Reviews with content warning for Slavery - The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket

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The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr

23 reviews

kek513's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative medium-paced

4.5

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mysteriesbooks's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

4.0

If you're expecting a step by step breakdown of how food gets from the farm to your Walmart aisle, this might not exactly be what your looking for. Lorr jumps from topic to topic; from the foundations of the first grocery store, to the weird beginnings of Trader Joe's, to the fact that the American trucking industry is built on indentured servitude. And it very well could be the 'tism in me that naturally talks like this with my friends, that made it so that I didn't mind it so much as some other reviewers.
Yes, we topic jump, but each sections' topics I was fully invested in and enthralled with where we were going. It was equal parts fascinating as it was horrifying. If anything, I would recommend the book for the trucker section and the fishing industry look alone.

That all said, I wasn't held quite as tightly during our look into the founding's of Trader Joe's, and Lorr comes into this with so much privilege from his white upper class background, that his shock that there's no ethical consumerism in capitalism was sometimes grating.

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alisonrcscheide's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

4.0

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hallie_hey's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative medium-paced

5.0

Benjamin Lorr's investigation into the life of our groceries does a beautiful job of showing us each step in the process through storytelling. What fully won me over was his thorough and nuanced footnotes. Topics brought up in this book will forever impact the way I think about my grocery store runs.

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wicalpickle's review against another edition

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dark funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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laminatedmoth's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative medium-paced

4.5

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basil_plant's review against another edition

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informative slow-paced

2.5

if only benjamin would recognize that he doesn’t need to use so many words to get his point across. this is the kind of nonfiction that makes people think they dislike nonfiction.

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