cover image Making Supper Safe: Why We've Lost Trust in Our Food and How We Can Get It Back

Making Supper Safe: Why We've Lost Trust in Our Food and How We Can Get It Back

Ben Hewitt. Rodale, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 9781605293097

Hewitt (The Town that Food Saved) takes a broad look at the politics surrounding American food and finds more irony than logic. With a cast of characters including a seed company owner, a dumpster diver, a lawyer specializing in foodborne illness, a raw milk dairy proprietor, and a family that nearly lost a child to E. coli O157:H7, Hewitt provides information salted with frequent tongue-in-cheek humor. While the hot food topics%E2%80%94the seed monopoly, antibiotic-fed livestock and poultry, genetically modified foods, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act%E2%80%94are all discussed in detail, making it clear why "we've lost trust in our food," it's not completely clear how Hewitt thinks "we can get it back." Hewitt's personal solution of raising most of his food and avoiding supermarkets won't necessarily work for urban populations, and readers may not agree that "accept[ing] the slim risk of pathogenic bacteria" is the first step to making food safer. Despite his arguable conclusions, Making Supper Safe will inform and entertain a broad audience of foodies, environmentalists, and health-attuned citizens. (June)