The Hidden Story of Our Food
- Topics:
- Blog, Hunger & Food Crisis
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010, 11:00 AM
If you’ve ever picked up a head of lettuce or a package of chicken and wondered who worked to get that food on your supermarket shelf, Gabriel Thompson’s new book, Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs [Most] Americans Won’t Do is the big reveal.
Thompson spent a year working alongside some of the most invisible workers in our food chain: lettuce pickers in Arizona, chicken cutters in an industrial slaughterhouse in rural Alabama, bicycle delivery workers at an upscale Manhattan restaurant.
Thompson writes with compassion and grace. His detailed descriptions of his co-workers, many of whom work while exhausted and injured for little money and few (if any) benefits are a heartbreaking reminder of the plight of so many food workers.
This book is a rare read: a page-turner, with dashes of humor, as well as an insightful critique of a food system that shuts out so many eaters, and workers. It’s the story of our food through the eyes of the hard-working men and women who bring it to our tables.
– Kate & Anna
