, sugar, and wheat consumption, Otter instead provides the reader with a much wider focus encompassing the cultural, material, and ecological dimensions of this avalanche of imported carbohydrates and proteins.
The chapter on meat thus provides a comprehensive presentation of the biological, environmental, and technological infrastructure that underpinned the new meat system, involving new apparatus for slaughtering, developments in meat logistics (refrigeration), creation of new breeds (the Hereford), and reengineering of distant landscapes (“the Anglicization of New Zealand's ecology,” 29), while never losing sight of the attendant cultural transformations. Similarly, in the chapters on wheat and sugar, Otter is attentive to all the links in the new food and commodity chains and to the social, material, biological, and environmental transformations—the “second nature”—that made Britain's food system possible: the “prairies, ranches, pastures, steamships, railroads, telegraphs, inspectors, paperwork, refineries, warehouses, wharves, mills, abattoirs and bakeries” (7).
In the ensuing chapters, Otter deploys his wide-ranging focus and keen analytical eye for thorough analysis of the consequences of the transformation of the British food system. Against a crude interpretation of the British nutrition transition viewed only from the point of view of increased availability of cheap calories (and the attendant rising height and resistance to infectious diseases), Otter shows how the process was accompanied by various forms of inequalities and fostered countless metabolic and environmental disturbances. In the chapter “Risk,” Otter shows how the new food system introduced “novel vulnerabilities” by recounting the rise of new epizootics (rinderpest or trichinosis outbreaks), new pathogens (milk-borne tuberculosis), and various other forms of food poisoning (103). The chapter also provides a sophisticated historical analysis of the rise of new technologies and infrastructure meant to manage these novel risks. By showing the unevenness and haphazard enforcement of new food safety regulations and the ever-rising complexity of new food-related risks, Otter debunks the idea of a simple progress in food safety standards.
The chapters “Violence” and “Metabolism” are both useful reminders of the complex background for Britain's alleged “escape from hunger” (134). By focusing on the Irish famine, recurring episodes of famine in India, and the two world wars, Otter demonstrates how food systems may be “instruments of slow violence” (132) and shows the need for placing the relatively full bellies of British people in the wider context of the—often devastating—reconfiguration of distant economies and food systems and of the use of food as a fundamental aspect of making war. The next chapter shows that increasing aggregate figures of meat, wheat, and sugar consumption hide significant disparities in the distribution of food between classes, gender, and age groups, resulting in significant metabolic inequalities.
In the next two chapters, Otter focuses on the various health and environmental hazards that the large planet diet brought in its wake. In “Bodies” he recounts the various new diseases produced by the nutrition transition (such as constipation, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and obesity) and closely examines the complex ways in which contemporaries negotiated the irruption of these conditions. Similarly, in “Earth,” Otter provides a wide-ranging overview of the various environmental costs of the large planet diet (deforestation, soil erosion, phosphate and nitrate leaching, heavy inputs of fossil-fuel) and the various criticisms that were voiced at the time to express opposition to such hidden costs. In the final chapter, “Acceleration,” Otter reviews the trajectory of the large planet diet after 1945 and its replication across many parts of the globe, never losing sight of its three critical costs, “novel health conditions, various forms of inequality, and manifold ecological problems” (270).
Readers will no doubt be struck by the erudition and the amount of documentary material Otter used in Diet for a Large Planet. Inevitably, the book may at times be a little dizzying, given the scope and the complexity of the processes outlined, but this extremely ambitious work is a rewarding read and is bound to become a reference in the field.
