Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139391 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
Praise for 'Shopped': 'She probably knows more than anyone else about where our food comes from.' Nigel Slater 'Joanna Blythman has bravely and compellingly exposed the corrosive effect of supermarkets on our farming and our food culture. And she has rightly identified you, the consumer, as the only person who can do anything about it. Don't read it and weep. Read it and change the way you shop.' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall 'Shocking and powerful.' The Guardian 'She'll fire you up with a righteous fervour that may last beyond your return to the mainland.' The Times 'Blythman has provided a compelling wake-up call.' Financial Times

BBC Good Food Magazine
'Thought provoking and engaging.'

New Statesman
'...a gruesome portrait of national degradation...she composes this...with precision, contempt and a truthfulness that is recklessly unselfserving.'

Customer Reviews

An excellent polemic
This passionate polemic is readable and entertaining throughout. Blythman has an argument to make and deploys anecdote and statistics to do so, but the real strength of her approach is its breadth.

We are used to reading about our bad food: it's the supermarkets' fault; it's schools' faults; we have too much fast food; it's farmers' fault for not caring for animal welfare or the environment; or it's the government's fault. But Blythman while acknowledging all of these co-conspirators locates the blame squarely in the culture we all share.

Each of the above offenders only succeed, she argues, because they deliver to the British public what they want. No one culprit is to blame, but a vicious circle means ever worsening food backs them all up.

One satisfying aspect of this approach is that the TV backlash against mass produced food, the much-reviewed London restaurants or the Dr Gillian McKeiths of our world are not presented as heroes but as part of the whole dysfucntional problem. In other words, this is not just the work of a foodie snob sneering at what poor people eat, she nails the food snobs too.

My main criticism of the book is that Blythman's counterpoint to our sad food culture, the culture in Europe, is too perfect to be true. She gives good examples of how things are better in Europe (and few would argue they are not) but her vision is somewhat idealised and generalised.

In addition, she could, like many journalists, really bolster her analysis if she had an appreciation of the world beyond Europe and the US. In Japan and South East Asia there are important lessons to be learned about the erosion and preservation of food culture, but we never hear about them.

Read it and weep
Another book that had a huge impact on my shopping and consumer behaviour. Well written and d well argued, this should be essential reading for anyone who buys or eats food. Joanna writes well and fluidly, neatly skewering the irony of the nation that doesn't cook and lives on ready meals but is drowning in a slew of cookery books, magaines and food programs. She shines a powerful light on to the appalling state of child nutrition in schools, restaurants and homes. It's not a rant or a polemic however and there's also a great deal of humour and irony in her writing. Read this together with Hugh Fearnley Whittinstall's 'Meat' and Felicity Lawrence's 'Whats Not on the Label' and Eric Schlosser's 'Fast Food Nation' and if you're still heading for the supermarket 'ready meal' aisles then shame on you. Blytheman was ahead of the game and in the light of the current spate of food programmes laying bare our bizarre and tortured relationship with food and food production,this book remains as relevant as ever. (I'm ordering a second copy as my original is so battered and worn from re-reading). The role supine and craven governments in thrall to big business interests, an industrialised food industry driven by profit and shareholder interest and consumer lack of interest in what is eaten and how it is produced is expertly laid bare. Above all the way in which we as consumers collude with the industry, determinedly practicing self deception to protect and deliberately nurture our ignorance is cruelly well depicted. Joanna neatly lays bare the folly and denial that lies behind the 'so busy I haven't time to cook' excuse and the determined pursuit of ever cheaper food that underpins our shopping habits. We're not powerless victims but willing collaboraters enthusiastically assisting to create the current state and understanding of British food and nutrition. We don't cook because we can't be bothered to cook and don't value the role food, cooking and shopping for food plays in our lives and society. Its uncomfortable reading precisely because we as consumers have the power to act but don't and there's a lot of people who won't face up to the realities behind our idolisation of cheap, industrially produced food at any costs. This book is shocking, ironic, funny, angry and only too accurate a picture of our food culture. It's a cry to arms to all of us as consumers to stop playing the victim card and to think about what they eat and how they shop. I certainly haven't bought a 'buy one get one free' meat product since reading this and I haven't bought a 'ready meal' in over 2 years. (And I do work full time and have a very busy schedule).

Smug, simplistic and unreliable
Having read Shopped, I was prepared to be amused by this book. But the writer's lack of understanding of statistics, her cheap anecdotal evidence and her fantasies about life here and on the continent disappointed me enormously.
Yes, there is a problem with food and cooking in this country. It is representative of a larger problem with work, shopping and time.
My copy is going straight in the charity shop box.