false 247908 2507738 0719567858 9780719567858 10 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2507738.Swindled_From_Poison_Sweets_to_Counterfeit_Coffee_The_Dark_History_of_the_Food_Cheats 3.79 29 Swindled tells it. Through a fascinating mixture of cultural and scientific history, food politics, and culinary detective work, Bee Wilson uncovers the many ways swindlers have cheapened, falsified, and even poisoned our food throughout history. In the hands of people and corporations who have prized profits above the health of consumers, food and drink have been tampered with in often horrifying ways -- padded, diluted, contaminated, substituted, mislabeled, misnamed, or otherwise faked. Swindled gives a panoramic view of this history, from the leaded wine of the ancient Romans to today's food frauds -- such as fake organics and the scandal of Chinese babies being fed bogus milk powder.

Wilson pays special attention to nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and England and their roles in developing both industrial-scale food adulteration and the scientific ability to combat it. As Swindled reveals, modern science has both helped and hindered food fraudsters -- increasing the sophistication of scams but also the means to detect them. The big breakthrough came in Victorian England when a scientist first put food under the microscope and found that much of what was sold as genuine coffee was anything but -- and that you couldn't buy pure mustard in all of London.

Arguing that industrialization, laissez-faire politics, and globalization have all hurt the quality of food, but also that food swindlers have always been helped by consumer ignorance, Swindled ultimately calls for both governments and individuals to be more vigilant. In fact, Wilson suggests, one of our best protections is simply to reeducate ourselves about the joys of food and cooking.]]> 247908 3.64 55 20 2008 440428 0312342616 9780312342616 9 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174788371m/440428.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174788371s/440428.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/440428.The_Hive_The_Story_of_the_Honeybee_and_Us 3.48 21 The Hive recounts the astonishing tale of all the weird and wonderful things that humans believed about bees and their “society” over the ages. It ranges from the honey delta of ancient Egypt to the Tupelo forests of modern Florida, taking in a cast of characters including Alexander the Great and Napoleon, Sherlock Holmes and Muhammed Ali.
The history of humans and honeybees is also a history of ideas, taking us through the evolution of science, religion, and politics, and a social history that explores the bee’s impact on food and human ritual.
In this beautifully illustrated book, Bee Wilson shows how humans will always view the hive as a miniature universe with order and purpose, and look to it to make sense of their own.</div></div>]]> 247908 3.64 55 20 2004 6177386 0719567769 9780719567766 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6177386.Swindled_From_Poison_Sweets_to_Counterfeit_Coffee_The_Dark_History_of_the_Food_Cheats 0.0 0 247908 3.64 55 20 2009