Fresh: A Perishable History Book

I wrote a review and, not for the first time, exited the d*** page before hitting the "save" button, which is outta sight on my screen. Am I peeved? Yes! Was this a good book? Yes!!

This book is well worth your time, if you are interested in the background of your food. How did we come to our current obsession with Fresh Food? And what does that mean, anyway? Ms. Freidberg provides answers to these (producers and shippers had a lot to do with it, and it means what you want it to mean!) and many other questions. She covers the role that refrigeration has played in our definition of freshness - it's major! She also pays attention to the human cost of freshness. It also can be major.

At the end of chapter five (of seven), which is about vegetables, is this statement: "Yet it's worth considering how our very ideal of freshness in vegetables - as a natural, even evanescent quality - has contributed to the historic undervaluing of the human labor that produces them. It's an ideal encouraged by supermarkets and other dealers in fresh produce, because it permits them healthy mark-ups for qualities that cost them little or nothing. The real cost has always been borne by the people whose work we don't see."

That cost is borne not just by vegetables, but also by the subjects of the other featured food groups: beef, eggs, fruit, milk and fish. She devotes a separate chapter to refrigeration, the "cold revolution" and it's fascinating.

I think this brings to a close my Reading About Food streak for now. I have to go to my garden and look for other local sources. I am more than ever before aware that I want to have a connection to the people that produce the food that I eat. That will never be a 100% deal, but I can up the percentage considerable just by making the effort.