In Food Routes, Robyn Metcalfe explores an often-overlooked facet of the global food system: how food techniques from producer to consumer. She discovers that the food supply chain is certainly adapting to our increasingly complex needs for both personalization and convenience-but, she says, it will not be an easy ride.

Networked, digital tools can enhance the food system but will also challenge our relationship to food in anxiety-provoking ways. It could not be simple to transfer our affections from verdant about Food Routes: Developing Bananas in Iceland and Additional Tales from the Logistics of Consuming areas of organic tomato vegetables to high-rise greenhouses tended by robots. And yet, argues Metcalfe-a cautious technology optimist-technological developments offer opportunities for innovations that may get better food to more folks in an more and more urbanized world.

Metcalfe follows a cut of New York pizza and a membership sandwich through the meals supply chain; considers local foods, global foods, and food deserts; investigates the digesting, packaging, and storage space of food; explores the transportation systems that connect plantation to dish; and explains how meals can be monitored using detectors and the Internet of Things. Future food could be designed, networked, and nearly independent of plants grown in areas. New technologies can make the food program even more efficient-but at what price to our traditionally close romantic relationship with food?