Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World

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Writing gamely and with admirable lucidity, Chang concludes with another metaphor, urging that ‘the best economists should be, like the best of the cooks, able to combine different theories to have a more balanced view’…It’ll help to have Econ 101 under your belt to appreciate this book, but it makes for fine foodie entertainment.” In the same way that Britain’s pre-90s refusal to accept diverse culinary traditions made the county a place with a boring and unhealthy diet, the dominance of economics by one school has made economics limited in its coverage and narrow in its ethical foundation. When Chang emigrated to the UK 36 years ago his Korean friends and parents were puzzled because it was “considered to be a country in decline”. Does he believe the same is true of Britain today? “Yes, but this is not the gentle decline of the 1970s and 1980s, the whole system is imploding. I don’t know if there will be a way out anytime soon because the country is too divided to forge a new model.” Unlike some – such as the former governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney – Chang does not blame Brexit for the UK’s malaise. “Brexit was a symptom, rather than a cause, people voted Leave because they’d had nearly a decade of economic stagnation and they wanted a way out,” he said. For starters, this book is not about the economics of food. It's rather a compilation of personal anecdotes, food history tidbits, and a critique of economic theories to explain the world we live in. This is the intro to economics we all needed 10 years ago in school and it certainly is the one we need now to make sense of all sorts of conversations in the media.

In the 19th century, cotton and tobacco, which were mostly grown on plantations that held slaves, were the main exports of the United States. It was not an industrialized country; it was an agrarian economy. These two agriculture products alone provided up to 65 percent of US export earnings. Two-thirds of the exports were produced by slaves. Given this prevalence of unfree labor, first in the form of slavery and then in the form of indentured labor, it is quite ironic that freedom has become the central concept in the defense of capitalism by free-market economists.P130: “[more re climate change] “…we need to drive less in personal vehicles….” And government has to determine better living arrangements for us- so we can walk to stores or use public transportation. This is the same egomania that underlined Stalin and Mao’s collectivization drives that killed millions.

This said, the connections between ingredients and economic concepts discussed often felt forced and disconnected. While the relationships established are outlined in the index, I felt they get lost in the introductory descriptions of ingredients of every chapter and only forcibly knit together with the economic concept discussed in the last paragraph of the chapter. The food stories are not just a pretext for a dry lecture, they are fascinating and engaging in themselves - so much engaging that you won’t realize when they morph into the economic ones. The author has an uncanny ability to connect very different topics into one coherent tale - say, pasta and automobile industry, or anchovy, guano and fertilizers. However, one thing that emerges from all these stories is that a diverse food culture, based on an open mind to new things and experimentation, is what makes our culinary life interesting and healthy.

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Este libro es fascinante porque conjuga con eficacia la gastronomía, la historia , la geografía y la economía. Permite viajar en el tiempo, por lugares diversos, conociendo detalles sabrosos de los alimentos y de ricas tradiciones culinarias, enlazando todo aquello con reflexiones convincentes sobre problemáticas económicas que repercuten en la vida cotidiana de todos los habitantes de este planeta. For decades, a single free market philosophy has dominated global economics. But this is bland and unhealthy - like British food in the 1980s, when bestselling author and economist Ha-Joon Chang first arrived in the UK from South Korea. Just as eating a wide range of cuisines contributes to a more interesting and balanced diet, so too is it essential we listen to a variety of economic perspectives. Chang needed to leave to deliver a lecture at the London School of Economics entitled: “Economics vs Science Fiction – what can each learn from the other?” But before he did, I pressed him on why he insists he remains an “optimist”. His answer combines the grand sweep of history and his own personal experience. “A lot of impossible things have happened. Two hundred years ago, people would have called you unrealistic if you advocated for the abolition of slavery in the US, a hundred years ago they would have called you naive if you supported the abolition of child labour. But these things came about”. Each chapter of my book is named after a food item (coconut, okra, chocolate, garlic, chili, you name it) and starts with some stories about that food item. But before you know it, the food stories are transformed into economic stories through what I call The Simpsons approach to writing. In other words, by having an open mind, British people achieved one of the greatest culinary transformations for the better in human history. 5. There are different ways of “doing economics.”

This book isn't about the economy of food production from planting to the market's shelf but about worldwide economics explained through food, a clever concept that makes economics accessible for the layperson.I don’t believe that there’s just one kind of capitalism. There are many different kinds, and we can make institutional changes to make capitalism more humane. You are what you eat, in the same way that you are what you know, the book seems to say. A seemingly unlikely parallel is drawn between the understanding of food and economic thinking, only to reveal itself as universal and foundational as human existence itself. At the end of the day, we are no hunter-gatherers and our economic activities and financial choices are what brings food to the table. We have a choice, therefore, both in our economic choices and our dietary selections. This book is an encouragement to choose to broaden our culinary horizons and seek a diverse economic diet. Diversity will not only make difficult concepts more palatable, but it will also surely enrich our lives. I am sure it will be a tasty treat for everyone interested not only in food or economics but in a good storytelling about how the modern world works. A lot of countries are being more honest and admitting that the government has always played an important role in industrial development, so they’re now thinking they might as well do it in a more systematic way. I try to bribe my potential readers into thinking about economics by wrapping dry economic arguments in succulent food stories. Food is so fundamental to our survival, identity, and happiness that most people are interested in it. Talking about food is a natural way to draw people in—especially if you want to eventually talk about things that people think are boring.

While I did find some of Chang’s opinions to be distinctly British — though born and raised in South Korea, Ha-Joon Chang attended university and now teaches in the UK — it was still easy to remind myself that this is a book of opinions as much as it is a book of fact. It’s not a textbook, but rather a unique economic overview from one individual’s perspective. I do appreciate the author’s evident extended effort to present ideas and concepts fairly, particularly multiple discussions of different versions and perspectives of the same theories, but the overarching author’s voice and bias is still ever-present. Fortunately, Ha-Joon Chang’s final recommendation to the reader is to understand that every perspective is just that: a perspective. Economics, though presented as firmly rooted in hard data and science, is just as much a matter of opinion as most things in this world. For another example, Neoclassical economics starts its analysis after taking the existing distribution of income, wealth, and power as given, so it is inherently bad at challenging the status quo. So, the dominance of economics by the Neoclassical school means that economics is now playing the role of Catholic theology in Medieval Europe. It has become a doctrine that tells people that things are what they are because they have to be, no matter how unjust and wasteful they may look.It will be unjust to readers if further description is given. But surely every chapter will excite them. In my case, it was like a roller-coaster ride that I finished in a breath, but its charm will stay forever.”— Prothom Alo English From the Publisher