I like food and the history of food and though this book was about why we have the best before the date I felt that there was just too much information facts and stats and not how and why we got there. Maybe less science and just simple explaining.

I expected a screed against processed food, but this book was much more rational about the reality of food. While we can try to eat as healthily as possible, convenience and availability of processed foods (which almost all food is that is not homegrown) make that difficult. Apart from preservation and ease of making benefits, there could be other benefits in the future. This book is informational and humorous.

This gave some really interesting insight into the food industry. Some of the things I already knew simply because I've read a lot about it since it's a subject of interest, but other things were completely new and kind of mind-blowing. You can't help but be more thoughtful about what you're buying and putting into your body after reading this.

Great idea for a book and really well executed. A thoroughly good read. Highly recommended. .

Best Before: The Evolution and Future of Processed Food suffers from an identity crisis, as the author includes too much personal information for it to be a scientific or scholarly publication. The book could use a fair amount of editing as well, as it lacks the formality to allow readers to take it seriously as a scientific treatise. The information is presented in a manner that is both dry and uninteresting, despite the fact that the various methods of processing food can be both alarming and eye opening.

I am a big fan of history, but the author spent so much time reciting facts that the information she was trying to impart got lost. Instead of opening my eyes to the cost cutting measures, the additives that have no business being in food, and the overall indifference that some in the industry have to the health and safety of their customers, my eyes drifted shut on many occasions while reading Best Before. For these reasons, I would not recommend this book to other readers.

Disclaimer: I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy of Best Before: The Evolution and Future of Processed Food via NetGalley and the publisher, Bloomsbury Sigma. The choice to review this book was my own.

This one was kind of flat for me, and wasn't nearly at all what I expected. The writing, while technically and scientifically interesting, just didn't hold my attention, and the author's humor was quite strange.

I was really surprised that the first chapter (on cheese!) was nearly half the book. The history of cheese and dairy preservation really isn't that interesting...

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this in exchange for my honest review.

How is food processed? What is processed food? Reading this you learn that pretty much everything is one way or another. Temple does thoughtful deep dives on things like micronutrients, salt, fat, and the British diet. She dives into staples like cheese and bread which are thoughtful and interesting. I love learning about things like this. I was a fan of this book and although at times it could be a bit dry, the material is well presented.

Nicola Temple's Best Before: The Evolution and Future of Processed Food fell a bit flat for me. I could not decide if the author was in favor of or against processed foods. She mentioned that hand making pasta at home was more difficult than using a machine to make pasta at home. If the ingredients are exactly the same, I hardly see a huge difference. I also found it confusing that she said buying a frozen lasagna and bagged salad were better since they eliminated food waste. I would much rather discuss ways to use up fresh ingredients instead of being told to choose convenience. I prefer an author to take a firm stand on a topic. Plenty of people "ride the fence" on issues as a safety net, but I want substance and conviction.

Thanks Netgalley for a copy to read and review!

Interesting read! Everyone seems to be on the food band wagon lately, one day something is good for you only for you to find out later it's bad. This book gives you a deep look at some of the processes where food is concerned. It seems like these days food doesn't spoil and can last forever. Remember the teacher that took a picture of the McDonalds hamburger for a year and it barely changed. So obviously our food is being processed to death. This book gives a unique look and history towards those processes. I gave it three stars because while it is interesting, the book circles and it was hard to really see where some of the ideas were going. Just throw a bunch of history and facts out there....you make your own judgement.

This book is positively addictive reading, even if a bit of it was awful news about food.

What is processed food? Basically, it's almost everything you eat unless you are growing it or slaughtering it yourself. The origins of processed food lie in trying to safely preserve or store food. Going back to ancient techniques like smoking, salting, drying, and ice houses, Temple takes us forward to Kraft cheese and cheese in a can, all the way to the present day, filled with little mini-carrots and ready/frozen dinners. The big question and the point of Nicola Temple's book is how food was processed and whether the producer is transparent about the processing. From produce to cheese to bread to protein, to the deleterious effects of sugar, which is added to so many things. Temple closes out the book with a discussion of nanotechnology (a topic near and dear to my heart) and some of the caveats, and the future of processed food. I was quite fascinated and repelled by the chapter on cheese. And delighted with the literate discussion of celiac disease in the bread chapter.

