ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the selects a number of themes on food and health. An even greater range is available now in the modern era because of the technological advances made by the food processing industry. By the late 1990s food safety was very firmly on the political agenda in Britain, other European countries and the USA. Income is by far the most important explanatory variable in the relationship between diet and health. The dietary health of old people and ethnic minorities is also at risk as a result of accessibility problems. A total of 21 people died and about 500 were affected after eating infected meat supplied by a butcher who allegedly had paid only lip-service to the regulations imposed upon him by environmental health officials from the local authority. With the possible exception of BSE, the problematic links that we have identified between food and health exist in most other countries in Europe and North America.
