From field to fork, our food system is mired in problems. It has harmed both the environment and human health. Land and waterways have been damaged by intensive farming as some of us suffer from diseases caused by what we eat and others are going hungry. No wonder a growing number of people believe change is urgently needed.
Among them is Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of restaurant chain Leon. When he was appointed the UK’s “food tsar” in 2019, it was heralded as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for change. He was to lead a year-long review that would culminate in a national food strategy to revamp the way the UK farms, and the way it feeds its population.
In March, Dimbleby quit his role at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs after politicians failed to act on most of his recommendations. “It’s not a strategy,” he said of the resulting policy. “It doesn’t set out a clear vision as to why we have the problems we have now and it doesn’t set out what needs to be done.”
Dimbleby hasn’t finished pushing for change, but is trying a different approach. Hoping to get his ideas across to a larger audience, he and his wife, journalist Jemima Lewis, have collaborated on a book, Ravenous: How to Get Ourselves and Our Planet Into Shape.
“Very few sane people are going to go online to download a government document, then read it,” says Dimbleby, now. “But the story is very important: why we’re becoming unhealthy, why we’re destroying nature.”
He refers to the modern food system as both a miracle and a disaster, and says that almost everything people understand about it is wrong. We don’t realise we are cogs in a vast and complex machine that influences everything we buy and eat.
