The Way We Eat Now

Imagine a world once haunted by hunger, where survival was uncertain and famine a constant threat. Today, we live in an era of unprecedented food abundance. The Haber-Bosch process, a technical marvel from the early 20th century, made synthetic nitrogen fertilizer cheap and widely available, allowing agriculture to feed nearly 40% of the global population. This innovation, combined with mechanization and global trade, has transformed our food landscape. Walk into any modern supermarket, and you will find an astonishing variety of foods from around the globe, available year-round. Bananas, once exotic and rare outside the tropics, are now among the most common fruits worldwide, with the Cavendish variety dominating markets as a genetic clone.

Yet this abundance comes with a paradox. While hunger has declined dramatically, diet-related chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease have surged. In 2006, for the first time, the number of overweight and obese people surpassed those who are undernourished globally. The modern food environment, rich in calories but often poor in nutrients, challenges our bodies and cultures in ways our ancestors never faced.

The emergence of the Global Standard Diet—dominated by animal products, wheat, rice, sugar, maize, and soybeans—has led to a narrowing of what we eat. This homogenization erodes the rich biodiversity of traditional diets, impacting health and culture. For example, while there are thousands of apple varieties in Britain, commercial production focuses on just a handful, reducing the diversity of phytochemicals we consume.

As we reflect on this transformation, it becomes clear that the story of modern eating is not simply one of progress but one of complex trade-offs. The next chapter will explore how our biology and culture struggle to adapt to this new world of plenty, creating mismatches that affect health and well-being.