Opinion
The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket
Book written by Benjamin Lorr
Reviewed by Ralph Grabowski
One of the greatest facades we face in modern life is the grocery store. Everything is plentiful, clean to the point of sparkling, and prices savings are galore.
Behind the scenes, the facade crumbles fast, which you know when you’ve ever had a peek behind the swinging doors to the warehouse portion of the store -- or looked at the final total on the till bill. In our two-person household, groceries represent our largest monthly bill.
The store we tend to patronize likes to hang posters of local farmers whose produce it sells. This clashes with the source labels, which insist the vegetables and fruit are instead from USA, Mexico, and in a recent purchase of kiwi fruit, from Greece -- and spare ribs from Germany. Do we not have pigs in western Canada?
And then there is the whole supply chain thing. I’ve thought about how Western civilization would collapse if the big tractor rigs couldn’t make their rounds any more.
We experienced that two years ago when flooding took out many bridges that connect our part of the world with the rest of the world. I recall grabbing the last container of milk from our grocery store after just two days, while our gasoline purchases were limited to 30 litres. After two weeks, routes were worked out that allowed the trucks to reach us by detouring through the northern United States.
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My favorite place to head to, when in a foreign country, is the grocery store. The types of products tells me what is important in the country, and the packaging tells me how marketing happens. Is the Organics (Bio) section up front, or is there none at all. How is cereal marketed? What are the pricing disparities? In Germany, grocery chains sell 1.5-litre bottles of water for 20 cents and 100g Ritter Sport chocolate (my favorite!) for 69 Euro cents vs. $4-$5 in Canada.
So when Benjamin Lorr wrote “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket,” I was all eyes. To go undercover, he got himself hired by various grocery chains or else went along with rides or investigative groups. He really dislikes Whole Foods, in part perhaps because it was acquired by Amazon while writing the book.
My favorite chapter is when he rides the cab of trucker Lynne, who delivers trailer loads to Aldi warehouses, perhaps because it was the least grocery-style part of the supply chain network. The most horrific chapter is on how shrimp are caught and processed in Thailand -- by actual slaves, according to him.
The source of the food we buy is as clear as the source of the gasoline we pump. In some cases, like eggs and shrimp, the name of the label is close to fictitious -- designed to create an ethos. One chapter is about a grocery consultant who tells chains how to connect better with customers in their region, such as the LA customer who wants to shop at an upscale Ralph's -- which means he wants frozen lasagna that's fancy.
Along the way he also covers the certification industry (useless), an entrepreneur launching a new “slaw” product (in the end, she wins), and his time being hired by Whole Foods to work at the fish counter (it stinks). He has a different tone, an admiring one, for Trader Joe’s, during the time when Joe still ran it.
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The Secret Life of Groceries
by Benjamin Lorr
Published by Penguin Random House
336 pages
Paperback $19
ISBN 9780553459418
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/253715/the-secret-life-of-groceries-by-benjamin-lorr/
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