Weekend reading: Food Banks and their Discontents

Graham Riches.  Food Bank Nations: Poverty, Corporate Charity, and the Right to Food.  Routledge, 2018.

I’m not sure how I missed this one when it came out.  It’s really good.

It is a tough analysis of the politics of charitable food—the institutionalized use of corporate food waste to feed hungry people, largely in OECD countries but also in the U.S.

• The analysis is seen in chapter subtitles, for example:
• Corporate capture: hunger as a charitable business
• Shaming the hungry, regulating the poor
• The “dark side” of food banking
• The corporate food charity state
• Food, as a matter of human rights

The solution?  Put rights and politics back into hunger.  The book gives examples of how to do this.