The Secret Life of Groceries

Author: Benjamin Lorr
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0553459406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
In the tradition of Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, an extraordinary investigation into the human lives at the heart of the American grocery store What does it take to run the American supermarket? How do products get to shelves? Who sets the price? And who suffers the consequences of increased convenience end efficiency? In this alarming exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing, immersive reporting, and compulsively readable prose, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn: • The secrets of Trader Joe’s success from Trader Joe himself • Why truckers call their job “sharecropping on wheels” • What it takes for a product to earn certification labels like “organic” and “fair trade” • The struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business • The truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry The result is a page-turning portrait of an industry in flux, filled with the passion, ingenuity, and exploitation required to make this everyday miracle continue to function. The product of five years of research and hundreds of interviews across every level of the industry, The Secret Life of Groceries delivers powerful social commentary on the inherently American quest for more and the social costs therein.

Death by Supermarket

Author: Nancy Deville
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 1608321150
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description
The epidemics of obesity, disease, low IQ, and depression are the result of a new source of malnutrition caused by chemically loaded, nutrient dead ''science fiction'' food made in factories. Nancy Deville masterfully links America's obsession with factory food and our growing reliance on the pharmaceutical industries. This well-researched guide based on scientific studies reveals the imminent danger behind the low fat/low cholesterol diet and links the introduction of this diet to the proliferation of high-fructose corn syrup, vegetable oil, endocrine disrupting soy, neurologically damaging aspartame, and other unhealthy ingredients that pervade factory food. You do not have to stay fat, depressed, or sick, tethered to pharmaceuticals and dreading old age. It's never too late to begin reversing the effects of factory food. Death By Supermarket shows you how to quit dieting and taking drugs, provide your body and brain with nutritional building blocks, and reclaim your genetic potential -- including your ideal body weight -- by choosing a historically eaten diet of real, whole, living food.

The Secret Life of Groceries

Author: Benjamin Lorr
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0553459414
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
"A deeply curious and evenhanded report on our national appetites." --The New York Times In the tradition of Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, an extraordinary investigation into the human lives at the heart of the American grocery store The miracle of the supermarket has never been more apparent. Like the doctors and nurses who care for the sick, suddenly the men and women who stock our shelves and operate our warehouses are understood as 'essential' workers, providing a quality of life we all too easily take for granted. But the sad truth is that the grocery industry has been failing these workers for decades. In this page-turning expose, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on the highly secretive grocery industry. Combining deep sourcing, immersive reporting, and sharp, often laugh-out-loud prose, Lorr leads a wild investigation, asking what does it take to run a supermarket? How does our food get on the shelves? And who suffers for our increasing demands for convenience and efficiency? In this journey: We learn the secrets of Trader Joe's success from Trader Joe himself Drive with truckers caught in a job they call "sharecropping on wheels" Break into industrial farms with activists to learn what it takes for a product to earn certification labels like "fair trade" and "free range" Follow entrepreneurs as they fight for shelf space, learning essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business Journey with migrants to examine shocking forced labor practices through their eyes The product of five years of research and hundreds of interviews across every level of the business, The Secret Life of Groceries is essential reading for those who want to understand our food system--delivering powerful social commentary on the inherently American quest for more and compassionate insight into the lives that provide it.

Summary of Benjamin Lorr's The Secret Life of Groceries

Author: Milkyway Media
Publisher: Milkyway Media
ISBN:
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 23

Book Description
Buy now to get the key takeaways from Benjamin Lorr's The Secret Life of Groceries. Sample Key Takeaways: 1) After hours at a Whole Foods supermarket in New York City, the night workers begin their shift and restock the shelves, fridges, and freezers. They also ensure the hygiene of the space so the products are in a safe environment. 2) Grocery stores are the entry point to understanding how and why food gets to us in the form it does. The supply chain that grocery stores utilize is shockingly efficient, and as they grow, our budget for food decreases while its quality and quantity increases.

The Secret Life of Food

Author: Martin Elkort
Publisher: Tarcher
ISBN:
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
Gives information and unusual facts on the origins of food and beverages.

