The Secret Life of Groceries

July 17, 2020

In his latest work, Lorr (Hell-Bent) offers a stark perspective on the grocery system that average American shoppers likely don't consider. The book's aim to shed light on the human toll of our grocery system is timely and important. Individual stories that comprise the bulk of the volume focus on various people within the food industry, from the founder of Trader Joe's and product developers to lumpers and truck drivers, inviting readers to get to know their struggles, triumphs, and colorful personalities. And while these people are compelling and their contributions memorable, their accounts don't always effectively connect to the broader grocery ecosystem. Lorr includes insight into the behind-the-scenes of the grocery industry, including auditing and dynamics, but book would have benefited from a stronger overarching structure and smoother transitions to make connections between roles within the system clearer. VERDICT Lorr succeeds in raising awareness of the people who make our food systems possible and the conditions in which they live and work. Yet the stories do not always effectively cohere to create a well-rounded narrative.--Sarah Schroeder, Univ. of Washington Bothell

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2020
Some food books leave a bad taste in your mouth. In the muckraking tradition of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (2001), Lorr goes on a deep dive into the nesting doll that is the American grocery experience. While confronting readers with the question of our food, our selves? he reveals the stark realities of how challenging it can be to capture a market segment (Trader Joe's), what it takes to get a new product onto shelves (Slawsa), how products actually get to stores nationwide (Lynne the trucker) and how horribly intertwined our consumption is with human trafficking, global structural inequalities, and dangerous farming practice (Thai shrimping). It's commodities all the way down, Lorr suggests, and readers may find a dangerous urgency?especially amidst COVID-19-related stay-at-home orders?to the deep psychological dependency on a well-stocked supermarket. Lorr's exploration of the systems and individuals that create the modern grocery store will move readers to ask far more probing questions about what they're putting on the table. For fans of Michael Pollan's work and Michael Ruhlman's Grocery (2017).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

August 17, 2020
Journalist Lorr (Hell-Bent) investigates the production, distribution, sales, and marketing of retail food products in this wide-ranging and acerbic exposé. Lorr documents the multiyear process of experimentation, pitch meetings, and negotiations behind new food products, and describes commercial fishing and shrimp farming practices in Thailand, where “NGOs estimate 17 to 60 percent of Thai shrimp includes slave labor... in its supply chain.” On a trip with a long-haul trucker, he discovers that the woman’s net pay for the previous year was $17,000 (out of $200,000 gross) after the cost of gas, supplies, and insurance were deducted. And working the fish counter at Whole Foods, Lorr learns what it’s like to have no job security or set hours. In a brisk yet comprehensive analysis of the history of the American grocery store, Lorr spotlights the advent of packaged food and the reinvention of the traditional model by Trader Joe’s owner Joe Coulombe, among other milestones. Lorr’s stylistic quirks, including extensive footnotes, overlong sentences, and oddly heightened language (he describes one stage in the processing of chickens as “a moment when industry mimics the god”) will be off-putting for some readers, but the depth of his research astonishes. Socially conscious readers will want to take note. Agent: Michael Harriot, Folio Literary.

Starred review from August 15, 2020
Where do we spend 2% of our lives and a big chunk of change? At the grocery store, the object of this diligent investigation. In his second book, Lorr digs behind the scenes at the grocery store. Much of his discussion centers Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, his thesis forming as his narrative moves along: "A grocery store is a finely tuned instrument to serve human whim, and the diversity of human whim often allows it to do double duty, serving one through the act of serving another." Yet a grocery store is also a place where the staff is anonymous and usually not well paid--one man who's worked a fish counter for years laments that he makes only $15 an hour--and where customer behavior is as spoiled as the ancient bits and pieces of fish and seafood that lie buried under the shaved ice. "One of the first things you realize working retail grocery is that people, in general, are hideous and insane," writes Lorr in his wide-ranging, entertaining blend of journalism and sociology. The narrative is peppered with interviews with a broad cast of characters, including truck drivers, food entrepreneurs, and cashiers, almost all of them underpaid. The author notes along the way that food prices, in real terms, have fallen by nearly three-fourths in the last century at the expense of food workers. He also looks closely at how stores came to be as they are, with their sometimes-tangled tales--e.g., when "Trader" Joe Coulombe became a wine expert largely so he could ease an alcoholic manager out of his job or how the Memphis-based Piggly Wiggly chain long ago "invited [customers] in to frolic among the abundance" while draining their wallets. In the end, what Kitchen Confidential did for restaurants, Lorr's book does for supermarkets. You won't look at a supermarket shelf the same way after reading this sharp-edged expos�.

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