ash | spaceyreads's Reviews > The Way We Eat Now: Strategies for Eating in a World of Change

Bee Wilson writes about our decisions around food, the food industry, and consumerism in The Way We Eat Now. Wilson talks to consumers, experts, businesses, and discusses the research, history, and philosophy behind phenomenons that are hot topics nowadays: health, dieting, eating disorders, cooking, quality of food, and more.

I found her book to be an enjoyable read but underdeveloped on many fronts, which is a shame. As this is my first foray into reading about food, I read a bunch of other goodreads reviews to get a sense of the community's opinion on where she stands in the food writing genre. It looks to me like she's trying to marry writing about food with writing about issues around food, which is more difficult than it sounds. I can see her bare attempts at trying to celebrate food and a variety of ways of eating and cultures around eating, but having to balance that with honest criticism about issues such as the environmental impact of over-consumption, the meat industry, health issues around eating out, and so on.

If done well, this can make the discussion very insightful. However, this requires skill and tact which Wilson did not always show. It actually makes a very confusing book because she sounds inconsistent. Her thoughts on vegetarianism are all over the place. She talked about loving how Indian food makes vegetarian food a delicious norm, and laments how this isn't the same in Europe, and then eventually concludes that our current meat eating habits are exploitative, extravagant, and unsustainable, but then go on to decry Western vegetarianism and veganism as a fad and concludes that 'flexitarianism' seems more doable. This shows to me the conflict between celebrating food and talking about social issues - it is rarely said in the same breath when it comes to meat as food. So a worthy attempt - but I think it fell short. This results in two types of unhappy readers - readers who come to read about food feel scolded for their decisions around food. Readers who come for more critical commentary don't get much.

On the issue of social commentary, I am personally disappointed at her deft skipping over gender roles and its social impact when it comes to the global decrease in hours spent (her words) cooking at home. She cited research that said that the average worker now works 1000 hours less a year now than in 1900, which meant that we have a lot more time to cook. Does this 'average worker' also include housewives, and other unpaid caregivers, such as children (especially girls) who often also help out around the kitchen? She did eventually bring up the issue a few chapters later of how home cooking was traditionally an unpaid and unappreciated role fostered onto women with no choice, and while the rise of feminism did meant that people ate food that was of lesser quality now, it also meant that, um, women have rights.

I felt that this showed bad editing - I think with some rewording and rewriting of a few sentences, it could have been said in a way which made more impact and relevance to the issue of home cooking vs eating out which she was very passionate about, but instead felt like it was added in reluctantly, as though women's rights were secondary to the issue of having fresh hot homecooked food on your table. I'm sure that wasn't Wilson's intention, but like I said, editing makes a difference.

She also uses a lot of personal anecdotes to support her points - either hers or that or her interviewees. She talked about preserving eating as a social activity, and laments - condescending, I might add - how she noticed millennials seem to like pictures of food more than food itself with their 'hashtags' and their 'instagram'. I also have a personal anecdote to support my counterpoint. I take pictures of food eaten or made with family and friends and post them on instagram to look back and be reminded of the joyful memory of eating and cooking with loved ones. But nevermind that - my point is her personal anecdotes add little to the value of her book.

I felt that she could also have done more for readers to feel more confident in the research she was citing. There were references to many outdated research papers. It was also unclear if extraneous variables were accounted for in these papers. For example, Wilson wanted to show the difference between eating the Japanese way and eating the American way - suppose the former was correlated with better health indicators. The research compared eating habits of two types of Japanese men in America - one group was less assimilated with American culture than the other. The research found that the assimilated group had significantly worse health indicators. My question is - did the research account for variables such as stress -perhaps the assimilated group faced more racism in their community or pressure trying to fit in? And I'm sure any researcher could think of others. The whole book was propped up by such research, which really did not make me more convinced of the points she was making.

That said, one concept I appreciated her making accessible to readers is the concept of choice around eating and health. It's a persistent myth that poor people making bad eating choices and people with obesity again, make bad eating choices.

“We speak of having better food choices, but for the most part, we eat the foods that food companies want to sell us.”

Wilson took the chance to write some very strong chapters on the food industry and how we were not given the right options to make choices from. She brought into light how poverty and inequality affects the options afforded to us - when fast food and frozen food is cheaper than fresh vegetables in terms of how many calories you can buy with a certain amount of money, when sugary unhealthy snacks are the only source of comfort and entertainment money can buy for a family in poverty, when fast food companies run targeted ads on TV to poor children knowingly, it is no wonder how poverty is correlated with poor health.

“As things stand, our culture is far too critical of the individuals who eat junk foods and not critical enough about the corporations that profit from selling them. We spend a lot of time discussing unhealthy foods in terms of individual guilt and willpower and not enough looking at the morality of big food companies that have targeted some of the poorest consumers in the world with products that will make them sick, or the governments that allowed them to do so.”

She is also passionate about overconsumption of bad food - overconsumption is unsustainable for the environment and unnecessary for us - especially when most of the options that was made appealing to us are oversized portions of sugar and processed foods.

My favourite takeaway from this is a proposed new food classification system NOVA and how to use it in your daily life - Group 1 being unprocessed/minimally processed foods, Group 2 bring processed culinary ingredients, Group 3 being processed foods, and Group 4 being ultra-processed food and drink products. The link includes a recommendation on how much of each group of foods to include in your diet. Even the name for the last one is food for thought.

Overall, an enjoyable read, bunch of good points made but jarred with inconsistent commentary and unconvincing research.