Ha-Joon Chang presents an easily digestible and occasionally mouthwatering introduction to some of the more challenging, and misunderstood, economic ideas
Review by Bryony Cottam
Over the decades, as Britons’ culinary tastes have expanded from a bland diet of boiled meat and veg, the diversity of economic theories that inform UK government policy has shrunk. In Edible Economics, Ha-Joon Chang presents an easily digestible introduction to some of the more challenging, and misunderstood, economic ideas.
Each bite-sized chapter takes the name of a food that, somewhere in the world, is a store-cupboard staple –okra, noodles, anchovies, Coca-Cola – using their histories, recipes and cultural importance to explore a variety of different economic theories. For example, in ‘Strawberry’, Chang explains how this labour-intensive fruit (actually not a berry) has contributed to the rise in low-wage jobs and, later, the automation that is seen as ‘the destroyer’ of those jobs (actually, Chang writes, it isn’t).
This isn’t a book about the economics of food. Rather the food tales often act as ‘conversation starters’ – the ice cream bribe to get us to eat our greens, as Chang describes them. Indeed, I sometimes lost the thread connecting a certain food to a particular economic theory amid the interlinking histories of cultures, languages and religions, but fortunately each chapter does circle back to food.
Edible Economics is a funny, thought-provoking book that often made me forget that I was reading about economics, which I’m sure was the point. I didn’t reach the end with a full understanding of even the most dominant economic theory – not even close – but Edible Economics has sparked in me an interest in a subject that I had previously found impenetrable, revealing it to be a much broader-ranging topic than I had believed. As the author explains, economics has a direct and enormous impact on our lives, so it’s ‘vital that we all understand at least some of its principles’.
