Hunger is a political choice

The rise of UPFs reflects a neocolonial food system organised around profit over health. We must put those systems under democratic control, argues Sarah Woolley The post Hunger is a political choice

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The rise of UPFs reflects a neocolonial food system organised around profit over health. We must put those systems under democratic control, argues Sarah Woolley

Hunger in one of the world’s wealthiest countries is not simply a policy failure; it is the consequence of political choices. Four decades of neoliberalism, culminating in austerity, have hollowed out public services and normalised food-bank dependency.

What began as emergency charity has become a substitute for social rights. The institutionalisation of food banks reflects a shift from welfare as a right to welfare as charity, replacing entitlement with discretion and citizenship with dependence.

A growing ‘food voluntariat’ has emerged: volunteers, mutual aid groups and community organisations providing food and care once delivered through publicly funded services. The compassion behind this work is undeniable, but charity cannot substitute for justice, nor can unpaid labour replace state responsibilities.

Food insecurity is fundamentally an income problem, rooted in low wages, insecure work and a weakened welfare state. But hunger is only one expression of a wider food crisis. The same economic system that leaves millions unable to afford adequate food also shapes what food is available in the first place.

So working-class communities are disproportionately exposed to unhealthy food environments and heavily marketed ultra-processed foods (UPFs), while healthier options often remain less accessible and less affordable. These inequalities are not accidental. They reflect a food system organised around profit rather than public health, and that keeps the working class ‘stuck in place’.

From bread riots and anti-colonial struggles to the Arab Spring uprisings, food is at the centre of class conflict

The debate on UPFs is often reduced to a simplistic distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods. The reality is more complex. Not all UPFs are equally harmful, and many dietitians (like me) note that some products, including certain breads, cereals and yoghurts, can contribute to a healthy diet.

As a recent Lancet Series concluded, diets dominated by UPFs are associated with higher risks of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression and premature mortality. However, the political question is not whether every UPF should be avoided, but why contemporary food systems increasingly depend on products designed for profitability rather than nourishment.

A Marxist food regime perspective helps explain why. Under neoliberalism, food has become less a source of nourishment and more a vehicle for accumulation. Corporate concentration, trade liberalisation and financialisation have reshaped food systems around the production of profitable commodities, not healthy diets. UPFs are the ideal product: cheap to manufacture, heavily marketed, globally scalable, and tasty, being designed for repeat consumption.

The issue is not processing itself but a food system that rewards products generating the highest returns, even when the public health consequences are profound. The rise of UPFs is therefore not simply a nutritional problem but the outcome of a food system organised around profit rather than health.

The same logic operates globally. Countries producing food for the world remain vulnerable to hunger while wealth flows through supply chains controlled by agribusiness corporations, commodity traders and financial institutions. The people who feed the world are often those most likely to go hungry.

As Ann Pettifor argues, contemporary capitalism increasingly resembles a form of parasitical casino capitalism. Food is not a necessity of life but a financial asset. On commodity exchanges such as the Chicago Board of Trade, investors speculate on future food prices without ever producing food. Wheat, maize and rice become objects of gambling. When prices rise, millions face hardship while financial actors profit from volatility. The global food system increasingly resembles ‘a betting shop in which the poor carry the risks and the wealthy collect the winnings’.

Alongside this, many governments face crushing debt burdens. Countries that constitutionally support the right to food often spend more servicing debt than investing in health, education and food security. A right to food without the resources needed to realise it becomes little more than a promise. Debt justice is inseparable from food justice.

The question is not whether UPFs should be avoided, but why contemporary food systems depend on products designed for profitability, not nourishment

These same economic arrangements are also driving the climate emergency. Industrial agriculture, monocultures, deforestation and global supply chains contribute significantly to ecological destruction while the costs fall disproportionately on poorer countries and working people. The world does not suffer from a shortage of food; it suffers from a shortage of democratic control over food systems.

History shows that people understand this instinctively. Food has always been political. Again and again, the denial of food has sparked resistance, rebellion and revolution. From bread riots and anti-colonial struggles to the Arab Spring uprisings, food is at the centre of class conflict because access to food is access to life itself. The Indian farmers’ movement of 2020–21 showed that food remains a site of political struggle, with millions mobilising successfully against reforms that would increase agribusiness’s access to their lands.

Trade unions are critical in challenging the neoliberal food system. In the UK, the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) has linked the struggle for decent wages and conditions to the wider fight for a legal Right to Food, arguing that a society in which food workers struggle to afford the food they produce is fundamentally unjust.

In Brazil, the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security (CONSEA) brought together trade unions, farmers, civil society organisations and government to shape food policy and advance the right to food through democratic participation and accountability. Together they point towards a broader vision of food democracy in which workers, producers and communities have a meaningful say over how food is produced, distributed and governed.

Food is also about collective care. During Covid-19 lockdowns, communities, schools, trade unions, mutual aid groups and food projects stepped in where the state failed. Their work showed that care is not simply a moral sentiment but a political practice requiring resources, responsibility and power. Governments cannot claim to care while permitting food poverty, underfunding social protection and allowing corporate interests to dominate food policy.

This is why the right to food is fundamental to socialist politics. It challenges the idea that food should be allocated according to wealth, purchasing power or market success and insists that access to adequate food is a human right. The question is not whether individuals make the right choices, but who controls the conditions under which those choices are made.

Food is not a commodity but a human right. The struggle for food has always been part of the wider struggle for democracy, justice and collective care. Establishing a legal Right to Food would be a decisive step towards moving beyond forty years of neoliberalism.

Sarah Woolley is General Secretary of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union

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