Fine Dining Lovers • April 2, 2012
It is often assumed that you have to be affluent in order to care about food and good eating. Apparently, though, that this is just one of the many commonplace beliefs that doesn’t stand the simplest test of all: number-checking.
Cape Ann Beacon • March 28, 2012
Why is it so hard to eat well, journalist Tracie McMillan wondered. Good food, such as the produce America grows in abundance, is relatively expensive even though only 14 cents of each dollar spent on produce ends up back on the farm it came from.
And “food deserts,” as McMillan calls them, stretch all over America where you have to drive 10 or 15 miles to get to a supermarket, making healthy food harder to find than the ubiquitous Happy Meal.
In his review for the Seattle Times, Alan Moores does a nice job of summing up one of AWE’s primary points: McMillan’s overarching point here is the disconnect between America’s overall wealth and its inability to eat well Always nice to see that someone read most of the book, not just the promotional materials!
The Seattle Times • March 24, 2012
It’s been more than 13 years since writer Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover, making beds, cleaning houses, working in the women’s-wear department at a Walmart, and opening America’s eyes to the bleak realities of our working poor in her groundbreaking Harper’s Magazine story, “Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America,” later expanded into a book by the same title.
Sojourners • March 21, 2012
I love great food. Last night, I made fresh linguini with organic whole wheat flour and local, free-range eggs, and topped them with from-scratch meatballs made with organic beef, fresh parsley from my garden, fresh Parmesan–you get the idea. And in a few days, I’ll be celebrating a special occasion at one of the finest restaurants in the Northeast, where the produce is local and seasonal and sustainable and where the experience of eating is a little like visiting a museum of fine arts where you get to taste all the masterpieces. And yesterday, I planted the first spring vegetables in my garden. I’m a member of Slow Food USA, for cryin’ out loud.
Mlive.com • March 20, 2012
Wonder what it’s like to work third-shift at a Kalamazoo-area Walmart store?
Author and Michigan native Tracie McMillan documents the experience in Chapter 5 of her new book “The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table.“
The Washington Post • March 16, 2012
Most food writers begin their tales with fond reminiscences of the great grub they grew up with: Mom’s Sunday meatballs or the secret recipe for Grandma’s beloved Christmas cookies. Tracie McMillan takes the opposite tack. She grew up in a working-class family in Flint, Mich., eating Ortega taco dinners and salads made with iceberg lettuce and Wish-Bone ranch dressing. The lesson her grandmother taught her was that any meal that took time or money to prepare — or worse, both — was for “fancy” people. Her father called them snobs.
Associated Press • March 16, 2012
“The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table” (Scribner), by Tracie McMillan: An author who writes about going “undercover” at Walmart or a migrant farm sets up expectations that she’s about to reveal a scandal or, at the least, juicy secrets. But few of the revelations in Tracie McMillan’s new book are all that surprising.
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