The Secret Life of Groceries - Benjamin Lorr

[wolverine890]

I really enjoyed this book. I grabbed it because of a research project I have done on the food industry. Lorr's approach is very hands on. He could have been very good investigative journalist. He follows people in the industry and move topics from farms, to delivery and actual grocers. He leaves the reader with a great left hook that I found incredibly insightful. 

Quote

 

To think of it another way, ever since Eric Schlosser and Fast Food Nation came into my life, and of course there was Upton Sinclair and many other muckrakers before him, there has been a very American idea that the closer we look at our food, the more disgusting it will turn out to be. And this always seems to be the case! Every time the best food minds and investigative journalists dig into a particular part of the supply chain they find some new horror. From slave-grown tomatoes to subsidized corn. It always seems to be there, at the bottom, this disgust. But in this book I’ve come to see something else in that digging. It is no less horrible, but maybe the slightly sadder form anger takes when balanced by introspection: more of a clawing feeling of being trapped, a revulsion at our own immobility. It is this notion that at the bottom, after all that digging, the particular investigative horror we’ve uncovered is just a proxy. Something closer to a shadow cast off from all of us above peering down and doing the digging. The real object of our scorn might not be in our food safety standards, in the revolving-door regulators, in the rise of industry, or even in the abuse and commodification of men, but in ourselves as agents in this world: for knowing what we want and what we are willing to give up to get it, for understanding that this is a moral outrage we’ve been digging for all along because it verifies what we know but also don’t quite want to acknowledge about ourselves.

 

This is to say, the great lesson of my time with groceries is that we have got the food system we deserve. The adage is all wrong: it’s not that we are what we eat, it’s that we eat the way we are. Retail grocery is a reflection. What people call the supply chain is a long, interconnected network of human beings working on other humans’ behalf. It responds to our actions, not our pieties; and in its current form it demands convenience and efficiency starting from the checkout counter on down. The result is both incredible beyond words—abundance, wish fulfillment, and low price—and as cruel and demeaning as Tun-Lin voluntarily choosing to return to those boats. To me this is as hopeful as it is depressing. We are in a dialogue with this world, not at its mercy. We have a natural inclination toward what is right that is as powerful as any selfishness. But for those out there who bristle at this reflection, who want to scream the patently obvious fact that meat is murder, that labor without choice is exploitation, or whatever their own personal horror is, who want to shake the world awake to the fact that we are literally sustaining ourselves on misery, who want to reform, I very much don’t want to dissuade you so much as I want you to consider that any solution will come from outside our food system, so far outside it that thinking about food is only a distraction from the real work to be done. At best, food is an opening, like any maw, that might lead us inside. Somewhere darker, more unknowable, a place where the real work of change may finally begin.

 

 

[jks327]

Sounds like an interesting read, have always believed in voting with our wallets for a better system of food production!

[DooDiligence]

Probably doesn't belong here but I thought this might interest some.

 

Aldi says it will buy 400 Winn-Dixie, Harveys groceries across the southern U.S.

[wolverine890]

1 hour ago, DooDiligence said:

Probably doesn't belong here but I thought this might interest some.

 

Aldi says it will buy 400 Winn-Dixie, Harveys groceries across the southern U.S.

 Why not? Chapter one goes through the history of trader joe's and shares the story of Theo Albrecht's (Albrecht family owns Aldi) purchase of Joe's.

[DooDiligence]

2 hours ago, wolverine890 said:

 Why not? Chapter one goes through the history of trader joe's and shares the story of Theo Albrecht's (Albrecht family owns Aldi) purchase of Joe's.

 

Here's to hoping McLane is getting a big slice of their business.

[dwy000]

On 8/28/2023 at 6:41 PM, wolverine890 said:

I really enjoyed this book. I grabbed it because of a research project I have done on the food industry. Lorr's approach is very hands on. He could have been very good investigative journalist. He follows people in the industry and move topics from farms, to delivery and actual grocers. He leaves the reader with a great left hook that I found incredibly insightful. 

 

I enjoyed this too but it wasn't what I thought or was hoping it would be.  I wanted insight into the logistics and financial workings of supermarkets (why is milk at the back, details on placement fees, coupons, etc, etc) and it covered some of those indirectly but it was really a series of personal stories of people within the supermarket universe (a truck driver, a person trying to sell them a product, etc).  It even had the author working at Whole Foods for a while selling fish.  

 

It was interesting but not really about supermarkets per se, more the people who make them work.