Tag: food

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#BookReview: Cleanup On Aisle Five by Ann Larson

C.S. Lewis Warned Us About This. C.S. Lewis wrote in 1949 that “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” Here, we have an entire book of exactly that kind of elitist, disdainful tyranny.

Larson openly admits to being a thief in several instances within this text. Her own actions as documented within this text show her to be a hypocrite. She actively denies objective reality in claiming that FDR’s support of unionism was a good thing, when it actually and objectively extended the Great Depression nearly twice as long as it would have gone without FDR’s price-fixing policies, including his support of unions.

And yet she is *absolutely sure* she knows *exactly* what would help the very people she had to lower herself to be around because she had no other choice and had to find any possible work available to her. Truly, this is the worst part of this entire narrative, is Larson’s elitist disdain for everything and everyone around her that is positively *dripping* from these pages. She alone knows what will save these people, and she alone will force them to accept her help whether they want her involvement or not.

I’ve worked in a supermarket myself – apparently longer than Larson did, as I worked there for 2? 3? yrs at the border of HS and college, though I do admit that this was 20 yrs before Larson did and in fact was at the time one of the supermarkets best known for its customer service – a culture of customer service that was deeply ingrained in my psyche and has served me well in all professional ventures both paid and not ever since. I was a bagger at Publix back when Publix was still expanding through North Ga – indeed, my own mom had worked at another Publix store closer to Atlanta before helping open the store in my hometown, which I then worked for (under her same store manager even) a couple of years later. Interestingly, while Larson covers a bit of rival Piggly Wiggly’s history, she never once mentions Publix – despite Publix actually originating in part from Piggly Wiggly. (Publix’s founder, George Jenkins, had rapidly risen through the ranks at Piggly Wiggly before starting out on his own as the Depression was still worsening, and in fact a few of his former colleagues at Piggly Wiggly were among his very first investors.) Now, don’t get me wrong -Publix of the 2020s is doing several things “Mr. George” is very likely rolling in his grave enough to be a pretty decent fan in this Florida heat, and even then, shortly after his death, was already likely doing some things he didn’t exactly like. But the culture of absolute commitment to the highest customer service was still a thing then, and in fact prevented at least some of the issues that Larson writes about in this book. (Cart collection in particular. Was never a problem back then, because baggers were required to walk every cart out with the customer and bring it back – and were prevented upon pain of summary termination from accepting any tip for doing so. Which actually led to a fun story of my own actions in this era, where I literally chased down a car. Granted, it was in the parking lot – but it *was* moving, and I *was* able to run it down before it got to the road. They/ I had forgotten one of their bags at the cash register, and I was able to get it to them. Nearly 30 years later, I couldn’t move half as fast if I wanted to. 😉 )

If your politics align more closely with Larson’s – who claims to be one of the activists who was leading the charge for Federal student loan “forgiveness” in shifting the burden of repaying loans students voluntarily took out to every American taxpayer and thereby both raising prices for everyone and lowering their relative income via inflation – you will probably enjoy this book a lot more than I did. It still is far from a Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr, which was a genuinely insightful look at grocery stores and how their modern incarnations came to be, but this text may in fact be something you enjoy, and it will absolutely confirm your own biases. For those more along my own lines – I literally have a tattoo of one of the subheadings within Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand tattooed on one of the wrists I’m using to type this review – I think I’ve made it clear here that this is a book you will more likely want to defenestrate… and really, there’s nothing actually here worth reading beyond seeing some experiences as a grocery store worker during the insanity of the global societal collapse over COVID.

And that is actually the final star deduction here – the intense (and not mentioned in the description) look at COVID. Even now these 5+ yrs later, it is a subject I do not care to read about. Ever. I’ve had a standing one star deduction for books that mention it at all ever since, and while I’ve relaxed it for passing mentions, this book uses it quite heavily and therefore still gets the deduction.

So, just to be explicit within my own rating framework, let’s make sure we detail each star deduction, shall we:

-1 star for elitism. I cannot stress enough how very *dripping* this text is with “I’m better than everyone around me, why don’t they know this?”
-1 star for open hypocrisy – even while praising unions and actively proclaiming that this store needed one, Larson also actively shows where a union would have done (as they always do in this modern era) exactly jack and shit to actually help these workers in this store.
-1 star for openly admitting to actively stealing from her own employer. I mean, kudos for the balls to openly admit something that is at least possibly still within any relevant statute of limitations. I’m not a lawyer at all, but I sincerely hope you had one for your jurisdiction read every word presented here. Even if legally “cleared” though, this is still a moral failing that should be resoundingly condemned.
-1 star for heavy and undisclosed discussion of COVID. This one may be the most ticky-tacky star deduction of the lot, but hell, I’m fairly certain I’ll have more people agreeing with me on this deduction than any other.

