Author says our food chain will find its weakest link soon

Food has become a major force on the best-seller lists, from memoirs of famed food personages to critiques of the fast-food industry to experimenters in the growing trend to eat local and fresh.

The next wave of food books, though, may not be so tasty. One of the first to the fore -- and frightening indeed -- is Paul Roberts' "The End of Food" (Houghton Mifflin, 322 pages, $26).

The best-selling Leavenworth-based writer sets forth the case that the current global food chain is stretched so thin that a major crisis is inevitable.

"What is new," Roberts has said, "is the realization that food-borne illness, obesity, soil degradation and other food crises are all part of the same underlying problem -- a system of food production that is no longer sustainable."

Roberts' "The End of Food" already has prompted a feature story in The New Yorker.

It also has garnered a glowing blurb from best-selling author Michael Pollan ("The Omnivore's Dilemma"), the Bay Area high priest of the new food writing.

Pollan says of Roberts' book: "For anyone concerned about the future of food, this is an indispensable book, clear-eyed, comprehensive and compelling. Paul Roberts has gone everywhere, read everything and returned with the best analysis of the global food economy you are likely to find."

Paul Roberts discusses "The End of Food" at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, at Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 206-652-4255. Tickets: $5 at the door.

-- John Marshall