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A review by stevenyenzer
Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America by Michael Ruhlman
3.0
Ruhlman provides a solid history of grocery stores in the United States, peppered with some nice personal anecdotes that I think fit in quite well. From a personal perspective, I found the chapters about "food as medicine" and meat-eating extremely irritating.
Firstly, Ruhlman moves drastically away from his otherwise science-based approached in the "food as medicine" section, which includes a fawning profile of a hippie doctor who works for the grocery chain Ruhlman is following. I thought it was irresponsible for him as a layperson to dive so deeply into nutrition with only Dr. Hippie as his guide.
Secondly, the meat-eating section of course bothered me as a vegan -- but I think it would offend anyone with a healthy sense of logic. Ruhlman spends too long trying to justify his own meat consumption, using tired old arguments like "we have incisors for a reason" (I believe this one came from his editor) and "if we didn't raise them, they wouldn't exist/would die horrible deaths in the wild." He acknowledges that Peter Singer would tear his arguments apart, but doesn't seem to actually think about why that might be. Ruhlman also continually brings up the "using every part of the animal" argument for eating meat, as though a cow would care that you ate its tongue after you killed it. Finally, in a book so often concerned with the environmental impact of our modern food system, Ruhlman doesn't even acknowledge that industrialized animal agriculture is one of the most significant drivers of climate change.
Overall I did enjoy the book, and my problems with it were more personal than objective. I would recommend it to anyone interested in how modern (and historic) grocery stores do business, and maybe not so much for Ruhlman's second-hand fervor about the problems of modern American food.
Firstly, Ruhlman moves drastically away from his otherwise science-based approached in the "food as medicine" section, which includes a fawning profile of a hippie doctor who works for the grocery chain Ruhlman is following. I thought it was irresponsible for him as a layperson to dive so deeply into nutrition with only Dr. Hippie as his guide.
Secondly, the meat-eating section of course bothered me as a vegan -- but I think it would offend anyone with a healthy sense of logic. Ruhlman spends too long trying to justify his own meat consumption, using tired old arguments like "we have incisors for a reason" (I believe this one came from his editor) and "if we didn't raise them, they wouldn't exist/would die horrible deaths in the wild." He acknowledges that Peter Singer would tear his arguments apart, but doesn't seem to actually think about why that might be. Ruhlman also continually brings up the "using every part of the animal" argument for eating meat, as though a cow would care that you ate its tongue after you killed it. Finally, in a book so often concerned with the environmental impact of our modern food system, Ruhlman doesn't even acknowledge that industrialized animal agriculture is one of the most significant drivers of climate change.
Overall I did enjoy the book, and my problems with it were more personal than objective. I would recommend it to anyone interested in how modern (and historic) grocery stores do business, and maybe not so much for Ruhlman's second-hand fervor about the problems of modern American food.