It is more than just ‘low-cal, low-fat’

 Information, Science, Sociology  No Responses »
Apr 302015
 
The gospel of food

There is a great number of people in the US, and even in other nations, those emulating everything American, who sincerely believe that low-fat or no fat, low cal or zero calories, and no-sugar-added food is healthy. This not so hard to corrobate fact may have to do with The Gospel of Food, where, on the one hand, consummers, either unknowingly or actually convinced by the daily barrage of commercial and experts appearing in TV morning shows, make sure that their grocery shopping meet the conditions stated above, even going to the other extreme, sometimes influenced, on the other hand, by the diet orthodoxy. The author doesn’t want to fall into the trap of “food perfectionism” neither the readers, in which an opposite stance, that of “nutritional imperialism”, pretends to be the solution to everything, from obesity to feeding the hungry, but according to certain  official guidelines. This is not a simple black and white issue as pointing the finger to the fast-food industry. Chapter 7, for instance, asks what made America fat, and hints that it’s not just the fast food…

The gospel of food : everything you think you know about food is wrong. Barry Glassner. New York : Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.

Related Website: Barry Glassner

I shop, therefore I exist…

 Economy, Sociology  No Responses »
Apr 302015
 
Life Inc.

I’m sure this book is part of the reading material of some interesting course in many a college or university and it should also be required reading material for any wise consumer in this day and age. “We have come to operate in a world where the market and its logic have insinuated themselves into every area of our lives. (…) and it not just the case of “hip, hypergentrified Brooklynites succumbing to market psychology”, says the author, but people of all walks of life and income levels sucked into the wishful whirlwind of an unsustainable economic illusion of progress and wellbeing. Thoroughly researched, with a wide historic perspective, and full of insight, it makes some rethink their false sense of security in which corporations have become the authority figures. A great reading to understand contemporary history and how it came to be as it is now. [Note: there are at least two different covers of this book, depending on the date of release. The 2009 edition, with a definitely bland cover design, has a slightly different subtitle: “how the world became a corporation and how to take it back.”  The 2011 edition, with the subtitle indicated below, includes “The Life Inc. guide to reclaiming the value you create.”]


Life inc. : how corporatism conquered the world, and how we can take it back. Douglas Rushkoff. New York: Random House, 2011.

Related Website: Rushkoff.