Matt Siegel

A fascinating volume on where our food comes from and how our food choices have changed through history. There is chapter on the development of our modern breakfast cereals starting with the Kellogg brothers. Honey, where it comes from and how it may be contaminated with something as harmless as water but also other materials that are more harmful is a wakeup. Olive oil is another important food that is frequently augmented with other liquids as dangerous as machine oil but usually with other edible oils such as sunflower. Two thirds to 90% of olive oil sold in the USA is not pure olive oil.

Some of the most fun in the book is when Siegel describes what people in the Medieval period ate. As well, chapter on corn describes how this crop is in a lot of our food. A chapter on vanilla may make you appreciate why it is so expensive.… (altro)

I thought this would focus on different foods than it did. Some things I already knew, but the book quoted other works on those things more thoroughly. The book seems largely built out of others and has heaps of footnotes. "Stoned" is a nonfiction book about jewelry by Aja Raden. It also quotes other sources as well and has copious footnotes, but hers are far more chatty and interesting in physical book form. I read it once a year. Please don't read it as an ebook; it'll drive you nuts. She encourages people to read other books too and is open about her research methods, whereas this author does not. I don't doubt his research; he just approaches it differently. The author doesn't seem interested in writing exactly, but quoting other sources. It felt like a long seminar course at university with a professor who was worried about being bored. The blurb warns parts of the book are disgusting. Yeah, but it happens less frequently than I thought. This is a great example of why trigger warnings and content warnings should be advertised on blurbs and in copy regularly.

CW/TW: The bran cereal guy sexually abused female patients; rites of passage from other cultures that would make a Westerner (me) squeamish; the gross things foods are filled with in modern day and age.

The book doesn't end with a conclusion. The author increasingly quotes statistics for paragraphs at a time near the end. The structure of the book is not great. Still glad I read this. Over half the book is footnotes and acknowledgments, so this does seem like a quick read despite page count.… (altro)