Carolyn Steel is a food urbanist, meaning she can explain what we all take for granted- our food and how it gets to us. In her talk today at TED Global 2009, she presented frightening stats about where food demand is headed in addition to gripping historical context about how the food chain has evolved. Here’s how TEDsters on Twitter grappled with this question:

… How do you feed a city? One of the great questions of our time, yet rarely asked. We assume food will be there, magic. — ruthannharnisch

Steel disagrees with Romer from yesterday – we have to stop building, we can’t feed megacities. — brainpicker

… The world is desperate to embrace the Western Diet. SO True. I see this all the time; it makes me sad. So unsustainable — pragzter

OH – Carolyn Steel could have given this talk every ten years for the last 400 years. — ruthannharnisch

… Half the food currently made in the US is thrown away. Anyone know if the figures for the UK are similar? — id

Carolyn Steel: “Sitopia” = “food place” (from Greek sitos, food + topos, place) or simply a better word for utopia :-) — TEDIndia