In Food and Revolution, Christiane Berth traces a compelling story of food policy and hunger in Nicaragua from the 1950s to the present, finding more continuity than one might expect across diverse governments. She credits the revolutionary Sandinista government as the only one to effectively address hunger, but just from 1979 to 1981, when the Contra war, US embargo, and poor management eroded their programs. However, one lasting outcome of the Sandinista era (1979–90) was the global movement for food security, an idea incorporated into the Nicaraguan Constitution in 1987 and revived in the 1990s by reorganized peasant networks that had learned to organize during the revolution.
One of Berth's most interesting contributions is her emphasis not just on the nutritional importance of food but on its cultural role. She discusses Nicaraguans as consumers, with preferences that could not be reshaped by nutritionists or revolutionary policy. Whether the Sandinistas...
