Feed the People! by Jan Dutkiewicz

Feed the People!

Why Industrial Food Is Good and How to Make It Even Better

Jan Dutkiewicz, Gabriel N. Rosenberg

Basic Books · Print & ebook · February 17, 2026

Why Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and other slow-food-loving locavores are wrong about food in America—and why Waffle House can save us all. “This book is sustenance for your mind as it imagines more democratic and delightful ways we can all fill our stomachs.” —Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone The food industry is a major driver of climate change, pollution, obesity, animal suffering, and workplace exploitation.

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Who it’s for
Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel Rosenberg argue for improving industrial food with smart technology and commonsense policies.
Genres
Agriculture & Food Policy, Agriculture & Food Systems, The Food Business
Published
Basic Books, February 17, 2026

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About this book

Why Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and other slow-food-loving locavores are wrong about food in America—and why Waffle House can save us all. “This book is sustenance for your mind as it imagines more democratic and delightful ways we can all fill our stomachs.” —Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone The food industry is a major driver of climate change, pollution, obesity, animal suffering, and workplace exploitation.

Continue reading

Many food writers blame the industrial food system and tell individual eaters to fix these problems by buying local, artisanal food from small farmers—a solution most Americans can’t afford. But, as food-policy experts Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel Rosenberg remind us, modern technology has made food more affordable, abundant, varied, and tastier than at any other time in history. In Feed the People!, they argue that modern food pleasures like Waffle House waffles, and the industrial systems that make them possible, are actually good. With smart technology and commonsense policies, we can make them even better. Dutkiewicz and Rosenberg have traveled around the United States to find the people changing the way we make and eat food, from the innovators behind plant-based burgers to the cooks serving free school lunches to the labor organizers unionizing fast food joints. They show that building a food system that works for everyone will take more than just eating your vegetables. Feed the People! invites you to sit at the table and join this delicious movement.

Industrial Food

Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel Rosenberg argue for improving industrial food with smart technology and commonsense policies.

Come here for

  • The case for affordable, abundant industrial food
  • Plant-based burger innovators and free school-lunch cooks

Expect

  • A challenge to local, artisanal food as a solution for everyone
  • Food workers organizing unions in fast-food restaurants

Where it sits

Agriculture & Food Policy73%
The Food Business40%
Agriculture & Food Systems36%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Agriculture & Food Policy
  • Agriculture & Food Systems
  • Food Packaging & Processing
Authors
Jan Dutkiewicz, Gabriel N. Rosenberg
Publisher
Basic Books
Published
February 17, 2026
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Agriculture & Food Policy