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Lead book review

Is there anything safe left to eat?

It’s not only junk food we should be wary of, says Olivia Potts. Pretty well everything contains additives – and our five-a-day mantra is costing the Earth

22 April 2023

9:00 AM

22 April 2023

9:00 AM

Ravenous: How to Get Ourselves and Our Planet Into Shape Henry Dimbleby, with Jemima Lewis

Profile, pp.332, 16.99

Unprocessed: How the Food We Eat is Fuelling Our Mental Health Crisis Kimberley Wilson

W.H. Allen, pp.304, 22

Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food... And Why Can’t We Stop? Chris van Tulleken

Cornerstone, pp.384, 22

Avocado Anxiety: And Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From Louise Gray

Bloomsbury, pp.288, 17.99

The chapter headings alone are enough to induce a panic attack: ‘Disrepair – how modern diets harm brain health in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood’; ‘How ultra-processed food hacks our brains’; ‘How solving the last crisis in the food system caused the current one’. It’s not a new thing for books examining our food system to be doom-laden, but there has been something of an avalanche of them recently.

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