The Food Police

by LUSK, JAYSON

• ISBN13: 9780307987037
• ISBN10: 0307987035
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-04-16
• Publisher: Crown Forum

Summary

A rollicking indictment of the liberal elite's hypocrisy when it comes to food. Ban trans-fats? Outlaw Happy Meals? Tax Twinkies? What's next? Affirmative action for cows? A catastrophe is looming. Farmers are raping the land and torturing animals. Food is riddled with deadly pesticides, hormones and foreign DNA. Corporate farms are wallowing in government subsidies. Meat packers and fast food restaurants are exploiting workers and tainting the food supply. And Paula Deen has diabetes! Something must be done. So says an emerging elite in this country who think they know exactly what we should grow, cook and eat. They are the food police. Taking on the commandments and condescension the likes of Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Mark Bittman, The Food Policecasts long overdue skepticism on fascist food snobbery, debunking the myths propagated by the food elite. You'll learn: - Organic food is not necessarily healthier or tastier (and is certainly more expensive). - Genetically modified foods haven't sickened a single person but they have made farmers more profitable and they do hold the promise of feeding impoverished Africans. - Farm policies aren't making us fat. - Voguish locavorism is not greener or better for the economy. - Fat taxes won't slim our waists and "fixing" school lunch programs won't make our kids any smarter. - Why the food police hypocritically believe an iPad is a technological marvel but food technology is an industrial evil So before Big Brother and Animal Farm merge into a socialist nightmare, read The Food Policeand let us as Americans celebrate what is good about our food system and take back our forks and foie gras before it's too late!

Author Biography

JAYSON LUSK is a professor and the Willard Sparks Endowed Chair in the agricultural economics department at Oklahoma State University. In the past ten years, Lusk has published more than one hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics related to consumer behavior and food marketing and policy.  By many accounts, he is the most cited and most prolific food economist of his generation.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
 
1. A Skeptical Foodie
2. The Price of Piety
3. From Cops to Robbers: A Brief History of Food Progressivism
4. Are You Smart Enough to Know What to Eat?
5. The Fashion Food Police: Organic—the Status Food
6. Franken-Fears
7. The Follies of Farm Policy
8. The Thin Logic of Fat Taxes
9. The Locavore’s Dilemma
10. The Future of Food
 
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index