Nestle owns Jenny Craig; Unilever, home of Ben and Jerry's ice-cream, owns SlimFast; and Coca Cola 'cosmeceuticals' promise to improve complexion and breast size - it's no wonder the weight-loss industry is worth over $40 billion annually. Who really decides what we eat and how we think about food? How did the stuffed outnumber the starved and why are so many of them poor? Why is soy in almost everything we eat? Stuffed and Starved is a groundbreaking inquiry into the workings of the global food industry. To reveal the stories behind the products in our shopping trolleys, Raj Patel visits rice paddies in India, coffee farms in Africa, protestor-packed streets in South Korea, UN agencies and corporate boardrooms. As he connects the dots between these places and our plates, he uncovers the real reasons for famine in Asia and Africa, the false choices given us by supermarkets and - at the heart of it - a handful of middlemen in control of the world's food supply. He also encounters a growing resistance to this control, from the farmer co-ops of Brazil to the Slow Food kitchens of Italy, and offers a recipe for a healthier, tastier and more equitable food system.