ABSTRACT
Cheap food, like field corn, need not be food at all—that, at least, is the position of some food writers and activists, such as Michael Pollan and Alice Waters. Cheap food harkens to a specific understanding of food; a cheapened understanding that is reductionist, de-contextualized, and highly impoverished. The chapter discusses how cheap food rests upon a cheapened understanding of food, and with that a cheapened understanding of health. It highlights how these understandings informed and were informed by twentieth-century international food policies and programs like the green revolution—policies that continue to this day. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that hunger and malnutrition cost, by way of negatively impacting global GDP, between US$1.4 and 2.1 trillion per year. Make no mistake: global hunger is not the result of a lack of calories in the world. The so-called global obesity epidemic is testament to that fact. Mexico has one of the highest obesity rates of any country.
