Pittsburgh Post-Gazette • March 4, 2012
From a certain perspective, Americans have never been so obsessed with food. Turn on the TV or pick up a magazine and you can feast on recipes, restaurant reviews, profiles of the latest celebrity chef and hottest new ingredient. One could easily imagine that it’s never been easier or more fun to eat well in our nation.
Three reviews went up this weekend, and the two I can access are generous almost to a fault. First up: China Millman at the Pittsburg Post-Gazette apparently felt that Dwight Garner didn’t go far enough. I’m literally speechless after reading her generous review: The American Way of Eating’: Food, our inglorious food Tracie McMillan details, … Read more
It’s short, but this review from Tasting Table — a food-world newsfeed based in NYC — is decidedly sweet: A book that gives new meaning to food journalism…along comes Tracie McMillan, author of The American Way of Eating ($25; click here to buy)….Her enlightening accounts are mellifluously interwoven with carefully researched data. The result is … Read more
Portland Oregonian • March 3, 2012
Tracie McMillan grew up on Tuna Helper and Ortega Taco Dinners and was raised to believe that farm-fresh, home-cooked food was for “fancy” people. But a decade ago, while covering the poverty beat for a small New York City magazine, she jettisoned these class assumptions about food. Writing about a program that teaches low-income youth to cook healthy food, she met 18-year-old Vanessa, who loved vegetables and wished she had a farmers market in her neighborhood but was resigned to eating what’s cheap and accessible: Burger King Whoppers and processed food from the supermarket.
Jezebel • March 3, 2012
Applebee’s may be great place to wash down your cheese-infused dinner with an Oreo milkshake (they still have those, yes?), but, according to an undercover reporter who spent time on the prep line at one of the popular restaurant chains, its male-dominated kitchens simmer with sexual aggression.
The Week Magazine blog • March 2, 2012 “It tells of Walmart employees who spend hours peeling off layers of moldy lettuce before restocking it on the shelves, illegal immigrants with no hope of workers’ compensation and Applebee’s chefs who don’t actually cook anything, since most food is pre-made and then shipped to the restaurant. … Read more
Colorlines • March 2, 2012
In America, it’s not just eating well that’s solely for the rich. Increasingly, eating healthfully is something only the well-off can do as well.
Tasting Table • March 2, 2012
Generally, going undercover is reserved for those in the fields of law enforcement or espionage. Such an act is a far cry from the admittedly comfortable environs of food journalism.
Then along comes Tracie McMillan, author of The American Way of Eating. Her ambitious book chronicles the nine months she spent investigating the American food system from the inside: first as a laborer in California’s farm fields, then as a produce clerk at Walmart and finally in the kitchen at Applebee’s.
The Majority Report with Sam Seder • March 1, 2013
Sam on Andrew Breitbarts death. Also, Tracie McMillan talks experiencing our food system from fields to Walmart and Applebees. And Occupy Wall Street takes issue with monied donors, Jeff Smith discusses.
Civil Eats • March 1, 2012
Tracie McMillan’s The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table takes us on a vivid and poignant tour of a place we don’t really want to go: the mostly hidden, sometimes horrible world of the workers who form the backbone of our cheap, industrialized food chain.
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