Food

You are what you eat. So runs a time-tested folkloric observation. The past four decades have witnessed a mounting concern with good nutrition as the basis of health. The nation, meanwhile, seems caught in an epidemic of obesity. Hunger, famine, and starvation seem permanently established in certain areas of the planet. Should we accept such disjunctions as part of a pattern of Malthusian necessity? Or will the ambition to feed the Planet be a signature accomplishment of the 21st century? Professor Alison Dundes Renteln has spent a lifetime seeking answers to these questions and will lead an integrated interdisciplinary discussion of how and why human beings establish production and distribution systems that keep significant portions of the human race hungry (at best) and more often, starving to death.