THE WORLD'S FOOD

M. K. Bennett is a professor of long standing and wide accomplishment and this serious outcome of a life time study of interrelations of world population, national diets and food potentials expounds the theory that war and economic autarchy rather than population, failing technology or limited resources are the real drawbacks to economic progress. That economic and population expansion should be kept equal, is the object of the first section- a picture of population and food and famine changes in the last milennium, and the implications of Malthus. An examination next of the American national diet concludes that the richer the country, the less starches are eaten, that good health is not all dependent on better nutrition and that an adequate diet can be low in cost. On the international level, the author disputes such theories as Josue de Castro's in his Geography of Hunger, stating the theory that hunger is determined at the level of calorie intake rather than being due to any social or cultural causes. Open to argument and an inconclusive more than answering book, this is still an extensive, well documented survey.