Ultra-processed and secretly produced foods are cheered by consumers and investors because they are plant-based--often vegan--and help address societal issues. Investigative reporter Larissa Zimberoff pokes holes in the mania behind today's changing food landscape and clearly shows the trade-offs of replacing real food with technology-driven approximations.
This fascinating overview of efforts to create a sustainable, cruelty-free meat substitute will take a well-deserved place on the shelf alongside works such as Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Mary Roach’s Gulp, and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation ... An engaging, thorough examination of the transformation of the food industry as it relates to sustainability and creating alternatives to the slaughterhouse. Highly recommended.
This is an opportune time to put out a future-of-food book ... The bulk of Technically Food’s real estate is devoted to plant-based foods, which hold appeal for nutritional and ethical reasons as much as for environmental ones ... Technically Food reads agreeably and pluckily, like an extended New Yorker–style dispatch from Silicon Valley. But it’s more a snapshot in time than a cornerstone of your food-lit library; its ventures and products may be busts by this time next year. My hope is that, like such food historians before her as Harvey Levenstein and the Michaels Pollan and Moss, Zimberoff keeps at it, checking back in on her subjects, amassing a trilogy or tetralogy of books that definitively tells the story of 'future food' as it evolves over this decade.
Journalist Zimberoff debuts with a breezy and informative survey of the food-tech industry, noting both the promise and perils of the innovations that are changing the way people eat ... Zimberoff excels at making complex issues accessible, and she leavens her survey with dashes of dry humor ... Anyone curious about the future of food should give this a look.
