What if you cant afford nine-dollar tomatoes? That was the question award-winning journalist Tracie McMillan couldn't escape as she watched the debate about Americas meals unfold, one that urges us to pay foods true cost — which is to say, pay more. So in 2009 McMillan embarked on a groundbreaking undercover journey to see what it takes to eat well in America. For nearly a year, she worked, ate, and lived alongside the working poor to examine how Americans eat when price matters.

From the fields of California, a Walmart produce aisle outside of Detroit, and the kitchen of a New York City Applebees, McMillan takes us into the heart of Americas meals. With startling intimacy she portrays the lives and food of Mexican garlic crews, Midwestern produce managers, and Caribbean line cooks, while also chronicling her own attempts to live and eat on meager wages. Along the way, she asked the questions still facing America a decade after the declaration of an obesity epidemic: Why do we eat the way we do? And how can we change it? To find out, McMillan goes beyond the food on her plate to examine the national priorities that put it there. With her absorbing blend of riveting narrative and formidable investigative reporting, McMillan takes us from dusty fields to clanging restaurant kitchens, linking her work to the quality of our meals — and always placing her observations in the context of Americas approach not just to farms and kitchens but to wages and work.

The surprising answers that McMillan found on her journey have profound implications for our food and agriculture, and also for how we see ourselves as a nation. Through stunning reportage, Tracie McMillan makes the simple case that — city or country, rich or poor — everyone wants good food. Fearlessly reported and beautifully written, The American Way of Eating goes beyond statistics and culture wars to deliver a book that is fiercely intelligent and compulsively readable. Talking about dinner will never be the same again.

Synopsis

In the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreichs Nickel and Dimed, an ambitious and accessible work of undercover journalism that fully investigates our food system to explain what keeps Americans from eating welland what we can do about it. Getting Americans to eat well is one of todays hottest social issues; its at the forefront of Michelle Obamas agenda and widely covered in the mediafrom childhood obesity to store brands trying to make their food healthier. Yet most Americans still eat poorly, and award-winning journalist Tracie McMillan wanted to know why. So, in 2009 McMillan went to work undercover in our nations food system alongside Americas working poor, living and eating off her wages, to examine how we eat. McMillan worked on industrial farms in California, in a Walmart produce section outside Detroit, and at an Applebees kitchen in New York City. Her vivid narrative brings readers along to grueling work places, introduces them to her coworkers, and takes them home to her kitchen, to see what kind of food she (and her coworkers) can afford to buy and prepare. With striking precision, McMillan also weaves in the story of how we got here, digging deep into labor, economics, politics, and social science to reveal new and surprising truths about how Americas food is grown, sold, and preparedand what it would take to change the system. Fascinating and timely, this groundbreaking work examines why eating well in Americadespite the expansion of farmers markets and eat local movementsis limited to the privileged minority.

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Details

Bookseller: The Vespiary Book Restoration & Bindery (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #: SQ9740765
Title: The American Way of Eating
Author: Tracie McMillan
Book Condition: Used - Good
Jacket Condition: Good
Quantity Available: 1
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1439171955
ISBN 13: 9781439171950
Publisher: Scribner
Place of Publication: U.s.a.
Date Published: 2012-02-21
Keywords: food, agriculture, united states, food production
Bookseller catalogs: Food/Cooking;

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