The World Needs to Start Eating Differently, Fast

If the cheeseburger and fries don’t kill you, the food system that sustains it one day could—by putting food supplies in peril. The largest global survey of crop diversity and diets conducted to date, released last month, paints a bleak picture of global food supplies. Countries are 36 percent more reliant on the same staple crops than they were 50 years ago. Just 50 crop commodities provide more than 90 percent of calories, protein, and fat around the world. To paraphrase folk singer Greg Brown, it’s as if “the whole world struggles to become one bland place.”