Not recommended.

This review of Cleanup On Aisle Five by Ann Larson was originally written on June 4, 2026.

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#BookReview: Frostbite by Nicola Twilley

Utterly Fascinating Parallels Between History Of Cold Food Tech And AI. This is the book I was reading on my walks in May 2026, and it was truly utterly fascinating to see the parallels between the history of cold food storage and transportation technology – a history of basically the past 150 yrs in particular, though Twilley does indeed also cover how food was cooled and stored before that period as well – and that of the current history-in-the-making of AI technology. One thing that stood out in particular was just how much more power is used for cold food storage and transportation than AI uses – a fact that actually checks out upon an independent deep dive. Another was the rapidity of societal change from “this new tech is harmful” to “this new tech is essential” – Twilley speaking directly of refrigeration of food, yet seemingly *also* speaking to the near future history of AI.

But the history and its parallels aren’t the only details that were fascinating to learn. Twilley covers seemingly everything about the topic, including how foods are kept fresh in grocery stores – and bleeding edge research to extend this in a variety of ways for a variety of foods – but also how the entire concept of cold food storage and transportation is being developed in rising areas such as China and Africa, and the challenges of bringing both regions to the levels that Americans and Western Europeans have now taken for granted for generations.

Overall a truly astounding text full of information that will illuminate several areas of your life that you hadn’t previously considered – likely even if you work in HVAC or (as in my case) have family and friends that do. One that has direct bearing on so many conversations in the zeitgeist of late, including not just AI but also GMO foods, power generation tech, and even cooling technology more generally. Indeed, in questioning whether cooling is an actual net positive for humanity (it is, but Twilley points out some areas where it is genuinely changing us and explores ways these changes may be mitigated), Twilley actually actively adds to even the very conversations she is covering within this text.

Absolutely one book that so very many should read, particularly those that pontificate about certain issues without having any clue about how very small those ant hills are in relation to the hills and indeed mountains of food chilled and refrigerated and the technology – and its power and resource consumption – that enables said mountains to exist at all.

Oh, and one note: As I read the Audible form of this book and this was not an Advance Review Copy, I do not have access to depth of bibliography information. This text would absolutely have the Sagan Standard applied though, so I do hope that the text forms of this book have at *least* 20% bibliography – I just don’t have access to that information as I write this review, and because of the format I consumed the book in, it did not bear on my actual experience with the text.

Very much recommended.

This review of Frostbite by Nicola Twilley was originally written on June 1, 2026.

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#BookReview: Feed The People by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg

Food – Like Reading – Is Not Political, Despite Authors’ Claims. I came into this book expecting a more science/ tech look at why industrial food is good (it is, and the authors are correct on this) and how it can be made better… and instead got a book focused almost entirely on the politics of the food industry and why the authors think that the small food/ farm to table crowd ala Michael Pollan and others is wrong. While I tend to agree with the authors in outcome, their reasoning here was extremely elitist and pro-totalitarian-government-intervention, with nearly every recommendation they make ultimately coming down to “government should dictate either specific actions or at worst the range of choices that businesses and consumers will have available to them”.

Given that one of the authors works in NYC and the other in Europe, perhaps this is understandable cultural bias, and perhaps you, the reader of my review, will agree with their reasonings as well as their outcomes. But for myself, a former Libertarian Party official who tends to agree more with the writings of Ayn Rand and Lysander Spooner… yeah, there wasn’t much here I could actually endorse myself. 😉

Ultimately, it isn’t the specific direction they chose but the sheer fact that they considered these recommendations the only possible policies and did not even allow for the possibility of other possibilities that lost a star. I love finding texts that come from different perspectives, but I expect *any* nonfiction book to at least mention other potential views and why they are more easily dismissed in the views of the author(s), and this simply wasn’t done here – making the overall text have at minimum an appearance of elitism. Again, your mileage will absolutely vary there, and I know people personally who will five star this book as among the most important food books you will ever read and people who will wish they could give this same book zero stars as utter trash that should never be read by anyone *for exactly the same reasonings* that I’m ultimately winding up in the middle of the road there.

