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.
Viv Mag • March 15, 2012
What if we’ve been wrong up to this point about the cause of the nation’s obesity epidemic? In spite of increased education on how to eat healthfully — less fat and sugar, more vegetables and fruit — obesity remains a public health crisis. Now food experts are beginning to turn their attention to the tougher aspects of the problem, such as how to create environments that make healthy food more attractive and accessible to consumers of all income levels.
Institute For Agriculture and Trade Policy • March 14, 2012
Our global food system hinges on secrecy. The anonymous nature of where the food in our supermarket was produced brings one layer of secrecy. But even if you can solve that puzzle, how it was produced—and more specifically under what working conditions it was produced—remains completely hidden. This is the curtain that author Tracie McMillan pulls back in her remarkable new book, The American Way of Eating.
The Buffalo News • March 11, 2012
Tracie McMillan didn’t grow up eating organic heirloom arugula. Her mom was sick and her dad worked, so it was meals from boxes or other easy food. Tuna Helper was a good night.
Knight Science Journalism at MIT • March 7, 2012
Fresh from his apology for describing Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student as a “slut” who should have sex and “post the videos online so we can all watch,” Rush Limbaugh has now gone after the writer Tracie McMillan and her book, The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Wal-Mart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields, and the Dinner Table. The book is the product of a nearly year-long investigative reporting project in which McMillan worked with, lived with, and ate with the working poor.
Time • March 7, 2012
I’ve often found myself, in this strange time we are living in, wishing I were Norwegian, and never more so than when engaging with the debate over American foodways. There are some unalterable facts about how the U.S. feeds itself today, or, as Tracie McMillan puts it in her fine new book, The American Way of Eating. One is that a lot of people are fat and unhealthy; another is that not enough people have enough nutritious food to eat; and a third is that the first two groups of people are generally to be found among the poor.
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.
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