When we eat, we become part of a complex network of global food movement. This mammoth transportation system links consumers and growers and a host of packagers through shipments of food that move in ways that are both wasteful and practical. And difficult to understand or evaluate.

Here's one example of the surprising relationships inherent in this modern international food system—China is now importing tea from Britain. Huh? China, where tea-drinking began and where tea has been grown for millennia, now imports tea from Britain, which over the last several centuries has elevated the consumption of imported tea to a national obsession. Yes, now tea, grown all over Asia and Africa, is shipped to Britain, where it is blended and packaged and then shipped to China where it has become the favorite of the young sophisticated Chinese urbanites.

Just to help reveal the incredible complexities and unexpected implications of this global process, here's another example—American efforts to end child labor in Asian production resulted in significantly increased suffering by those children. A U.S. Senate bill was proposed in 1992 that would prohibit importation to the United States of any products made with child labor. Fearing the loss of the U.S. market, producers in Bangladesh fired all their young workers. Without jobs, many of those children had to become street urchins and prostitutes.

OK. One more example. Given the rising concern about “food miles” (the huge number of miles food products travel and the high fuel costs involved), recently many analysts have compared the per-pound transportation costs of food grown and sold locally versus food grown on another continent. Without including other values (like food freshness and nutrition), they have discovered that given the huge volumes carried and the efficiency of the system, imported food can cost significantly less in petroleum use per pound. How can that be? If you go to your neighborhood store and buy New Zealand apples, they found that you will spend less gasoline (per apple) than if you drive to a farmer's orchard. Or growing local tomatoes in northern climates can include heated greenhouses, which requires more petroleum input than tomatoes grown in Mexico and shipped north.

There is nothing simple about the global food system, and there are no simple answers to questions about how to refocus food to reliance on local or organic sources. And here in Moscow, there are no obvious solutions to the recent controversy about the choice between flour grown and milled locally versus imported organic flour.

That complexity is the essence of Sarah Murray's new book, Moveable Feasts. Murray focuses on the history of a dozen food products—like olive oil, wheat, yogurt, and bananas—to tell the story of how our modern global system of food shipment got started and why it kept growing.

The book is very readable and even fun. Murray has a great eye for the just-right detail, and does an excellent job in bringing this entire saga together. This is a great addition to the difficult discussion about ways to humanize and improve food shipment, if only because Murray reminds us how complex the relationships have become and how co-optive and resilient are the multinational food processors.