Oh yeah, kind of gave away that there was another star deduction coming there, right? This is one long time readers of my reviews will be quite familiar with in my reviews of nonfiction books – the bibliography simply wasn’t long enough, clocking in at just 10% of the overall text here. The applicability of the Sagan Standard (“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”) is perhaps debatable given the ultimate discussions of this book, but even without applying Sagan, I’ve maintained for years that in my vast reading of even Advance Review Copy nonfiction books over the years, a bare minimum – by my later expanded standards – of roughly 15% documentation is needed to get this star, and as noted, that is actually expanded , as for many years I required a bare minimum of 20%. So yeah, 10% simply isn’t going to cut it there.

Still, for all this, read this book. Seriously. You may want to defenestrate it because it openly embraces unions and calls for more of them. You may want to defenestrate it because it says openly and honestly that if we are going to provide meat for billions of people, industrialized animal farming is the only realistic way that is going to happen. But you should read it anyway, no matter your own political persuasions, because ultimately this *is* a pretty realistic book looking at exactly how we can feed the masses going forward, even if it is an extremely pro-government-mandate and anti-individual liberty view.

Oh, and I repeat the title, since the authors were so adamant in the opposing view: Food is **NOT** political.

Recommended.

This review of Feed The People by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg was originally written on January 29, 2026.

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#BookReview: Grocery by Michael Ruhlman

Memoir That Happens To Contain History. This book is less a history of the grocery store and absolutely less about the even then-current (nearly a decade ago as I write this review) grocery store practices and more about this one particular food writer’s experience in… Cleveland, of all places, home of Michael Symon, MTV and WWE’s Mike ‘The Miz’ Mizannin, and apparently this Michael… and his love of grocery stores. In particular, a local brand that while has expanded to Chicago, apparently hasn’t spread too far outside of the general Ohio region. And I get it, grocery stores in America are *highly* regional. Outside of supermarket chains like Walmart, Target, and Costco, there are few if any national grocery store chains here in the US – and Ruhlman certainly doesn’t go into any of the few (such as Kroger) that exist, instead harping incessantly about the aforementioned supermarkets and their impact on the industry.

Read as more memoir and personal shopping/ cooking / eating philosophical text, this is a clear love story for the grocery store and the author’s dad, which is quite awesome – to use Mizannin’s word – to read. That aspect worked quite well, for what it was.

But the bibliography alone – a bare 11% of the text – shows just how little actual details of grocery store operations you’re going to get, and a very large chunk of what we do get comes from the author’s direct interviews with – and being taken to trade shows by – executives from the local grocery store chain that Ruhlman’s dad took him to all those years prior to the writing of this book. Which are insightful, so far as they go, but also pale in comparison to the more comprehensive look at the topic through multiple eyes that we see in say The Secret Life Of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr, which is absolutely recommended more than this particular text if you’re looking for a more comprehensive examination of the grocery store and its practices. It is this dearth of bibliography that is the reason for the star deduction here.

Still, organized as it is around the various sections of the grocery store, this book works well for what it actually is and how the author and editors chose to organize the information it does present, so I’m comfortable with the single star deduction overall.

Recommended.

This review of Grocery by Michael Ruhlman was originally written on March 1, 2025.

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#BookReview: The Story Of Sushi by Trevor Corson

Interesting Combination Of Case Study And Academic Disciplines. This was an interesting approach to the topic of sushi where rather than just look to how sushi is prepared at the time of the writing of this book (18 yrs ago as I write this review) or just the science and history of the various elements of sushi, Corson instead used the case study of a particular group of students learning how to make sushi at a particular school at a particular point to then springboard from there into the history and the science. He does both quite artfully, though the contemporary scenes he describes feel a touch dated nearly twenty years later, as Corson describes sushi in both Japan and America as on the cusp of either greatness or collapse here. While I can’t speak to how it plays today in Japan – I’ve barely crossed the Missisippi River in the US more than a handful of times, and I’ve never so much as seen the Pacific Ocean absent some picture or screen – in America, even in the Deep South I’ve called home nearly every day of my 40+ years on Earth, sushi has become quite common. Perhaps not prepared exactly the way Corson describes here and perhaps with a distinct lack of the traditions behind it that Corson so eloquently shows, but the food itself has exploded to be seemingly everywhere. Within just a mile or two of my home in Jacksonville, FL, I can name at least a half dozen different spots to get some form of it, from prepared overnight grocery store level sushi to actual sushi bars to even an all-you-can-eat sushi/ Asian fusion food place. And yet, the book, given its time and place, truly tells its story as it is known within that time and place quite well. While I can’t know how documented this was due to having listened to its Audible form, and *perhaps* a text based reading of the same material would have led to a star deduction for lack of bibliography… again, the way I consumed this tale I simply cannot know this, and the benefit of the doubt from not knowing goes to the book keeping the extra star. Overall a fascinating and informative book, one that compels the reader to keep reading and find out more both about the people being detailed and the food and culture they are working with. Very much recommended.

