Cleveland Plain Dealer • Feb. 21, 2012
Why do we do it, America? Why do we eat a cheeseburger and fries for lunch instead of bringing carrot sticks and hummus from home? Why, in the supermarket, do we walk past the produce bins to reach the frozen pizza?
We know better.
A very nice write up from @BookPage! http://ow.ly/9bqjB
The New York Times reviews #AWE.. http://ow.ly/9bmNs i swear to God, I have never met Dwight Garner in my life.
My take on the latest review: What if The Tea Party @FreedomWorks read #AWE? Brilliant satire by @Roadfood123 for @sfgate http://ow.ly/99nZI
The New York Times • Feb. 20, 2012
One of the first things to like about Tracie McMillan, the author of “The American Way of Eating,” is her forthrightness. She’s a blue-collar girl who grew up eating a lot of Tuna Helper and Ortega Taco Dinners because her mother was gravely ill for a decade, and her father, who sold lawn equipment, had little time to cook. About these box meals, she says, “I liked them.”
Nice, straightforward summary of AWE in a double-review, alongside (appropriately!) Tovar Cerulli’s The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian’s Hunt for Sustenance, a book on hunting and fishing, in Sunday’s Toronto Star: McMillan’s book isn’t simply a personal account but, in addition, a good analysis of the systemic problem of food production in the United States (the hard … Read more
The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 28, 2012
In 2009, Tracie McMillan, an accomplished young writer, spent nearly a year working undercover as an agricultural field laborer in California, as a produce handler at a Michigan Wal-Mart and as a kitchen worker at a Brooklyn branch of Applebee’s, the country’s largest “family style” restaurant chain. The result of her efforts is “The American Way of Eating.” The best thing about this engagingly written tract is its excellent and sometimes moving first-person narrative of the author’s experiences sharing, albeit briefly and under false colors, the daily grind of workers at the bottom of the Great American Food Chain.
The San Francisco Chronicle • Feb. 19, 2012
The American way of eating is terrible. So says Tracie McMillan, who spent a year pretending to be a poor person eking out a living at menial levels of the nation’s food system, including farm fields, Walmart groceries and an Applebee’s kitchen. A New York writer and senior fellow at Brandeis University accustomed to top-tier provisions, she descends the class ladder a few rungs (her expression) to venture undercover and figure out why the hoi polloi eat so badly.
Los Angeles Times • Feb. 19, 2012
Readers curious about food have been able to deepen their knowledge exponentially over the last decade. They know how bad fast food is (thanks to Eric Schlosser), understand the complexities of food production (thanks to Michael Pollan), and know how hard it is to work in a kitchen (thanks to Bill Bryson). There are shelves upon shelves of books about how, why and what we eat by restaurateurs, farmers, chefs and even moonlighting novelists.
Toronto Star • Feb. 18, 2012
Formerly known for her fatty-sweet recipes, TV cooking show host Paula Deen came out as a closet diabetic last month and announced she was the new spokesperson for a diabetes drug company.
Chef, author (Kitchen Confidential) and TV personality Anthony Bourdain responded with this twitter quip: “thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”
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