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.