A book that will make you think about your groceries

In a millennial-driven world where vegetarianism is on the up, and during a pandemic that has already forced us to look within, comes a book that will further provoke debate about eating habits.

“The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket” by Benjamin Lorr exposes facts about the food industry that nauseate and startle, even when you are not expecting anything to the contrary. And though mainly about America, the book has relevance to other parts of the world.

Behind glistening arrays of seafood laid out on ice across supermarket shelves are stories of slaves and torture. Lorr took the Hemingway-Gonzo route of immersing himself in an activity and then writing about it. In the five years he spent on the book, he worked at supermarkets, endured their “fecal-matter” like stench during cleaning, and visited fishing docks in Thailand, among other things. When an unpaid labourer on a boat in Thailand got delirious from exhaustion, he wasn’t given fluids and taken to hospital. The man was beaten up and thrown overboard. Some others were lashed with stingray tails.

“One of the first things you realize working retail grocery is that people, in general, are hideous and insane,” Lorr writes. “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. To do so, the industry relies on an anonymous and underpaid staff working without health care or job security.”