Stuffed and starved seems like such a paradox. There's so much food. How can there be hunger and obesity? In supposedly the world's wealthiest country, tens of millions of Americans are hungry. With the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression those numbers will certainly increase. Issues of race and class are factors linking diet with cancer, diabetes and heart disease all of which are much higher among African Americans and Latino Americans. Food's also a global issue. There are connections between famine in Africa and coffee prices at Starbucks as well as how biofuels made from corn in Iowa drives up tortilla prices in Mexico. In the U.S., the popularity and growth of farmers' markets and CSAs, community supported agriculture are indications of new thinking about food. But few among the poor can afford those options.

Raj Patel, writer, activist and former policy analyst with Food First, is a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at UC Berkeley. He has worked for the World Bank, the WTO, and the United Nations, and has also protested them on four continents. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.