Book Review: Modern Foods: The Sabotage of Earth’s Food Supply

The title of this well-researched expose is descriptive of its contents. In fact, the careful reader will realize that the insertion of the word ‘sabotage’ in the subtitle is reflective of the facts, not an editorialization of them. Casper and Stone discuss first the betrayal of American consumers by their government, and the health consequences of our current food supply system, providing example after example of unbridled greed, amoral business practices, powerful entanglements between regulators and the regulated ,near-monopolistic concentrations of economic power in our food and seed supply, vertical corporate integration and interlocking directorates, and a media largely indebted to large pharmaceutical interests. They also discuss the effects of globalization on our food and nutritional choices, and an almost blind scientific pride in man-made, laboratory-engineered ‘foods’ and ‘seeds’. Former Archer Daniels Midland CEO Dwayne Andreas’ boast to Reuters News Service that he wanted ADM to be the world’s dominant agricultural firm because there’s simply nothing more powerful than controlling the world’s food supply, is an eerie admission lending validity to the authors’ concerns.