Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University London’s Centre for Food Policy since 2002. After a psychology PhD at the University of Leeds, he became a hill farmer in the 1970s. For 35 years, he’s engaged in public and academic debate about food policy, locally to globally.
A founder member of Sustain, the NGO alliance in 1985 he was its chair in 2000-2006. He’s been a regular consultant to the World Health Organisation. In 2006, he was appointed Natural Resources and Land Use Commissioner on the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission (abolished in March 2011), where he led Green, Healthy and Fair (2008) on government relations with supermarkets, and Setting the Table, (2009) on the need to define sustainable diets.
Tim was on the Council of Food Policy Advisors to the Secretary of State at Defra (2008-10); a special advisor to four House of Commons Select Committee inquiries (food standards [twice], globalisation and obesity); and London Food Board from 2010. He’s chaired the Scottish NHS Executive’s Scottish Diet Action Plan Review (2005-06); been a researcher on Chatham House’s Food Supply in the 21st Century programme (2005-08); advisor to the Cabinet Office review of Food and Food Policy (2007-08). He’s been a Vice-President of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, 1999 to present; was elected Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health in 2001; and is President of Garden Organic, 2008-11, and of the Caroline Walker Trust since 2005.
He writes a column in The Grocer, has written and co-written c100 reports and chapters, 9 books and 90 journal articles. Most recent books are Food Policy (with D Barling & M Caraher),Food Wars (with Michael Heasman), The Atlas of Food (with Erik Millstone and Unmanageable Consumer (with Yiannis Gabriel).
