Stuff
Product Details
Scribner, February 2012
Hardcover, 336 pages
ISBN-10: 1439171955
ISBN-13: 9781439171950
Description
What if you can’t afford nine-dollar tomatoes? That was the question award-winning journalist Tracie McMillan couldn’t escape as she watched the debate about America’s meals unfold, one that urges us to pay food’s true cost—which is to say, pay more. So in 2009 McMillan embarked on a groundbreaking undercover journey to see what it takes to eat well in America. For nearly a year, she worked, ate, and lived alongside the working poor to examine how Americans eat when price matters. From the fields of California, a Walmart produce aisle outside of Detroit, and the kitchen of a New York City Applebee’s, McMillan takes us into the heart of America’s meals. With startling intimacy she portrays the lives and food of Mexican garlic crews, Midwestern produce managers, and Caribbean line cooks, while also chronicling her own attempts to live and eat on meager wages. Along the way, she asked the questions still facing America a decade after the declaration of an obesity epidemic: Why do we eat the way we do? And how can we change it? To find out, McMillan goes beyond the food on her plate to examine the national prio-rities that put it there. With her absorbing blend of riveting narrative and formidable investigative reporting, McMillan takes us from dusty fields to clanging restaurant kitchens, linking her work to the quality of our meals—and always placing her observations in the context of America’s approach not just to farms and kitchens but to wages and work. The surprising answers that McMillan found on her journey have profound implications for our food and agriculture, and also for how we see ourselves as a nation. Through stunning reportage, Tracie McMillan makes the simple case that—city or country, rich or poor—everyone wants good food. Fearlessly reported and beautifully written, The American Way of Eating goes beyond statistics and culture wars to deliver a book that is fiercely intelligent and compulsively readable. Talking about dinner will never be the same again.
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“The book Ms. McMillan’s mostresembles is Barbara Ehrenreich’s best seller Nickel and Dimed. Like Ms.Ehrenreich, Ms. McMillan goes undercover amid this country’s working poor….This is a voice the food world needs.”
-- New York Times
"With much courage and compassion, McMillan explores the lives of those at the bottom of our food system. Here is a glimpse of the people who feed us--and the terrible price they pay. If we want to change the system, this is where we must begin."
-- Eric Schlosser
“Tracie McMillan is gutsy, scrappy, and hard-working--you'd have to be to write this book. The American Way of Eating takes us local in a new way, exploring who works to get food from the field to the plates in front of us, what they are paid, and how it feels. It's sometimes grim but McMillan doesn't flinch; I especially appreciated her openness in telling us what she spent in order to get by (or not). A welcome addition to the urgent, growing body of journalism on food.”
-- Ted Conover, author of Newjack and Coyotes
“These tales lay bare the sinews, the minds, and the relationships that our food system exploits and discards. In a work of deep compassion and integrity, Tracie McMillan offers us an eye-opening report on the human cost of America’s cheap food.”
-- Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved and The Value of Nothing
“To uncover the truth behind how our modern food system works, Tracie M. McMillan took jobs in a supermarket produce section, a chain restaurant kitchen, and the fields alongside migrant laborers. If you eat, you owe it to yourself to read this masterful book.”
-- Barry Estabook, author of Tomatoland
"McMillan provides an eye-opening account of the route much of American food takes from the field to the restaurant table."
-- Kirkus
“Three cheers for Tracie McMillan; this book is a revelation! It is the sort of engaging first person adventure story that reads like a good novel, all the while supplying the facts and figures that make the larger picture clear. I'm grateful to her in equal parts for the stamina and courage to undertake this undercover journey, the narrative skill that makes the account so digestible, and the commitment to social justice for both workers and consumers that infuses the whole project.”
-- Janet Poppendieck, author of Free for All and Sweet Charity
"This is an amazing book. Tracie McMillan willtake any reader into new territory. The implacable fierceness offarmwork, the slovenliness behind the produce section at Walmart--prepare to besubmerged in harsh little worlds and shocked. But McMillan keeps hercool, always presenting the context and the content of her struggles withenough analytic detachment to rough out a complete, and convincing, vision offood as a social good. Read her book and your dinner will never look thesame."
-- William Finnegan, author of Cold New World
“Tracie McMillan has written a remarkable book for right now--a book that smartly tells us what is wrong with what we eat and how we might improve it. But what is even more remarkable about the book is how deeply engaging it is. With her intimate and confident portraits of American food workers, she crafts a touching, emotional narrative that will stay with you long after you have finished the last page.”
-- James Oseland, author of Cradle of Flavor
“This is a wonderful introduction to the triumph and tragedy of the American food industry. Mixing compassionate participant observation with in depth, up-to-the-minute background research, Tracie McMillan takes us for an eye-opening, heart-rending tour of the corporate food chain. Along the way we meet unforgettable people who, at great personal cost, labor hard so that we can eat cheaply and easily. Having seen what it takes to move our meals from farm to table, the reader will emerge shaken, enlightened, and forever thankful.”
-- Warren Belasco, author of Appetite for Change and Meals to Come
“This book is vital. [McMillan] has the writing skills to bear witness, the research background to provide context, and the courage to take on the challenging task.”
-- Los Angeles Times
“A compelling and cogent argument that eating healthily ought to be easier.”
-- Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Clear and essential.”
-- The Boston Globe
Irish Times, February 27, 2012
...them precious little option to do otherwise, writes DWIGHT GARNER 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 ...
MySanAntonio, February 26, 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 ...
AlterNet.org, February 25, 2012
...Tracie McMillan talks about her new book and how she went undercover as a farmhand and worker at Walmart and Applebee's. LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign ...
Forbes.com, February 23, 2012
...than McClelland’s elevensomething an hour, given the federal minimum wage of $7.25. A new book by Tracie McMillan, The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table, describes the exhaustion ...
Salon, February 22, 2012
...You may not be truly shocked by any single statistic in Tracie McMillan?s new book, ?The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee?s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table? ? but by the time you finish reading, you?ll definitely ...
CBS New York, February 21, 2012
...Bookstore Cafe 126 Crosby St. New York , NY 212-334-3324 www.housingworks.org/events Save to foursquare Author and journalist Tracie McMillan celebrates the release of her latest book called The American Way of Eating: Undercover ...
Cleveland Live, February 21, 2012
...the supermarket, do we walk past the produce bins to reach the frozen pizza? We know better. Journalist Tracie McMillan decided to find out why Americans, particularly the poor and working class, eat so much of the bad stuff. She went ...
Examiner.com, February 20, 2012
...52 founder Amanda Hasser and the Reverend Devanie Jackson of the Bed Stuy Farm come together to launch Tracie McMillan's; The American Way of Eating and to discuss loning food, but not foodies. February 1-29, 2012: Get More NYC; a production ...
Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2012
...Tracie McMillan takes us to agricultural fields, Wal-Mart and Applebee's, where she works short stints and tries to eat healthfully on meager pay. The American Way of Eating Undercover at ...
Toronto Star Online, February 18, 2012
...indulgences, on the other hand, would be affordable to most, and certainly those who are the subject of Tracie McMillan’s The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table. America, ...
Slate Magazine, February 15, 2012
...do the hardest job at Applebee's. Spike Mafford This is the first of three articles adapted from Tracie McMillan’s new book, : Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table. Nearly three years ago, Tracie McMillan ...
