Hunger Inc.

‘This ground-breaking work explains why food banks prolong hunger and what must be done’ Danny Dorling, University of Oxford

‘The book we need right now, as inequality rages and people across the “wealthy West” turn in ever greater numbers to food banks and other types of food support’ Mary O’Hara, author of Austerity Bites 10 Years On

Since 2020, we have seen a huge increase in the demand for charitable food aid, due to multiple political and economic crises. Initially seen as an emergency measure, corporate-backed food aid programmes are now entrenched ‘solutions’ to hunger. But who really benefits from them?

In Hunger Inc., Kayleigh Garthwaite travels across Britain, North America and Europe, working with food banks, co-ops, urban farms and food justice organisations. She documents the limitations of these programmes, and how institutionalising charitable food aid absolves governments of their responsibility to ensure that people have a right to food. As hunger and inequality continue to rise within advanced capitalist countries, this issue is more urgent than ever.

Proposing radical key policies for governments, she explores alternative community-led responses grounded in solidarity, not charity, to end the need for food aid before the indignity of food banks becomes completely normalised.

Kayleigh Garthwaite is Associate Professor in Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of the British Academy Peter Townsend Prize-winning Hunger Pains: Life Inside Foodbank Britain. She co-founded the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health, and Social Justice.