The title of this review is the subtitle used by Mrs Lawrence for her book. And indeed readers will discover some harrowing facts about the way the industry processes our everyday food. If you don't know what mechanically recovered meat is, how chickens are raised in Brazil, that when you order chicken in a restaurant you may in fact be eating 30% beef, that a farm is no longer a place where food is grown but an industrial complex of packing sheds around lorry parks or that the conditions under which illegal immigrants pick fruit and vegetables in Spain can be compared to "South African apartheid". The author visited a giant refrigerated packing plant near Aylesford which reminded her of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"! Did you know that a standard shopping basket in a supermarket with 20 fresh foods represents an average accumulation of 100 000 "food miles"? One example: the mangetout or asparagus from Peru you buy have a journey of 6312 miles behind them... Or that 60% of the factory bread consumed in Britain is produced by plants belonging to two giants - who call themselves "bakeries" - British Bakeries and Allied Bakeries?
Well Mrs Lawrence has plenty of examples in store in her study which will surprise many a reader about the way our modern food is manufactured and processed. In the same vein, readers may also be interested in Joanna Blythman's very instructive discussion of supermarket policies in her book "Shopped".
