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Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America

Michael Ruhlman

Start date: December 1, 2023

Finish date: January 31, 2024

Discussion: Books of the Month

Discussion leader: Larry

Why we're reading this: December 2023 Book of the Month - Moderator's Choice…more
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What Members Thought

Nov 06, 2020 Petra X rated it really liked it

Shelves: popculture-anthropology, cookery-food-diet, review-at-last, 2020-read, 2023-reviews, 2023-100-reviews, reviewed

Review This book was an interesting survey of the grocery industry from the history of supermarkets to the latest trends in food marketing told with examples of two of the author's local supermarket chains - Heinens and Fazios although the book is more about grocery stores than supermarkets.

The discussion of convenience foods was interesting. They are 'convenient' for us but generally, outside of frozen veg and fruit, whole dinners, main dishes and desserts are not really healthy being full of s Review This book was an interesting survey of the grocery industry from the history of supermarkets to the latest trends in food marketing told with examples of two of the author's local supermarket chains - Heinens and Fazios although the book is more about grocery stores than supermarkets.

The discussion of convenience foods was interesting. They are 'convenient' for us but generally, outside of frozen veg and fruit, whole dinners, main dishes and desserts are not really healthy being full of salt, fat and/or sugar and unpronounceable chemicals. Their real convenience is for the companies that manufacture them, the impetus for which came from the grocery industry.

Pre-selling a harvest of peas to a frozen food manufacturer is much more profitable than shipping them out to even large stores, wholesale markets or even local individual greengrocers. And frozen, they taste good and are good for you. When they are added to a roast dinner with processed meat, which is at the price frozen dinners and canned food is sold at, certainly not going to be a prime cut, processed potatoes and gravy that is more chemicals and starch than jus, the nutritional value of the peas drops, but the economic value of the peas remains the same for the farmer.

We all need to be more informed of our food choices, whether it is being able to eat organic locally or buying from Wholefoods or the beautifully-lit freezer chests saying 'entrees' and 'novelty desserts'. But sometimes, like with hamburgers and candyfloss (cotton candy to Muricans) you just got to give in!

It's a good book about the American food system and the writing is good so it's enjoyabe as well as informative. 4 stars.
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Reading notes I read this book in early October. I added it to my shelves, I did the usual notes while reading and updates that passes for a 'review' with me and now it's disappeared. Must be a coincidence that I mentioned this book as a better book in my review of The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket and how I hadn't liked the author commenting on what I'd written about it which was basically the author disagreed with my review. ...more

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Aug 03, 2017 Lynne rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooks, food-cooking, micro-history, 2017

I really enjoyed the beginning of the book in which the author discusses the history of the grocery store. I enjoyed the last section about the challenge of ordering produce. However, the middle of the book was a repetitive discussion of what we should be eating.

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