Member Reviews
This is an interesting book on how food has begun to be labeled in moral terms. The author looks at Farmer's Markets and organic labeling and show how food has started to be marketed as "good" vs "bad" and whether those terms are correct and how they relate to class. She also offers solutions to many of the food crisis society is now facing. After reading this book I began to look at food differently. The book is well written and easy to read.
I received this book from Netgalley for an honest review. I was really disappointed in this book and the author. She says she been to one farmers market and then talks badly about people who sell at them and buy from them. She lumped everyone into one though she’s only visited one farmers market. I thought this book would be way more than it was.
It is refreshing to see someone looking at the "clean food" movement from the perspective of reality -- how this fits in with our modern lives. Organic and non-GMO fruits and vegetables aren't always better for us or for the environment. They can be less sustainable and they can be more expensive, making it harder for people with lower incomes to access fresh foods. I found the author to be well-informed and her arguments are well-supported, with references and quotes from people on both sides of the discussion.
We each need to make decisions about what we put into our bodies based on what we believe is best for us, but sometimes we need to cut through the hype and recognize it for what it is, and when something is a real concern and when it is just marketing and food-shaming.
To be honest, I had to force myself to read this entire book since I had agreed to review it. I was frequently annoyed with the author and found her to be pompous, snarky and flat out irritating.
To start, the author is not really a "farmer's market devotee" at all. She seems to have been one in the past but she frequently insults everything about the culture. She suggests that most people who shop at farmer's markets and buy organics are basically rich and shallow and doing it so we can post perfect looking "market hauls" to Instagram. She blasts farmer's markets as overpriced and unsustainable, and makes it sound as if you need to be a multi-millionaire to afford an organic peach. She frequently makes fun of her teenage self who apparently wore "an infected nose ring" to seem cool and cared about green issues, which was just off-putting, as if it was okay to insult people who care about these issues if she says she was once one of them.
The disdain this woman holds for those of us who care about organic foods is palpable. She is NOT currently in this camp and it's frankly slimy to pretend that she still is in order to push her agenda.
Tucker is from a large Canadian city where I'm sure the farmers markets are pricey, but that doesn't mean it's not possible to find organics at lower costs. I frequently give advice on how to do that on our family blog and even have a Facebook page where I share tips about how I feed our large family mostly organic for around $100 a week or less.
Tucker quotes famous food authors heavily, but she seems to have an irrational bitterness towards them. While she clearly grew up with a mother who cared about health and grew/cooked mostly very healthy, whole foods (and seems to still get along with her poor mother, whom I actually identified with more than I did with the author), she almost seems personally offended by the entire organic/slow/natural food movement.
She even says at one point that she has to get "snarky" for a minute and I snorted out loud because the entire book seems to be composed of nothing but her getting snarky, but in a really intellectual way like you're reading a really opinionated person's doctoral thesis.
Towards the end of the book, Tucker goes into why we are all idiots for not embracing genetic engineering. She goes off on anti-GMO folks and anti-vaxxers (what exactly do vaccines have to do with the food industry?) and is smug and preachy -- even though she admits that she has no idea at all about the safety of genetically engineered foods and has chosen to take the word of people who tell her that they're safe.
Along the way she also says that science says we couldn't feed the planet if we went vegetarian or vegan because we need meat for the high calories it provides, among other things. She also says Monsanto is supporting specialized technology that can help us feed the planet (besides their GMO and Roundup enterprises). She never says a word about the health risks of pesticides, to those who eat foods raised with them or for the workers whose health is compromised by them.
Tucker also takes offense at the idea of labeling foods as "good" or "bad." A lot. That's quite a long winded diatribe that I don't have the energy to repeat.
As a mother of five who feeds my kids mostly organic foods while living on a very small income, I cannot tell you how often I took offense at this book. It read like a really long op-ed and offered nothing but snobbish anti-organic derision.
I can tell you that it is quite possible to eat healthy food on a budget. If the author wanted to actually help people do that, she could have asked those of us who do it. She doesn't seem to really want to know though, but rather wants to find an excuse to go back to eating her Triscuits. That's absolutely fine, but she doesn't need to write a book to insult those of us who make different choices and she certainly doesn't need to pretend that it's not possible to eat good (yes, good) food on a budget.
I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.
tw mention of eating disorders!
thank you to netgalley, the publisher, and the author for providing me with a copy of a matter of taste! first off, the very good: rebecca tucker denounces the false morality so many people apply to food, and repeatedly asks the reader to let go of their ideas of 'good' and 'bad' food. i fully agree with her here. a food item is not inherently good, nor is it bad. it's just food. it can be healthy, it can be unhealthy, it can be sustainable or mass-produced or homegrown—but at face value, eating tomato won't make you any better of a person than if you'd eaten a candy bar, and shaming foods in this way only serves to fuel eating disorders, guilt trip poor folks for the food insecurities that are out of their control, and ultimately, creates countless new issues with humanity's relationship to food.
i also agree wholeheartedly that we should be looking towards genetic modifying foods to help combat modern problems; drought or disease resistant crops for example, are inarguably relevant to this era. it's refreshing to see someone include humanity in their definition of what's sustainable. after all, if only the top 1% can afford something, then surely it is not the right path forward. if our idea of health and sustainability leaves behind marginalized groups, then what's the point of it?
but this is far from a perfect book. much of what tucker offers here is collated ideas from other works, rather than her own thoughts or research. it's useful in that it holds all this research in one easily consumed place, but i would've liked to read more of tucker's own thoughts on the process. furthermore, as an author, she seems very much torn. the title says this is a 'semi-reluctant argument', and that shows. tucker goes back and forth, clearly still in love with the much lauded, now lambasted, view of sustainability as friendly/local farmers, even as she supposedly argues for innovation and technology. she also glosses over some of the very relevant critiques of companies like monsanto, whose deplorable practices have done a great deal to turn people off from GMOs. perhaps this was an intentional choice, to keep things focused on the concept of GMOs rather than the current practice, but it seems neglectful at best to leave those discussions out (because GMOs may not be that bad, but monsanto is disgusting).
tucker ultimately concludes that she doesn't know what we should do, only that we should employ some kind of moderation between the many opposing food ideologies in our society: a true enough statement, but not a particularly groundbreaking one.
An interesting discussion on Farmer's Markets and organic foods in general. Her arguments are sound, and made me think about this issue and how we in an overall way misinterpret the definitions of each. I like the references to other books as well, so if the reader wants to delve deeper they can. Images would help break up the text though, and help with visual appeal. A good read, and one I highly recommend.