Book Review: Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell

Ellen Ruppel Shell's book Cheap: the High Cost of Discount Culture is an expose on the inner workings of the world of consumerism: the designs, the psychology, the travels, the boardroom ideas that make us buy what we buy and expect to buy it for dirt cheap. Cheap is, I would say, the Fast Food Nation-equivalent for Walmart and the rest of our bargain-based economy.

The prices that we pay are kept low by an unsustainable system of cheap labor and environmental exploitation, of cutting corners around regulation every chance available. They are a prime example of our failure to contextualize our actions (and especially our purchases) in an increasingly globalized world.

When you buy a snack or a T-shirt, how much do you really know about it? How far did it travel to get there? Where, in fact, was it really made? Who made it? How much were the laborers paid--if they were even paid? These types of questions will foment in your mind while reading this book, and you will get a better understanding of the system of subsidies (which make our food dirt cheap and destroy agrarian economies abroad) and marketing (why prices are what they are--both economically and psychologically).

The one shortcoming of this book, in my opinion, is its failure to provide a semblance of a solution at the end. For those of you that saw Food, Inc., even though you probably felt powerless at the end, the producers attempted to give you a glimmer of hope. Ruppel Shell discusses Wegman's as an example of good quality goods, ethical practices, and low prices---for real. (Just ask anyone who shops at Wegman's about this: you will listen to them extol the praises of Wegman's for hours on end. Just make sure you have enough time.) However, one does not feel as though one really has the power to effect change in the system. Sadly, it comes down to the idea that, as you have heard since elementary school, knowledge is power. You can't solve a problem unless you know what the problem is.

Book Review: Food Politics

Leaving the realm of traditional environmentalism for a minute to quickly discuss Food Politics by Marion Nestle, a professor from NYU and an adviser to/member of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration.

SIDE NOTE: She also keeps a blog, appropriately titled Food Politics, dedicated to giving consumers/readers up-to-date information about food in the news.

This book was particularly interesting to me, since I have a particular affinity for the relationship between food and the environment. It may be a bit too in depth for some likings, but it is very (as the title alludes to) political.

For example, the FDA is powerless to recall many products, particularly beef. Following the mad cow disease breakout, Oprah Winfrey had a guest from the Humane Society on her show, where they discussed the fact that cows are fed to other cows. (Gross.) She replies, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!"

As a result, she got sued by the beef industry under veggie-libel laws, i.e. for inciting fear in consumers. She went to trial in January 1998 and ultimately won, but the legal fees were astronomical - and certainly enough to quiet any regular consumer.

(Nestle also discusses "McLibel," which I won't get into here but I found fascinating. It was a group of poor activists who distributed "libelous" pamphlets about McDonalds in the UK and were sued by McDonalds. They won.)

At the heart of this book, is the fact that some foods are good for you and some are bad for you. This goes against what food providers want you to think - since if you believe that every food can be good for you, then you can't write their food off.

Nestle discusses how companies/lobbying firms can seem bigger than governments - at least in terms of the amount they have to spend on advertising/lawsuits. The connections between food lobbies and members of Congress seem pretty indicative to me that there's a lack of impartiality going on.

This book also provides certain insights into how government agencies work regarding food. Nestle devotes a large section to supplements, which are in limbo regarding regulation - not food, not quite medicine. They essentially have free reign over how they market their product.

Most disturbing is the fact that the FDA is powerless to carry out many of the actions that it is meant to do. The FDA has not banned any supplements following the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, although there have certainly been harmful products, because of budget deficiencies.

Nestle also discusses food fortification (which she calls "techno-foods"), which has many flaws. Conceptually, it fails because foods like fruits or vegetables are so intricate that isolating one chemical or one vitamin is not the equivalent of eating the entity. Though in some circumstances, it has worked - see: salt and iodine. However, industrialized countries consume much more iodine than they need.

At the end of her book, she briefly discusses "food ethics," which she describes as eating food that is close to its source and local - foods which are good for you and the earth.

Book Review: Fast Food Nation

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the last people in the world to have read Fast Food Nation (as cleverly alluded to on satirical blog and propagandist of the "new" environmental movement Stuff White People Like), but I finally got around to reading it and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm a big Michael Pollan fan, but I understand that people might not literally want to know what they're eating. For people with weaker stomachs (but still care about what they're funding/eating and more importantly, what their children are eating), Fast Food Nation is for you.

Fast Food Nation analyzes the growth of the fast food industry from a historical, market-based point of view. Eric Schlosser discusses the rise of many fast food chains, most thoroughly McDonald's but also Yum! Brands' Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut; Subway; Burger King; Jack in the Box; and Wendy's.

His main focus is on the rampant social justice issues with fast food rather than the abundance of fat and sugar in your McMeal, which is a nice departure from the "air of moral superiority that often accompanies" (257) advocates of vegetarianism/veganism.

After watching Schlosser in Food, Inc., I thought that this book was going to be an anti-corporate work denouncing multinational corporations and promoting veganism. I was glad to read, right in the introduction, that Schlosser was mostly worried about the welfare of our nation's children, whom fast food is mostly marketed to, and that he had eaten a good amount of fast food while conducting research for this book.

