Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal
Written by Melanie Warner
Narrated by Ann Marie Lee
4/5
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About this audiobook
From breakfast cereal to chicken subs to nutrition bars, processed foods account for roughly seventy percent of our nation's calories. Despite the growing presence of farmers' markets and organic produce, strange food additives are nearly impossible to avoid. Combining meticulous research, vivid writing, and cultural analysis, Warner blows the lid off the largely undocumented-and lightly regulated-world of chemically treated and processed foods and lays bare the potential price we may pay for consuming even so-called healthy foods.
Melanie Warner
Melanie Warner is a freelance writer for various publications, including The New York Times and Fast Company. She has spent the past fifteen years writing about business, first as a writer at Fortune magazine, where among other things, she wrote about the dotcom boom in Silicon Valley. She was also a staff reporter for The New York Times, covering the food industry. The author of The Magic Feather Effect and Pandora’s Lunchbox, she lives in Honolulu.
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Reviews for Pandora's Lunchbox
65 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love this book. Whenever I re-read it, processed foods become much less tempting for a while.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Melanie Warner takes an adventurer's attitude in her quest to understand how food is processed and discovers a world of ingredients and flavors that delight our senses while undermining our nutrition. Unlike Michael Moss (Salt Sugar Fat), she accepts the industry's profit motive but notes that the people who make the profits possible don't eat the products. Instead, they eat simply but well - something that is possible for all of us with very little effort.
Why demonize an industry when we have choices? - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Melanie Warner had heard the rumors that Twinkies would never spoil, so she decided to test that theory. Using different processed foods (cookies, burgers, chicken nuggets), Warner started a little laboratory in her home. She left the food undisturbed and unrefrigerated, and cataloged the results. From mildly amusing (huh, those Oreos haven't really even gone stale) to downright repulsive (completely liquefied frozen organic chicken nuggets), the results spoke for themselves. Truly unprocessed food would succumb to the normal process of decomposition via bacteria or molds, just like any other organic life-form. But the highly processed foods did not culture anything that could break them down. Very unnatural.Warner treads a lot of the same ground that Michael Moss covered in Salt, Sugar, Fat, and even references some of the same stories. What I found interesting was her description of the chemical processes involved in creating the flavors and textures that we have come to expect in convenience foods.While I agree with Warner's conclusion that it is within our own power to change what kinds of food we insist upon eating, I still think that too many people will say it's too difficult and inconvenient to select and purchase fresh food, and then cook it. Again, I think books like these preach to the choir.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's a good book - with some good research and it does make you stop and think about what you're eating. I think she could have had a stronger finish - the end was a bit wishy washy - so well, what do we do? Considering all of the Monsanto crap, what's put into our food is very important. And I know I'm eating crap when I eat morningstar farms bacon. I would probably be better off eating organic bacon.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5adult nonfiction; food science/molecular engineering. Chemicals in your (processed) foods; not enough data to show how many of which are harmful (or not), but there is certainly enough evidence to be wary.
Sept 2020 update: I checked out the e-audio and this version is also good. Didn't finish it because I'd already read it (just forgot that I had). - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was an informative and balanced book. I thought the author did a reasonable job of presenting information without an overly skewed narrative. She certainly had her biases but for some reason, they came off as charming; rather than annoying. I learned a few things and reconfirmed my suspicions that people are better off the more we cook from scratch with whole ingredients.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5People who read this book are already partially convinced that we need to change how food is produced in the US, forgoing low cost or benefitting large corporations, and making moves to improve health. This book has some compelling information. It delves into the issues of additives or ingredients that are several steps removed from anything produced by Mother Nature. I definitely learned that my healthy breakfast of cereal is not nearly as healthy as I thought. But, I felt that this book too often strays from good factual data to personal anecdotes. I'm glad that the author's son seemed less moody when he embraced a healthier diet, but I want more facts. The book has potential, but is missing an unbiased viewpoint to be placed in the same category as books like The China Study, and lacking the beautiful writing style or emotional impact of Jonathan Safron Foer's Eating Animals to become a book that I would recommend to others.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lots of information on what "processed" really means in terms of modern food production. A combination of food science history and detailed explanations of the various chemicals and procedures used to create modern packaged food. I sometimes skimmed over the technical details, but it was very eye-opening to learn just what happens to our food. I was surprised that even food I thought was natural, like vegetable oil, goes through pretty extreme processing just to make it palatable.