Bloomsbury £12.99 pp450
What do you eat when everything is available to you, how do you make your choices and at what cost to yourself and the planet? These are the questions at the heart of this investigation into the American food chain. Pollan embarks on a philosophical and gustatory road-trip across the spectrum of modern eating, starting with the bloated cornfields of the Midwest and the processing plants and fast food joints they supply. As he travels from organic farms to idyllic sustainability experiments and, finally, to hunter-gathering adventures in northern California, he builds a compelling picture of the alternatives to industrial food production and draws ever closer to a definition of the perfect meal. This articulate and engrossing book is as beautifully written as it is insightful.
BAD FOOD BRITAIN
by Joanna Blythman
Fourth Estate £7.99 pp318
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With celebrity chefs dominating the airwaves, you’d think Britain was experiencing a golden culinary age. But is it? In this thought-provoking audit of British food culture and the industry behind it, Blythman presents a portrait of a nation where bad food has become the norm. She argues that we have lost touch with what we eat and why we eat it. Far from being champions of a brave new world of gastronomy, we consume more junk food than the rest of Europe put together. Families graze on ready meals in front of the television. Monolithic supermarkets feed our fixation with cheapness at the expense of both quality and our waistlines. Ludicrous health-and-safety rules favour processed food giants over small artisan producers. This is a book that anyone who cares about what they and the country eat should read, digest and act upon.
THE BIG OYSTER: New York in the World of Molluscular History
by Mark Kurlansky
Cape £17.99 pp307
When the first Europeans arrived in what would one day be New York, the local oyster population was so large that it could filter all the water in the harbour in just a few days. Today, the oyster beds are gone, dealt a fatal blow by the excesses of the industrial age. Kurlansky’s fascinating social and gastronomic history charts the city’s growth and changing fortunes through its enduring love affair with bivalves. From the prehistoric shell middens of Manhattan, via the oyster craze of the late 19th century, when New York’s 2.5m inhabitants ate their way through 1m oysters a day, to the final destruction of the Hudson’s once bounteous eco-system, this is an absorbing book filled with evocative detail and culinary colour.