This review of The Story Of Sushi by Trevor Corson was originally written on May 16, 2023.

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#BookReview: Lost At Sea by Patricia Sands

Solid Women’s Fiction, Too Reliant On COVID, Unnecessary Element In Epilogue. This is the penultimate entry in the Sail Away “series” where several authors have come together to craft their own unique stories all centered around cruising, with each taking a different bent to it. The cruise Sands uses here is more of a luxury yacht / WindStar type ship sailing the Mediterranean, and the cruising elements here are absolutely breathtaking – particularly for anyone who is even remotely familiar (even from other pop culture sources/ YouTube) with the waters and coasts of the region, from Spain to France to Italy.

Something like a solid 70% of this tale is more women’s fiction based, with a woman trying to rediscover her passion after years of COVID burnout, and through this section, it absolutely works as a women’s fiction tale. The star deduction is because it *is* so heavily focused on COVID and related topics, and any such talk for me is an automatic star deduction because I DO NOT WANT TO READ ABOUT COVID. (This noted, it *is* in the description that this will be discussed to some extent or another, but in my defense here… I pre-ordered this entire series months before publication, just on the strength of the authors and my love of cruising generally.)

The romance here, such as it is, feels a bit tacked on and rushed, even in a shorter sub-200 page novel/ longer novella. It works within the story being told to that point, just don’t expect the entire tale here to be the romance. 🙂 Note that no other element of this tale feels so rushed as this particular element.

And the epilogue. It works. It is what one would expect from a women’s fiction/ romance. But why oh why does seemingly every romance author out there (not *all* of them, but *many*) feel the need to tack in a baby/ pregnancy in these epilogues? Completely unnecessary, and leaves a bitter aftertaste to the tale for those who are childfree (such as myself) or childless (others I know). Yes, there is a difference between the two – childfree largely are happy not having children, childless want them and don’t have them. (A touch of a simplification, but one that works for purposes of *brief* explanation.) Something to look at for authors who may not be aware that these particular groups exist – and thus the inclusion of the pregnancy here in the epilogue wasn’t star-deduction worthy so much as discussion-within-the-review worthy.

Still, overall this book really was quite good, and a solid entry into a fun series. Very much recommended.

This review of Lost At Sea by Patricia Sands was originally written on February 24, 2023.

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#BookReview: Dinner On Mars by Lenore Newman and Evan DG Fraser

An Army Fights On Its Stomach. This was a fascinating look at what it would actually take to have a survivable human colony on Mars (or really on any other planetary body not Earth), starting from the same place Generals have known for Millenia: Ok, we got our people there. How do they stay there? First, they need food. From there, the discussion – and the book *is* written as an accessible third person discussion between its coauthors and the reader – centers on how to actually grow food on Mars for a population larger than one. (Sorry Mark Whatney and Andy Weir, but while your science may work for one person in a survival situation just trying to get off planet, it won’t work for a livable colony trying to ensure it doesn’t become the Mars version of Jamestown.) The science and bleeding edge/ near /future tech that Newman and Fraser discuss is utterly mind-boggling, but smaller scale experiments even in such places as The Land Pavilion in EPOCT at Walt Disney World (a personal favorite ride in the entire compound, specifically for the science it displays in action) show the promise of some of these exact techs. Overall a much more generally approachable discussion than other similar books from active literal rocket scientists (including Buzz Aldrin’s Mission to Mars, where he discusses his proposal for moving people and materiel between planets), this one really only has two flaws: First, it discusses COVID quite a bit, as it forced the interactions of the coauthors and their research along certain paths and even opened the general idea to begin with. I am on a one-man crusade against any book that discusses COVID for any reason, and an automatic one-star deduction is really my only tool there. The second star deduction is for the dearth of any bibliography. Yes, there were footnotes frequently, but even these seemingly barely amounted to 10% of the text – which is half to one third of a more typical bibliography in my experience, even with my extensive experience working with advance reader copies. Still, overall this is an utterly fascinating discussion and something that anyone who is serious about expanding humanity’s population beyond low Earth orbit seriously needs to consider. Very much recommended.

