Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (55 page)
Read Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives Online
Authors: Carolyn Steel
70
Reported by Reuters, September 2004.71
McDonald’s press release, 13 April 2007,
http://www.mcdonalds.com
.72
See Levenstein, op.cit., pp.28–30.73
George Orwell,
The Road to Wigan Pier
(1937), Penguin, 2001, p.92.74
For a detailed discussion of the French ‘decapitation’ of English cookery, see Mennell, op.cit., pp.204–14.75
Derek Cooper,
The Bad Food Guide
, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967, p.xvi.76
Joanne Finkelstein,
Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners
, Polity Press, Blackwell, 1989, p.3.77
One tube advert for The Brunswick read, ‘The Bloomsbury Set might have had culture, but they didn’t have Waitrose.’78
Yes, it contains coffee. But by the time it has been decaffeinated and had frothy milk, sugar and flavourings added, it effectively becomes a large, hot milkshake: a nursery drink.79
See Naomi Klein,
No Logo
, Flamingo, 2001, pp.135–7.80
Brillat-Savarin, op.cit., p.208.81
See the splendidly named Barbara J. Rolls, ‘The Supersizing of America, Portion Size and the Obesity Epidemic’,
Nutrition Today
, Vol.38, No.2, March/April 2003, pp.42–53.82
Greg Critser,
Fat Land
, Penguin, 2003, p.14.83
Ibid., p.28.84
Ibid.85
Type B malnutrition describes of the effects of eating too many processed foods, leaving people simultaneously obese and undernourished, with a high risk of developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.86
Paul Rozin, quoted in Levenstein, op.cit., p.256.87
Banzhaf was also the first lawyer to sue tobacco companies on health grounds.88
Chapter 6 Waste
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/5349392.stm
.1
Victor Hugo,
Les Misérables
(1862), trans. Norman Denny, Penguin, 1982, p.1065.2
The engines were fabricated in 1856 by James Watt and Co. to designs by Joseph Bazalgette.3
Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman,
London Under London
, John Murray, 1993, p.60.4
Donald Reid,
Paris Sewers and Sewermen: Realities and Representations
, Harvard University Press, 1993, p.10.5
Coventry Leet Book, quoted in Dorothy Davis,
A History of Shopping
, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966, p.24.6
Estimates of London’s size vary. See B.M.S. Campbell et al.,
A Medieval Capital and its Grain Supply
, Historical Geography Research Series No.30, 1993, pp.9–11.7
Trench and Hillman, op.cit., p.60.8
Ibid., p.63.9
Malcolm Thick,
The Neat House Gardens, Early Market Gardening Around London
, Prospect Books, 1998.10
John Strype,
An Accurate Edition of Stow’s Survey of London
(1720), quoted in Robert Webber,
Covent Garden: Mud-Salad Market
, J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd, 1969, p.31.11
The first patented flushing WC was designed by Alexander Cummings in 1775. See Trench and Hillman, op.cit., p.64.12
John Snow’s discovery of germ theory was still two decades away.13
Edwin Chadwick,
Inquiry into the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain
, London, 1842, p.369.14
Rome’s sewers only served public buildings such as latrines and bath-houses. Most private houses made do with cesspits, while multistorey apartment buildings,
insulae
, had no means of sewage disposal. See Jérôme Carcopino,
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
(1941), Penguin, 1991, p.51.15
According to some scholars, Rome was founded by the Etruscans. Certainly many Roman city-founding rites can be traced directly to Etruscan practice. See Joseph Rykwert,
The Idea of a Town
, Faber and Faber, 1976, p.29.16
Carcopino, op.cit., p.51.17
The Cloaca is still in use today, its mouth visible just downriver of the Ponte Rotto.18
Justus von Liebig,
Agriculturchemie
, quoted in Herbert Girardet,
Cities, People, Planet: Liveable Cities for a Sustainable World
, Wiley Academy, 2004, p.77.19
Reid, op.cit., p.56.20
Trench and Hillman, op.cit., p.71.21
Although John Snow made his discovery of the link between cholera and contaminated water in 1854, ‘germ theory’ was not yet fully understood. See Chapter 4.22
Quoted in Trench and Hillman, op.cit., p.69.23
One engine, Prince Consort, has been restored to full working order by the Crossness Engines Trust, and can be seen in action on ‘steaming days’. See
http://www.crossness.org.uk/
.24
http://www.thameswateruk.co.uk
.25
Girardet, op.cit., p.227.26
Hugo, op.cit., p.1061.27
WRAP,
Understanding Food Waste
, March 2007, p.4.28
Ibid., p.19.29
Defra,
Waste Strategy for England
, 2007, p.20.30
WRAP, op.cit., p.9.31
Ibid., p.12.32
Walkers Midshire, one of Britain’s largest food manufacturers, has a special lab dedicated to ‘abusing’ its products in various ways, and testing the outcome.33
Mary Douglas,
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
(1966), Routledge, 1995, p.2.34
Ibid., p.4.35
Ibid., p.36.36
Ibid., p.161.37
Ibid.38
Ibid., p.162.39
The dilemma is captured in the double meaning of the English word ‘soil’, both a verb meaning ‘make something dirty’ and as a noun meaning earth; and the American usage of the word ‘dirt’, primarily referring to earth or soil.40
Hugo, op.cit., p.1065.41
Henry Mayhew,
London Labour and the London Poor
, quoted in Reid, op.cit., p.21.42
Reid, op.cit., p.3.43
Sometimes the transformation was direct: one of Paris’s most fanciful parks, Buttes-Chaumont, was built on top of the city’s notorious old rubbish tip at Montfaucon, made obsolete by the construction of the sewers and designed by Adolphe Alphand, another of Haussmann’s chief sewer engineers.44
‘The food we eat – crops rot as supermarkets demand perfection’, the
Observer
, 16 August 1998, quoted in
A Battle in Store?
