I was recently shopping at the Trionfale market in my Roman neighborhood of Prati. The place is brimming with all kinds of produce and products, mixing the artisanal and the industrial, the convenient and the traditional. The market is now inside a recently built structure, and new vendors mingle with the old ones. However, smells, accents, colors are all very familiar to me. In a stall, bright red chili peppers caught my eye. I got closer to read the information on the packaging and found out that they originated from Tanzania. These vegetables had come from half the world away, while very similar ones are grown much closer. What commercial and economic mechanisms determined the presence of the African chili peppers in Rome? What infrastructures – visible and invisible – allowed its transportation, storage, and distribution? What prompted the shop owner to buy and sell them? How many shoppers would even notice? These are some of dynamics I have tried to explore in my new book, Food. Here is a little excerpt from the first chapter, dealing specifically with these questions.

“Food’s newly central presence in all sorts of everyday conversations is intensified by the fact that because everybody eats, we all consider ourselves experts. Precisely for this reason, this book will tackle the sprawling topic of food from a consumer’s standpoint, starting from our own everyday experiences and then following the connections that tie us through wider and wider networks to the food system at various scales—from the local to the global. We will see that we can be much more than consumers: we can reclaim our role as citizens. Without realizing it, a child that unwraps her favorite chocolate candy, anywhere in the world, is unknowingly entangled in intricate and wide-reaching linkages that connect her to stores, distributors, manufacturers, food scientists, nutritionists, food importers and exporters, crops producers and agrobusinesses, agronomists, botanists, biologists, and, lately, climatologists.

That’s not all: tax and custom agencies, all levels of government, international organizations, and many other actors, more or less invisible to the average consumer, influence the shape and the nature of the networks in which they participate. In the case of the chocolate bar, all these stakeholders determine where the cocoa is grown, in what varieties, and by whom; how much farmers are paid and in which conditions they work; how cocoa beans are bought, transported, and distributed across the globe; who turns the cocoa into chocolate and how; how the chocolate is manufactured, packaged, marketed, and distributed; who has access to it and at what price it is sold: in other words, who wins and who loses, who profits, and who is exploited in the food system.

Of course, nobody particularly wants to think about all that when they just want to enjoy some chocolate, especially if the candy satisfies a craving or it is a gift from a loved one. Moreover, consumption of sweets may come with heavy emotional luggage due to health or body image issues. Understandably, we tend to focus on the product at hand and the pleasure that it brings us. There’s nothing wrong with that! However, being aware of the dynamics that support the food system can empower us, not only as individual consumers but also as citizens and members of all sorts of social formations that range from the local to the regional, national, and international. Looking at the bigger picture is likely to help us make better-informed decisions in terms of not only personal preferences and political outlooks, but also more active social participation. If we acknowledged that our purchasing choices (“voting with our wallets”) are not enough to solve all issues, we would probably be more amenable to taking collaborative actions, beyond our personal spheres. Understanding the present could help us determine which future we want to live in, one that better reflects our preferences but also responds to the needs of larger segments of the world population.

The goal of this book is to identify the aspects of food systems that have great impact on our everyday lives, whether we are aware of it or not. In fact, many central and critical issues in the contemporary food system remain largely invisible to the public at large. They are harder to grasp because they are systemic, often originate in long-term historical dynamics, and have global ramifications that require familiarity with the complexities of international affairs to be fully understood. Our desire for convenience and access to cheap food may have unwanted consequences in terms of how supply chains and distribution networks are structured, influencing what’s grown, how it’s grown, and how it gets to us. For this reason, the book will take readers beyond experiences that directly and obviously affect them, to highlight more intricate connections that may not be immediately evident, in part because some involved parties—usually those with financial and political power—have an interest in hiding their actions and their interests.”