Temple's discussion of the convenience conundrum, which drives the production and consumption of processed food, is worth the price of admission. Our modern lifestyle has affected our perceptions and expectations of food. (I'm mindful of that report last year which said that many children thought chocolate milk came from brown cows and didn't know pickles were actually cucumbers.) The actual nutritional content of many of these convenient processed items is of concern. This book was written with a British slant but she also reports on information for Canadian and American readers. America's love affair with salt and sugar have taken firm hold in the UK. Other things to consider in "ready meals" include the caliber of the ingredients (bound to be the cheapest) and the fact that many micronutrients may be lost due to overcooking. Then there are the additives (things like carrageenan and gums) and preservatives (thinks like polyphosphates). Temple does provide a thoughtful discussion on the various forms of processing, including flash freezing, and why some frozen produce might be better than fresh bought produce artificially ripened with ethylene. (Less waste due to spoilage and froze at the peak of ripeness.)

This book is fascinating enough to make me go and read Temple's previous outing, Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food and Fraud Forensics, which sounds like a scary read.

I thought the author got a little preachy in places, but overall, I really enjoyed the read. I'd recommend it to people like myself who enjoy microhistories.

Fascinating information bogged down by personal opinion

The discussions of how food is processed - its history and science - are fascinating, and on its own, would have merited five stars. In addition, author Nicola Temple demonstrates a great sense of humor. Where I found the book weak was in Temple’s sometimes sanctimonious description of her cooking and eating habits. She will state that she doesn't like a certain processes but won’t give any information to back that up, for example on irradiation and food preservatives. It disrupted the flow of the book and about two-thirds of the way through, I started skipping over her opinions and just read the more factual parts of the book. Overall though, it is a good book and I enjoyed reading it.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchanged for an honest review. I thought this book was fascinating. It's always a joy to learn about something most people have misinformed opinions on and learn the reasoning behind the truth. Very cool book.

Best Before by Nicola Temple looks critically at the history, the present, and the future of food processing. In today's world we are all far removed from growing our own fruit and vegetables or keeping animals for meat. Nicola Temple explains how we achieve to keep food fresh and nutritious from harvest to table by modern food processing. A lot of food processing is beneficial for society, but sometimes we remove food too far from their original in order to cut processing time, cut product cost, and prolong shelf life. A good example in this book is the history of cheese which culminates in the invention of individually wrapped, processed cheese slices. I learned a lot by reading this book, especially about modern packaging practices and the use of nanotechnology. Not all food processing is evil, but I am certainly not interested in eating lab-created frankenfoods as long as I can choose other, minimally processed food instead. Nicola Temple opened my eyes to the benefits of modern food processing while reminding me to carefully weigh the pros and cons when it comes to consuming processed foods.

The author does a great job of taking a fairly dry, yet important, topic and keeping the reader interested through humorous inserts. There is a lot of very helpful information tucked in these pages, backed up by historical and media research and scientific fact, that discusses food preservation since the dawn of man....literally. Each chapter begins with the cavemen and goes up through modern day and the future. Some chapters are more interesting than others (my children particularly got a kick out of the 'cheese' chapter), but all of them take a topic that is often misrepresented and paints it in a less-scary, more-information way. Does this mean that I'm totally happy with how our food is being handled? Nope. But it does mean that I understand some of the intricacies, which I'd only partly understood and that from mainstream news, a lot better than before.

Best Before is an intriguing book on how food has been processed, preserved and stored, covering methods both legal and illegal, disgusting and sterile, ancient and futuristic.

This book is not anti-processing, it merely covers different types that have been used, and the ways to improve food preservation without adverse health benefits in the future.

Temple's writing is clear and approachable, and full of humor. I liked how references were documented. Also, I learned much more than I ever needed to know about cultured meat and eating insects.