Small Farm Republic

Author: John Klar
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 164502220X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
“I have read at least 20 books a year for the past 25 years and Small Farm Republic is absolutely one of the very best that I have ever read. . . A must-read not only for those involved in all facets of agriculture but policy makers and consumers as well.”—Gabe Brown, regenerative rancher, author of Dirt to Soil From farmer, lawyer, and political activist John Klar comes a bold, solutions-based plan for Conservatives that gets beyond the fatuous pipe dreams and social-justice platitudes of the dominant, Liberal “Green” agenda—offering a healthy way forward for everyone. While many on the Left have taken up the mantle of creating a “green” future through climate alarmism, spurious new energy sources, and technocratic control, many on the Right continue to deny imminent environmental threats while pushing for unbridled deregulation of our most destructive industrial forces. Neither approach promises a bright future. In a time of soil degradation, runaway pollution, food insecurity, and declining human health, the stakes couldn’t be higher, and yet the dominant political voices too often overlook the last best hope for our planet—supporting small, regenerative farmers. In fact, politicians on all sides continue to sell out the interests of small farmers to the devastating power of Big Ag and failed “renewable energy” incentives. It’s time for a new vision. It’s time for bold new agriculture policies that restore both ecosystems and rural communities. In Small Farm Republic, John Klar, an agrarian conservative in the mold of Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin, offers an alternative that puts small farmers, regenerative agriculture, and personal liberty at the center of an environmental revival—a message that everyone on the political spectrum needs to hear.

Why Food Matters

Author: Paul Freedman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030025377X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
From the author of Ten Restaurants That Changed America, an exploration of food's cultural importance and its crucial role throughout human history "A rich and fascinating narrative that reaches deep into the historical and cultural larder of societal experience, powerfully illustrating the myriad ways that food matters as an essential condiment for humanity."--Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and Shake Shack Why does food matter? Historically, food has not always been considered a serious subject on par with, for instance, a performance art like opera or a humanities discipline like philosophy. Necessity, ubiquity, and repetition contribute to the apparent banality of food, but these attributes don't capture food's emotional and cultural range, from the quotidian to the exquisite. In this short, passionate book, Paul Freedman makes the case for food's vital importance, stressing its crucial role in the evolution of human identity and human civilizations. Freedman presents a highly readable and illuminating account of food's unique role in our lives. It is a way to express community and celebration, but it can also be divisive. This wide-ranging book is a must-read for food lovers and all those interested in how cultures and identities are formed and maintained.

Food & Society

Author: Amy E. Guptill
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509542256
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description
This popular text, now in a third edition, offers readers a vivid perspective on the cultural and social complexities of food practices and the current food system. Synthesizing insights from the multidisciplinary field of food studies, this book engages readers’ curiosity by highlighting the seeming paradoxes of food: how food is both individual and social, reveals both distinction and conformity, and, in the contemporary era, seems to come from everywhere but nowhere in particular. Each chapter begins with an intriguing case study and ends with suggested resources and activities. Chapter topics include identity, restaurants and food media, health, marketing, industrialization, global food, surplus and scarcity, and social change. Updates and enhancements in this edition reflect new scholarly insights into how food is involved in social media, social movements, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout, the book blends concepts and empirical accounts to address the central issues of culture, structure, and social inequality. Written in a lively, accessible style, this book provides students with an unrivalled and multifaceted introduction to this fascinating aspect of social life.

The Secret Life of Cities

Author: Helen Jarvis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317904540
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Contemporary urbanisation has two faces: global flows of people, money and information, and that of localised social and economic disparities. Recent research has focused on the headlines of global cities as control centres of the world economy, and social and economic shock waves that have raged through cities and regions, but less attention has been paid to the secret life of cities, and the changing nature of everyday life in the wake of such changes.This book challenges current research and policy agendas recommending spatial concentration and relocation as a solution to the problems of environmental sustainability and social dislocation. Instead, this book highlights the key linkages between social and environmental problems, it argues that neither are likely to be resolved with a simple spatial fix. The book draws attention to local contexts of contemporary urbanisation emphasising consideration of policy making from the perspective of the household as a key unit of analysis in identifying links between labour and housing markets, transport and leisure.This book draws upon detailed household interviews about the daily experience of life in a global city. It illustrates the dilemmas and solutions that people routinely find in order to go on in their lives. It shows that these local fixes that are managed at the level of the household work in spite of, and sometimes against, existing policies aimed at sustainability. It concludes that policy making needs to be radically overhauled in order to address the integrated nature of people's everyday lives.

The Secret Life of the Seine

Author: Mort Rosenblum
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0786731184
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Mort Rosenblum, a celebrated foreign correspondent, invites us aboard his fifty-four-foot launch tied up in the center of Paris and introduces us to the characters who share his life along the river, ranging from eccentric movie stars and reclusive novelists to barge families just scraping by. He then hauls in the bow line for an unforgettable tour of the river itself from its source to its mouth. The Secret Life of the Seine is a love story between man and boat and the river that they live on, a discourse on the sensual beauty of France and the art of living well. In the tradition of A Year in Provence, Under the Tuscan Sun, and Paris to the Moon, here is what Garry Trudeau called "a moveable feast [with] a top speed of five knots—fast enough for fun, languid enough for dreaming. Take a trip you'll never take: This is what books are for."