During the Cold War, there was the worry that a nuclear bomb would end life as we know it. After 9/11, terrorists are the new villains threatening the world order.

Instead, could it be that the rise of a successful food system meant to feed us will spell our destruction as a society? That is the fear of author Paul Roberts who has written the chilling The End of Food (Houghton Mifflin, $26), the follow-up to his bestseller The End of Oil.

His work is well-researched and his conclusions, chilling. The world faces a serious food crisis that could be one disaster away from toppling the supply chain.

Evidence supporting his premise is all around. Prices of food have skyrocketed. Shortages in Third World nations are predicted. Strains of avian flu can seem unstoppable. Airborne food illnesses threaten public health. In just the past few days, a slew of people in more than a dozen states were sickened with salmonella from consuming raw tomatoes.

All this leads Roberts to conclude that the food crisis is an economic problem, one that suffers from the instability of supply and demand.

The problem is food isn’t viewed by most of us a commodity but as a lifeline. Yet that’s how it has been treated. He compares the selling of food to the marketing of DVDs.

The food system that feeds so many so economically is a victim of its own success, Roberts maintains. High volume/low-cost production has locked food producers into a vicious cycle. Poultry producers have to grow bigger chickens, faster. Farmers have to produce more yields of grain. And Wal-Mart (which shockingly accounts for a fifth of all U.S. consumer food purchases) has to keep selling it all at low, low prices.

Farmers, ranchers and food producers have to keep cutting prices to sell their goods. They do this by automating to raise input. But isn’t food unsuited to mass production, Roberts asks?

“We’ve had to reengineer our crops and livestock to make them amenable to mechanical harvest, then ‘amend’ the finished product by adding colors, flavorings and other chemicals to repair the damage incurred by the manufacturing process,” he said.

All this threatens the safety of the food supply, he concludes.

And that is just one of the many issues he addresses.

Another threat to our food supply comes from dependence on energy sources. Fuel is needed for tractors and farming equipment; for trucks to transport goods; and as a chemical base for fertilizers and pesticides. Grain surpluses are a thing of the past too as one-third of grain grow in the U.S. is now going into biofuels.

Still, Roberts suggests that water shortages may dwarf oil as a limit to future food output.

Roberts notes that socially Americans have changed, too, and maybe not for the better. America’s rural farm culture is almost gone and with it a self-reliance that we can feed ourselves. Neighborhood groceries and mom-and-pop stores have all but disappeared as big discount chains thrive and increase the distance between food source and where it is consumed. At home, families have become content to outsource food preparation to restaurants and industrial kitchens. This has contributed to an obesity problem.

So what can we do? Buy local? Buy organic? Ultimately, Roberts believes those solutions have limits as he questions whether there will be enough local and organic food to meet the population’s needs. Plus, are people prepared to pay the higher prices that come with that change?

Roberts is duly concerned that the world population is climbing, especially in developing nations. Many of these are adopting Western diets full of meat. This modern “meat economy” as Roberts calls it, has to be halted because a pound of meat requires four pounds of grain to produce it. The world doesn’t have the resources to sustain that system, he writes.

Ultimately Roberts offers no simple solution but says the world requires a new way of thinking about food with a global vision. How can there be one with such a complicated subject?

But his book, with all its troubling stories detailing the enormity and scope of the world’s food crises, should become food for thought for all of us who need to eat.