Schlosser paints the fast food industry as one that not only goes to any means necessary to make a profit, but one that blatantly disregards the welfare of the people who work for it and uses totalitarian tactics to silence its critics.

He discusses the high school dropouts who work behind the counters of their local fast food restaurants. These are young people who are generally not educated about their rights and are exploited by the system to work long hours, subject to menial labor which ultimately doesn't leave them with any valuable skills for their next job.

He continues with narrative about the factory farms where cows are raised and potatoes are grown. He discusses a lot of the same facts that were discussed in Food, Inc. and the Omnivore's Dilemma - namely that the way that factory farms are set up now promote the evolution and spread of super viruses/bacteria such as e. coli 0157:H7.

Schlosser offers a rare, behind the scenes view of meatpacking/slaughterhouse corporations. These sections were the parts of the book I found most disturbing - on several levels.

Though meatpacking is a highly skilled job, most of the employers are illegal immigrants, who can not read/write English, who have no skills, and are getting paid minimum wage. The corporations keep it this way because these workers are least likely to unionize for fear of losing their job and least likely to demand health care, which is much needed on this job. This keeps prices down and profits up.

Lurking above all of this is the mega-power of these super corporations on a political scale. One of the most infuriating facts is that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not have the power to recall meat. Even if half of the nation's beef was infected with e. coli, the government lacks the legal authority to recall the meat. Additionally, the blatant disregard for human safety in the name of profit is sickening.

Schlosser finishes by reminding the reader that the US is a capitalist society - which means that, ultimately, the corporation responds to the consumer. With these super sized companies, it's hard to remember that the consumer is still the one in control. To get these corporations to change their practices, people need to demand change - but before this, people need to become aware.

Conclusion? You probably won't get disgusted by the depiction of the actual food in this book, but it would be hard to suppress the anger and indignation from discovering that many of our nation's worst social justice issues are funded by the sale of Big Macs and Happy Meals.

(A side note: I'm also pretty sure that this book is on the reading list for Professor Fuisz's Humanities 011 class on banned books... I do know that it's on some class' required reading list. Does anyone know?)

Book Review: Ecological Intelligence

I just finished reading Daniel Goleman's Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything . Goleman is also the author of the books Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence. You have probably heard about the former, considering how prevalent "EQ (or Emotional IQ/Quotient) tests" appear online.

Ecological intelligence, considered by Time Magazine to be one of the ten ideas changing the world right now, is a very new and very powerful concept. Ecological intelligence refers to the knowledge and understanding of the histories of the products we buy and the decisions we buy. When you go to the supermarket, for instance, you only see products on shelves; you do not know about how much water, how much energy, and how many miles went into their creation. When you choose paper or plastic, how do you know which bag has a less effect on the environment? And how do you know how much of an offset that reusable tote is? Goleman explores these questions and the role of INFORMATION and RADICAL TRANSPARENCY in this discourse...


One would hope that, given full information on two equivalent products, the consumer would opt for the one that has a better social and environmental history; however, greenwashing (common in marketing campaigns today--just think of some ads in the metro stations) is far from a carbon footprint label.

The Good Guide is one of many innovations Goleman discusses. One of my friends recently told me about the Good Guide when he had been thinking about such an idea himself. Founded by students in Berkeley, it is a cell phone- and Internet-based service that rates consumer goods on their health, environmental, and social impacts, letting you know the product's and company's history with just a snapshot (for the cell phone) or a click (for the Internet). Essentially, it compiles and condenses all of this data for you in the moment in takes to make that shopping decision. The Guide is only in its beta version now but could have a lot of potential.

Likewise, Goleman speaks a lot about the idea of RADICAL TRANSPARENCY. With new technological advances, consumers are able to find out more about companies, and more info can come out through the press as well. Radical transparency, then, can be the best of defenses: businesses should make all of their information available to consumers and position themselves for innovation and openness.

The ideas in this book are akin to those in the online web video The Story of Stuff by former Greenpeace activist Annie Leonard. Leonard's video has come into the news recently under accusations that it is an attack on capitalism. However, in my firm opinion, it is not an attack on capitalism itself, but rather a misguided manifestation of it. In the economic model of PERFECT COMPETITION, both consumers and producers have full knowledge of the product. With the lack of information that exists today for so many of the goods we buy, this "perfect knowledge" is noticeably missing. Such a lack of shared knowledge also prohibits the innovation provided by a competitive market; if consumers had all of the information about their purchases right in front of them at the store, then companies would probably be much more likely to innovate, a lesson that needs to be learned from the current problems in the automobile industry.

I think that the last lines of Goleman's book are perhaps the most powerful and most telling. He quotes Ian McCallum, a South African physician and naturalist who writes about ecological intelligence, saying, "We have to stop speaking about the Earth being in need of healing..the Earth doesn't need healing. We do" (247).

Photo courtesy of amazon.com.