The Secret Life of Groceries

The Secret Life of Groceries
Author: Benjamin Lorr
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2021-11-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0553459414

"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.

The Secret Life of Food

The Secret Life of Food
Author: Clare Crespo
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2005-09-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780786837359

Welcome to Clare Crespo's world of demented and delightful culinary creations, where what you see is definitely not what you get. Illustrated with vivid and slyly hilarious photographs, The Secret Life of Food introduces parents and children to forty-six unbelievable recipes that turn familiar, easy-to-make dishes into wondrous imitations of plants, animals, common household objects, and even human body parts (the ultimate Halloween gross-out!). A hip gift book perfect for young families, The Secret Life of Food shows these and many more whimsical, ingeniously disguised creations. Parents will have as much fun as their children making these playful dishes, or simply leafing through this charming, disarming collection.

The Secret Financial Life of Food

The Secret Financial Life of Food
Author: Kara Newman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2012-12-04
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0231527349

One morning while reading Barron's, Kara Newman took note of a casual bit of advice offered by famed commodities trader Jim Rogers. "Buy breakfast," he told investors, referring to the increasing value of pork belly and frozen orange juice futures. The statement inspired Newman to take a closer look at agricultural commodities, from the iconic pork belly to the obscure peppercorn and nutmeg. The results of her investigation, recorded in this fascinating history, show how contracts listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange can read like a menu and how market behavior can dictate global economic and culinary practice. The Secret Financial Life of Food reveals the economic pathways that connect food to consumer, unlocking the mysteries behind culinary trends, grocery pricing, and restaurant dining. Newman travels back to the markets of ancient Rome and medieval Europe, where vendors first distinguished between "spot sales" and "sales for delivery." She retraces the storied spice routes of Asia and recounts the spice craze that prompted Christopher Columbus's journey to North America, linking these developments to modern-day India's bustling peppercorn market. Newman centers her history on the transformation of corn into a ubiquitous commodity and uses oats, wheat, and rye to recast America's westward expansion and the Industrial Revolution. She discusses the effects of such mega-corporations as Starbucks and McDonalds on futures markets and considers burgeoning markets, particularly "super soybeans," which could scramble the landscape of food finance. The ingredients of American power and culture, and the making of the modern world, can be found in the history of food commodities exchange, and Newman connects this unconventional story to the how and why of what we eat.

The Secret Life of Food

The Secret Life of Food
Author: Martin Elkort
Publisher: Tarcher
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1991
Genre: Cooking
ISBN:

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

The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You

The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You
Author: Sylvia Tara
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2016-12-27
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 0393244849

A biochemist shows how we can finally control our fat—by understanding how it works. Fat is not just excess weight, but actually a dynamic, smart, and self-sustaining organ that influences everything from aging and immunity to mood and fertility. With cutting-edge research and riveting case studies—including the story of a girl who had no fat, and that of a young woman who couldn’t stop eating—Dr. Sylvia Tara reveals the surprising science behind our most misunderstood body part and its incredible ability to defend itself. Exploring the unexpected ways viruses, hormones, sleep, and genetics impact fat, Tara uncovers the true secret to losing weight: working with your fat, not against it.

Back of the House

Back of the House
Author: Scott Haas
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2013-02-05
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 1101619279

Food writer and clinical psychologist Scott Haas wanted to know what went on inside the mind of a top chef—and what kind of emotional dynamics drove the fast-paced, intense interactions inside a great restaurant. To capture all the heat and hunger, he spent eighteen months immersed in the kitchen of James Beard Award-winner Tony Maws’ restaurant, Craigie on Main, in Boston. He became part of the family, experiencing the drama first-hand. Here, Haas exposes the inner life of a chef, what it takes to make food people crave, and how to achieve greatness in a world that demands more than passion and a sharp set of knives. A lens into what motivates and inspires all chefs—including Thomas Keller, Andrew Carmellini, whose stories are also shared here—Back of the House will change the way you think about food—and about the complicated people who cook it and serve it.