, Sustain, 2000, p.11.45
There has been some controversy in Britain over Whole Foods Market’s ‘organic’ status, since rules governing the use of the term are less stringent in the US than they are in Britain.46
Timothy Jones (2004), University of Arizona’s Bureau of Applied Research Anthropology,
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376-us-wastes-half
.47
http://www.fareshare.org.uk/
.48
The word ‘freegan’ is a conflation of ‘free’ and ‘vegan’.49
J.N. Postgate,
Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History
, Routledge, London and New York, 1994, p.181.50
Plato,
Critias
, 111c,
The Collected Dialogues
, eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Princeton University Press, 1987, p.1216.51
The mound, now Monte Testaccio, remains intact. It was the city’s main rubbish dump until the fourth century AD.52
See Neville Morley,
Metropolis and Hinterland
, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.88.53
Quoted in Girardet, op.cit., p.46.54
Quoted in Massimo Montanari,
The Culture of Food
, trans. Carl Ipsen, Blackwell, Oxford, 1994, p.10.55
Jeremy Bentham,
Panopticon
, cited in Dominique Laporte,
History of Shit
, trans. Nadia Benabid and Rodolphe el-Khoury, MIT Press, 2000, p.119.56
See Jared Diamond,
Collapse
, Penguin, 2005, p.11.57
Suetonius,
Vespasian
, Book 23, quoted in Laporte, op.cit., p.77.58
Frances Trollope,
Domestic Manners of the Americans
, 1832, quoted in John Clubbe,
Cincinnati Observed
, Ohio State University Press, 1992, p.88.59
Hugo, op.cit., p.1061.60
Quoted in Reid, op.cit., p.59.61
Ibid., p.62.62
Ibid., p.66.63
Defra, op.cit., p.23.64
House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee on Refuse Collection, Fifth Report of Session 2006–07, p.4.65
The EU Landfill Directive requires that the amount of biodegradable waste sent to landfill be reduced to 75 per cent of its 1995 levels by 2010, and 35 per cent by 2020.66
Girardet, op.cit., p.209.67
Reid, op.cit., p.4.68
Chapter 7 Sitopia
Robin Murray,
Creating Wealth from Waste
, Demos, 1999, p.4.1
In comparison, new housing developments in Britain between 1997 and 2001 were built at an average of just 25 dwellings per hectare.2
From an interview with the author in August 2007.3
Ibid.4
The concept of an ‘ecological footprint’ was invented by the Canadian ecologist William Rees in 1992. Although its method of measurement is disputed, it remains a useful means of estimating and describing the impact of our lifestyles on the planet.5
Living Planet Report, World Wildlife Fund, 2006, p.3.6
European Commission,
Environmental Impact of Products (EIPRO)
, May 2006, p.17.7
Jonathan Watts, ‘Invisible City’, the
Guardian
, 15 March 2006.8
The approximate volume of the Albert Hall is 120,000 cubic metres; the volume of a tonne of municipal waste around 10.9
Arup, Dongtan Eco-City, Shanghai, Presentation to PIA National Congress, Perth, Australia, May 2007.10
Thomas More,
Utopia
(1516), trans. Paul Turner, Penguin, 2003, p.53.11
Ibid., p.73.12
Aristotle,
The Politics
, ed. Stephen Everson, Cambridge University Press, 1988 (Book 2, 1265a 14–16), p.30.13
Fred D. Miller Jr,
Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics
, Clarendon Press, 1995, p.349.14
St Benedict,
Rule
, Chapter 48, quoted in Wolfgang Braunfels,
Monasteries of Western Europe
, Thames and Hudson, 1972, p.233.15
Ibid., p.42.16
Gerrard Winstanley, et al.,
The True Levellers Standard Advanced, or, The State of Community opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men
, London, 1649, p.6 (British Library Facsimile E.552.5).17
Niall Ferguson,
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World
, Allen Lane, 2003, p.69.18
Ibid.19
Frank and Fritzie Manuel,
Utopian Thought in the Western World
, Harvard University Press, 1979, p.679.20
See Colin Rowe,
Collage City
, MIT Press, 1979, p.15.21
Fourier’s ingenious solution for the collection of rubbish was to organise children (who were naturally drawn towards dirt) into gangs and make it into a competition. See Joseph Rykwert,
The Seduction of Place: the History and Future of the City
, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp.63–4.22
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
The Communist Manifesto
(1848), trans. Samuel Moore, Penguin Classics, 2002, p.255.23
Quoted in David Harvey,
Spaces of Hope
, Edinburgh University Press, 2000, p.30.24
Marx and Engels, op.cit., p.223.25
Ibid., p.244.26
William Morris,
News From Nowhere and Other Writings
, ed. Clive Wilmer, Penguin Classics, 1993, pp.61 and 77.27
Ibid., pp.61 and 122.