The Secret Life of Groceries
The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket
Ratings22
Average rating4.2
15
The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket
Ratings22
Average rating4.2
"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. What does it take to run the American supermarket? How do products get to shelves? Who sets the price? And who suffers the consequences of increased convenience end efficiency? In this alarming exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing, immersive reporting, and compulsively readable prose, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn: The secrets of Trader Joe's success from Trader Joe himself/ Why truckers call their job "sharecropping on wheels;" What it takes for a product to earn certification labels like "organic" and "fair trade;" The struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business; The truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry. The result is a page-turning portrait of an industry in flux, filled with the passion, ingenuity, and exploitation required to make this everyday miracle continue to function. The product of five years of research and hundreds of interviews across every level of the industry, The Secret Life of Groceries delivers powerful social commentary on the inherently American quest for more and the social costs therein"--
Reviews with the most likes.
A series of narratives about parts of the supermarket development. We get a peek behind stocking, marketing, product placement, and more.
This Likely Would Have Rated Lower Had I Read The Print Rather Than Listened To The Audible. As the title of this review says, my five star rating here is because, listening to the Audible form of the book - and thus not having access to see what, if any, bibliography it offers - there is little here to objectively deduct stars from. Yes, this book is more a loose collection of essays. Yes, the author is almost as present in the book as anything he is writing about - damn near to the point of being more a memoir than any reporting on anything about the supermarket or its supply chains. Yes, there is a lot of woke, activist drivel that at some points is easily as thick as the pig shit the author slopped through at one point in the narrative. But for what it does show, and admittedly the very conversational style (including multiple F-bombs, for those that care about such things)... this book is actually fairly solid. At least in the Audible form, where I can't see if the author bothered to have any documentation other than his own personal interview and anecdotes. So give the Audible a listen, at least. It is read by the author, and it works quite well. And then maybe go find some better sourced, arguably better (ie, more objectively) written books exploring the topics covered here. Recommended.
PS: I think the biggest takeaway from this book, for me, is that I am going to try to find and try some Slawsa. Read the book to find its story. :)
Originally posted at bookanon.com.
Good information, but the author is pretty annoying. Comes across at times as preachy, or holier-than-thou, and other times spends a lot of time praising the attributes of the individual people he interviewed for this book. I get that he formed opinions of them and wanted to highlight the things he felt deserved highlighting, but after the fifth person or so being praised as being an absolute saint of a human being without really contributing to why we're reading about them in the first place, I was pretty tired of it.
Also, I don't know if it was just his delivery in the narration (narrated by the author) but every time he mentioned a highly specific grocery item (all the time) it just had a sense of arrogant to it. Like, “ah yes, consumers, they want their chocolate covered almonds and their chipotle avocado all dressed chips, how dare they”.
I can't really recommend this because the writing bothered me so much, but hey, the actual facts on the ground were pretty interesting.