Garlic and Sapphires

Garlic and Sapphires
Author: Ruth Reichl
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2005-05-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781741146448

A funny, tell-all memoir from the New York Times' most controversial restaurant critic.

Finding Betty Crocker

Finding Betty Crocker
Author: Susan Marks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 1439104018

IN 1945, FORTUNE MAGAZINE named Betty Crocker the second most popular American woman, right behind Eleanor Roosevelt, and dubbed Betty America's First Lady of Food. Not bad for a gal who never actually existed. "Born" in 1921 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to proud corporate parents, Betty Crocker has grown, over eight decades, into one of the most successful branding campaigns the world has ever known. Now, at long last, she has her own biography. Finding Betty Crocker draws on six years of research plus an unprecedented look into the General Mills archives to reveal how a fictitious spokesperson was enthusiastically welcomed into kitchens and shopping carts across the nation. The Washburn Crosby Company (one of the forerunners to General Mills) chose the cheery all-American "Betty" as a first name and paired it with Crocker, after William Crocker, a well-loved company director. Betty was to be the newest member of the Home Service Department, where she would be a "friend" to consumers in search of advice on baking -- and, in an unexpected twist, their personal lives. Soon Betty Crocker had her own national radio show, which, during the Great Depression and World War II, broadcast money-saving recipes, rationing tips, and messages of hope. Over 700,000 women joined Betty's wartime Home Legion program, while more than one million women -- and men -- registered for the Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air during its twenty-seven-year run. At the height of Betty Crocker's popularity in the 1940s, she received as many as four to five thousand letters daily, care of General Mills. When her first full-scale cookbook, Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, or "Big Red," as it is affectionately known, was released in 1950, first-year sales rivaled those of the Bible. Today, over two hundred products bear her name, along with thousands of recipe booklets and cookbooks, an interactive website, and a newspaper column. What is it about Betty? In answering the question of why everyone was buying what she was selling, author Susan Marks offers an entertaining, charming, and utterly unique look -- through words and images -- at an American icon situated between profound symbolism and classic kitchen kitsch.

The Secret Life of Cows

The Secret Life of Cows
Author: Rosamund Young
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0525557334

"Within a day of receiving this book, I had consumed it... Absorbing, moving, and compulsively readable."—Lydia Davis In this affectionate, heart-warming chronicle, Rosamund Young distills a lifetime of organic farming wisdom, describing the surprising personalities of her cows and other animals At her famous Kite's Nest Farm in Worcestershire, England, the cows (as well as sheep, hens, and pigs) all roam free. They make their own choices about rearing, grazing, and housing. Left to be themselves, the cows exhibit temperaments and interests as diverse as our own. "Fat Hat" prefers men to women; "Chippy Minton" refuses to sleep with muddy legs and always reports to the barn for grooming before bed; "Jake" has a thing for sniffing the carbon monoxide fumes of the Land Rover exhaust pipe; and "Gemima" greets all humans with an angry shake of the head and is fiercely independent. An organic farmer for decades, Young has an unaffected and homely voice. Her prose brims with genuine devotion to the wellbeing of animals. Most of us never apprehend the various inner lives animals possess, least of all those that we might eat. But Young has spent countless hours observing how these creatures love, play games, and form life-long friendships. She imparts hard-won wisdom about the both moral and real-world benefits of organic farming. (If preserving the dignity of animals isn't a good enough reason for you, consider how badly factory farming stunts the growth of animals, producing unhealthy and tasteless food.) This gorgeously-illustrated book, which includes an original introduction by the legendary British playwright Alan Bennett, is the summation of a life's work, and a delightful and moving tribute to the deep richness of animal sentience.

A Floating Life

A Floating Life
Author: Tad Crawford
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2012-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1611457025

Realizing that he is no longer certain about who or what he is, a middle-aged narrator attends a party and talks with an unknown woman who proves to be his wife before finding himself separated and enduring an abstract existence of mercurial boundaries before bonding with an elderly Dutch model maker who dreams of taming nature's destructive forces.