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The Secret Life of Groceries
- The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket
- Narrated by: Benjamin Lorr
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
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The Secret Life of Groceries
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Publisher's Summary
In the tradition of Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, an extraordinary investigation into the human lives at the heart of the American grocery store.
The American supermarket is an everyday miracle. But what does it take to run one? What are the inner workings of product delivery and distribution? Who sets the price? And who suffers for the convenience and efficiency we’ve come to expect? In this rollicking exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing, immersive reporting, and compulsively listenable prose, Lorr leads a wild investigation to:
- Learn the secrets of Trader Joe’s success from Trader Joe himself
- Drive with truckers caught in a job they call “sharecropping on wheels”;
- Break into industrial farms with activists to learn what it takes for a product to earn certification labels like “rain forest friendly” and “fair trade”;
- Follow entrepreneurs as they fight for shelf space, learning essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business;
- Journey with migrants to examine shocking forced labor practices through their eyes.
The result is a compelling portrait of an industry in flux, filled with the passion, ingenuity, and inequity required to make this piece of the American dream run. The product of five years of research and hundreds of interviews across every level of the industry, The Secret Life of Groceries is essential listening for those who want to understand our food system - delivering powerful social commentary on the inherently American quest for more and compassionate insight into the lives that provide it.
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What listeners say about The Secret Life of Groceries
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2022-12-30
Listened to it all in one day!
Insightful and delightful! An eye opener to the world of groceries. I’ll be going to my grocery store thinking about everything I learned from this book, and everyone that’s behind the scenes to bring food to us.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Pierre Gauthier
- 2021-02-24
Disjointed and Superficial!
Writer Benjamin Lorr sets out to reveal what lies behind the scenes of our clean and slick grocery stores. Sadly, his narrative structure is difficult to follow. The book reads almost like a collage of essays on distinct topics: working at Whole Foods, driving a delivery truck, launching “Slawsa” as a new product, fishing for shrimp in Malaysia where refugee workers are apparently odiously exploited, etc. In each case, the author spent considerable time on location, for instance working at Whole Foods during a few months or spending weeks in Malaysia with an NGO. Surprisingly, there is no description of contemporary farm life.
The result is tediously anecdotal with the author inducing risky generalizations from his personal experiences, that are necessarily limited in scope. He does not seem to consider that his contacts may not be telling the whole truth to a stranger, or that information may be lost in translation when he is abroad. No mention is made of how his whole research operation was financed.
The writing style is at best journalistic, bordering at times on casual. Footnotes, inserted no doubt after the book had been laid out, are overabundant and break the book’s continuity. This is particularly annoying in audio format.
Overall, there is little justification to recommend this work to anyone.
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1 person found this helpful