Food Fight

From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet

By Stuart Gillespie

Using decades of research and insight gathered from around the world, health and nutrition expert Stuart Gillespie reimagines our global food system, plotting a way forward for a sustainable, equitable, and healthy food future 

Food is life, but our food system is killing us. Designed in a different century for a different purpose—to mass-produce cheap calories to prevent famine—it’s now generating obesity and ill-health and driving the climate crisis. We need to transform it into one that can nourish all eight billion of us and the planet we live on.

In Food Fight, Stuart Gillespie shares the insights he’s gleaned over a forty-year career in food, nutrition, and health, revealing how the global food system we once relied upon for nutrition has warped into the very thing making us sick. Many of us are now simultaneously overweight and undernourished. From its origins in colonial plunder through to the past few decades of neo-liberalism, our food system now lies in the tight grip of a handful of powerful transnational corporations that are playing for profit at any cost—aided by governments who let them get away with it.

With his eye trained on solutions within our grasp, Gillespie also celebrates success stories from around the world, driven by remarkable citizens, social movements, policy makers, and politicians. These case studies offer hope that, by organizing, sharing, and learning, we can build a better food future for ourselves and for our children.

Both unflinching exposé and revolutionary call to arms, Food Fight shines a light inside the black box of politics and power before mapping a way toward a new system that gives us hope for a future of global health and justice.

ISBN: 9781443475297
Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers
On Sale: May 13, 2025
List price: $24.99
No of pages: 368
Trim Size: 6.600 in (w) x 9.030 in (h) x 1.400 in (d)
BISAC 1: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Agriculture & Food (see also under POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy)
BISAC 2: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Food Industry
BISAC 3: HEALTH & FITNESS / Diet & Nutrition / Nutrition

Stuart Gillespie

Biography

STUART GILLESPIE has been fighting to transform our dysfunctional food system for the past forty years. He worked with a range of UN agencies across the world before joining the International Food Policy Research Institute in 1999, where he founded the Regional Network on AIDS, Livelihoods and Food Security; the Transform Nutrition research consortium, a flagship Agriculture for Nutrition and Health program; and the Stories of Change initiative, among a host of other interventions in public food and nutrition policy. His work—the food fight he has been waging—has driven change across all frontiers, from the grassroots (with village health workers, mothers, and children) to the political (challenging corporate behemoths and strengthening governance).

Stuart Gillespie

Biography

STUART GILLESPIE has been fighting to transform our dysfunctional food system for the past forty years. He worked with a range of UN agencies across the world before joining the International Food Policy Research Institute in 1999, where he founded the Regional Network on AIDS, Livelihoods and Food Security; the Transform Nutrition research consortium, a flagship Agriculture for Nutrition and Health program; and the Stories of Change initiative, among a host of other interventions in public food and nutrition policy. His work—the food fight he has been waging—has driven change across all frontiers, from the grassroots (with village health workers, mothers, and children) to the political (challenging corporate behemoths and strengthening governance).

Using decades of research and insight gathered from around the world, health and nutrition expert Stuart Gillespie reimagines our global food system, plotting a way forward for a sustainable, equitable, and healthy food future 

Food is life, but our food system is killing us. Designed in a different century for a different purpose—to mass-produce cheap calories to prevent famine—it’s now generating obesity and ill-health and driving the climate crisis. We need to transform it into one that can nourish all eight billion of us and the planet we live on.

In Food Fight, Stuart Gillespie shares the insights he’s gleaned over a forty-year career in food, nutrition, and health, revealing how the global food system we once relied upon for nutrition has warped into the very thing making us sick. Many of us are now simultaneously overweight and undernourished. From its origins in colonial plunder through to the past few decades of neo-liberalism, our food system now lies in the tight grip of a handful of powerful transnational corporations that are playing for profit at any cost—aided by governments who let them get away with it.

With his eye trained on solutions within our grasp, Gillespie also celebrates success stories from around the world, driven by remarkable citizens, social movements, policy makers, and politicians. These case studies offer hope that, by organizing, sharing, and learning, we can build a better food future for ourselves and for our children.

Both unflinching exposé and revolutionary call to arms, Food Fight shines a light inside the black box of politics and power before mapping a way toward a new system that gives us hope for a future of global health and justice.

ISBN: 9781443475297
Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers
On Sale: May 13, 2025
List price: $24.99
No of pages: 368
Trim Size: 6.600 in (w) x 9.030 in (h) x 1.400 in (d)
BISAC 1: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Agriculture & Food (see also under POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy)
BISAC 2: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Food Industry
BISAC 3: HEALTH & FITNESS / Diet & Nutrition / Nutrition

Stuart Gillespie

Biography

STUART GILLESPIE has been fighting to transform our dysfunctional food system for the past forty years. He worked with a range of UN agencies across the world before joining the International Food Policy Research Institute in 1999, where he founded the Regional Network on AIDS, Livelihoods and Food Security; the Transform Nutrition research consortium, a flagship Agriculture for Nutrition and Health program; and the Stories of Change initiative, among a host of other interventions in public food and nutrition policy. His work—the food fight he has been waging—has driven change across all frontiers, from the grassroots (with village health workers, mothers, and children) to the political (challenging corporate behemoths and strengthening governance).

Stuart Gillespie

Biography

STUART GILLESPIE has been fighting to transform our dysfunctional food system for the past forty years. He worked with a range of UN agencies across the world before joining the International Food Policy Research Institute in 1999, where he founded the Regional Network on AIDS, Livelihoods and Food Security; the Transform Nutrition research consortium, a flagship Agriculture for Nutrition and Health program; and the Stories of Change initiative, among a host of other interventions in public food and nutrition policy. His work—the food fight he has been waging—has driven change across all frontiers, from the grassroots (with village health workers, mothers, and children) to the political (challenging corporate behemoths and strengthening governance).