Scan barcode
A review by alexisrt
The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table by Tracie McMillan
4.0
I don't think this book is groundbreaking. It gives a lot of information that's available elsewhere and packages it together with a personal narrative. That, however, may make it more useful and accessible. The three part structure works well and helps highlight different phases of now we eat.
There are a lot of comparisons to Nickel and Dimed, a book that people often love or hate. While I can see the comparison, it's not the same book. There's more focus to her decisions; she's not really pretending that she can show you what it's like to be an immigrant farm worker by doing the job. If anything she's all too conscious of how she's different. Going out and working in the fields is a little bit of a gimmick, but it throws you into it more than just an interview. I think it would have been a less interesting and effective book if she had not gone and reported firsthand.
Overall, I liked this and felt that she did a good job of illustrating the problems with our food system without being overly preachy or elitist in the Mark Bittman "if you have time to watch TV, you have time to cook" mold, or pretending that buying those $9 tomatoes and being a locavore is the solution. This is a systemic problem that is much more complicated than where your tomatoes are grown and whether the fertilizer was organic. Who picks the food at your farmers' market? Do you know? I don't. It's about labor law, immigration, land use policy, corporate structure, logistics, and much more.
There are a lot of comparisons to Nickel and Dimed, a book that people often love or hate. While I can see the comparison, it's not the same book. There's more focus to her decisions; she's not really pretending that she can show you what it's like to be an immigrant farm worker by doing the job. If anything she's all too conscious of how she's different. Going out and working in the fields is a little bit of a gimmick, but it throws you into it more than just an interview. I think it would have been a less interesting and effective book if she had not gone and reported firsthand.
Overall, I liked this and felt that she did a good job of illustrating the problems with our food system without being overly preachy or elitist in the Mark Bittman "if you have time to watch TV, you have time to cook" mold, or pretending that buying those $9 tomatoes and being a locavore is the solution. This is a systemic problem that is much more complicated than where your tomatoes are grown and whether the fertilizer was organic. Who picks the food at your farmers' market? Do you know? I don't. It's about labor law, immigration, land use policy, corporate structure, logistics, and much more.