Tracie McMillan grew up on Tuna Helper and Ortega Taco Dinners and was raised to believe that farm-fresh, home-cooked food was for “fancy” people. But a decade ago, while covering the poverty beat for a small New York City magazine, she jettisoned these class assumptions about food. Writing about a program that teaches low-income youth to cook healthy food, she met 18-year-old Vanessa, who loved vegetables and wished she had a farmers’ market in her neighborhood but was resigned to eating what’s cheap and accessible: Burger King Whoppers and processed food from the supermarket.
“If you want people to eat healthy, why make it so expensive?” Vanessa wonders.
This question—which haunted McMillan as she watched New Yorkers rhapsodize over $6-a-pound farmers’ market tomatoes—is what drove her to undertake a year-long investigation of the American “foodscape,” from (industrial) farm to (chain restaurant) plate.
Continue reading my review of McMillan's book, the American Way of Eating, which ran in Sunday's Oregonian.
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