This, from the New York Times on August 21.

Here’s the headline:

A sales growth of ONLY 2.6% dropped Walmart’s stock by 9%.

OK, Walmart isn’t all about food, but it has larger food sales than any other place by a wide margin.

As I keep saying, I’m not against profit.

But the idea that 2.6% growth is insufficient to please stockholders explains everything about what’s wrong with our food system.

People and pets can only eat so much.  All food-selling enterprises cannot continue to grow infinitely.

I’ think a good argument can be made that the bad things food companies do to employees, customers, animals, and the environment result directly from stockholder pressures to grow sales and profits, quarter after quarter.

System change, anyone?

The post Our current investment system does not work for food companies or us appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle

Chin Jou.  Captive Consumers: Hunger, Violence, and Inequality in American Prison Food.  University of North Carolina Press, 2026.  344 pages.

I have been a fan of Chin Jou’s work for a long time and did a blurb for her latest book:

Captive Consumers is a tough, uncompromising, and utterly compelling analysis of the ways America’s mass incarceration system uses food as punishment, and must become more humane.

From the publisher:

Using a wealth of sources from untapped historical records to prison newspapers, Jou excavates the voices of the incarcerated and shows that prison food dehumanizes the imprisoned, compounds racial and class inequalities, and induces more violence—ultimately making carceral institutions more dangerous. But this compelling book also illuminates how people behind bars have reasserted their identities, resourcefulness, and humanity through self-prepared food even as prison food services profit from lucrative, taxpayer-funded contracts that reward cost-cutting over care. If US corrections systems continue to perpetuate physical and psychological violence through food, Jou argues, Americans will suffer not just wasted tax dollars but the cost of bringing traumatized, ailing, and hungry formerly incarcerated people back into society.

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Arriving Sept 8. For a 30% discount, pre-order here using code UCPSAVE30.

The post Weekend reading: a deep dive into prison food appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle