Pandora’s Lunchbox

Pandora’s Lunchbox

Melanie Warner

4.5 Post-its

This book is one of those books that if you do read it you might want to forget some of the things you learned.  Now that doesn’t sound like a recommendation but this book is an awesome survey of our lunch boxes. 

The book starts with the history of processed foods by Melanie Warner, who was a food writer for the New York Times.  She happened to become curious about expiration dates and then ended up collecting and storing items off the grocery store shelves as she went about doing some research of her own.

This research starts with the history of the FDA and Harvey Wiley to how Kraft food began as a way to help keep the cheese he was delivering form becoming moldy and drying out.  Pretty interesting stuff if you ask me.

The history lesson then cruises through the cereal aisle with its beginnings with the Kellogg family to what we now have as 100s of cereal choices for a “healthy” breakfast but the cereal is pretty much anything but real……

Ms. Warner moves through the rest of the food groups in the grocery store including food additives like preservatives and vitamins.  Turns out we end up having to add so many vitamin supplements to our foods because of processing them for our “convenience.”  Vitamins is a scary industry in and of itself.  How they are made and regulated leaves quality control in question.

Fillers, soy, meat products oh my and what are we supposed to do?  Too much to cover for a review but you will learn lots about each of these.  These remaining topics and what to choose close this book with the thoughtful ideas of eating simply while staying within a budget.  Since the long term effects of the processed world are not that rosy, it seems the expense evens out in the end.  The sit at home and chew chapter will give you some ideas of how to hot lose your mind with all the choices available today.

This is not a book for people who want to stick their heads in the sand about what they might be putting in their mouths.

 

I give this one 4.5 Post-it…..it is chocked full of info, maybe too much but man I learned a lot.

Click here to find the book on Amazon