This review of Dinner On Mars by Lenore Newman and Evan DG Fraser was originally written on July 2, 2022.

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#BookReview: Oceans Of Grain by Scott Reynolds Nelson

Remarkable History Of Wheat As Agent Of Change. This is one that I could make a case for either 4 or 5 stars for, and because of the doubt I ultimately sided with 5. The reason here is that while there is indeed considerable time spent on how American wheat of the Civil War/ Reconstruction era (and later) destabilized Europe and eventually led to the late 19th/ 20th/ 21st century histories we know and are actively living, there is also quite a bit establishing the history of wheat being a similar disruptor throughout all of recorded human history. Thus, while the description of the book paints it mostly as a tale of the past 150 ish years, it is actually a tale of the entirety of human existence and instead of the lasting points being about the more recent history, the lasting points (at least for this reader) are more about the overall history. Which was the crux of my internal debate. In other words, no matter the focus or points retained, this is a truly remarkable history of a particular commodity that gives a more complete understanding of major world events, particularly over the last 150 ish years. Very much recommended.

This review of Oceans Of Grain by Scott Reynolds Nelson was originally written on February 20, 2022.

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#BookReview: Metabolical by Robert Lustig

Interesting Concept. Remarkable Honesty. Questionable Science. First, I gotta mention that the author intentionally left out the Bibliography, claiming it would run to 70 pages and add $5 to the cost of the book, so he instead put it on the website of the book. Which is an interesting idea, but part of his reasoning was also that this would allow users to click the links and see the sources directly… which eReader users can already do in an appropriately linked (re: fully publication-ready) bibliography. But he discusses this in the very introduction of the book, which sets the tone for how frankly he expresses his views throughout. Still, to this reader this was an attempt to obfuscate the sources at best, and was thus an automatic star reduction.

The other lost star comes from the at times questionable science. Rather than actually discussing various claims made by those with competing ideas, he simply claims massive conspiracies from Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Government, and whoever else he can try to conveniently scapegoat. And then he completely ignores the economic and social sciences in his recommendations for measures that would make Josef Stalin blanch at just how extreme this author wants to dictate to the masses.

Still, the ideas – while ultimately not truly novel and ultimately self serving as he *just happens* to run a nonprofit advocating these very positions – are interesting and explained in quite a bit of detail, from the chemical and cellular all the way up to the global. Making this a worthy text to read and consider… just don’t buy the farm based on just this one book, and make sure you seek out competing narratives to fill in the author’s inconsistencies. Recommended.

This review of Metabolical by Robert Lustig was originally written on June 20, 2021.

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#BookReview: Planet Palm by Jocelyn C Zuckerman

Eye Opening, Yet Problematic Itself. This is a well documented work – roughly 30% of the text was bibliography, even if much of it wasn’t actually referenced in the text of the advance reader copy I read. (Perhaps that will be corrected before actual publication, so if you’re reading a fully published version circa June 2021 or later, please comment and let me know. :D) It does a tremendous job of showing the development of palm oil from regional subsistence level agriculture to today’s modern arguably Big Palm level industry, and how it spread from regional staple to in seemingly every home in the “developed” world, at minimum. It is here that the book is truly eye opening, and truly shows some areas that perhaps still need some work.

HOWEVER, the book also often lauds communists and eco-terrorists, among other less than savory characters, for the “efforts” to “combat” this scourge – and this is something that is both pervasive throughout the text and a bit heavy handed, particularly when praising a team of Greenpeace pirates who tried to illegally board a cargo ship a few years ago.

Still, even with the aforementioned pervasive praise of people who arguably truly shouldn’t be, the fact that the text does such a solid job of explaining the various issues and histories at hand alone merits its consideration. Recommended.

This review of Planet Palm by Jocelyn C Zuckerman was originally written on March 7, 2021.