- An easy to read yet in-depth introduction to the concepts surrounding food choices today - The perfect format for the reader who is short on time but demanding in the information they want - Covers all the core topics such as nutrition, health, economics, history of food production and consumption, the severely hungry world population of 800 million people, food as social-cultural-environmental health resource and food security - Illustrated with jargon-free graphs and tables to emphasise the crucial points. - Takes an international approach and blends different strands while most comparable titles focus on specific issues: big business, politics and food, fast food & obesity, food and culture, social history. - Course adoption potential: Food Science and Nutrition, Nature Resource Economics, Economics of Technological Change, Agriculture Economics, Ethics, Society and Technology, Health and Sociey, Humanities in Medicine