Amazon.co.uk: Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate: Books: Felicity Lawrence

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

This book should be read by everyone , 27 April 2006

Reviewer:

Angie Davies (SE England) - See all my reviews

After living overseas for several years, I could not believe how poor the food in Britain has become especially in supermarkets. Even the fresh produce has little or no flavour. Not to mention the damage to the environment through excessive use of agrochemicals to produce the 'perfect' looking produce in a clinically wrapped environmentally unfriendly container. The book also covers other environmentally unsound practices such as transportation of the produce huge distances by air and lorry resulting in road congestion too.

An excellent book that should be read by everyone. I rate it 10 stars! A real eye opener to how our food is made commercially. Take bread for example, it goes from flour to sliced loaf in half a hour! During food processing, the nutrients are removed and fed to animals, the waste product is fed to humans along with a cocktail of synthetic additives. All for increased shelf-life and profit. No wonder out health is suffering. It is time supermarkets took note and stop promoting foods that kill. Note how many of the bad fattening foods are on the BOGOF offers (buy one get one free).This fantastic book covers it all.

I used to be a supermarket fan but after reading the book I no longer shop at supermarkets but eat local. Far more flavour in the produce which is often locally grown. Not only has that boosted my health and energy but helped the helpful and friendly local trader who is suffering badly thanks to the supermarkets.

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3 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

Good read but a bit biased, 17 Mar 2006
Reviewer: A reader
This is a well written and I would award 5 stars for writing style alone. The problem is that there is a slight left wing biased slant to it (it was originally published by "The Gaurdian", after all). The suthor seems to blame everything that is wrong in society on the supermarkets, probably because they are capitalist systems. For example ill treatment of foreign workers in Spain could not all be blamed on supermarkets. In many countries you can get low paid mistreated workers in the building sector, you would probably get mistreated foreign workers in another sector if they were not producing food. It is just a part of globalisation and unscrupilous employers.
Then there is the organic angle; The fact that Food was so much more expensive before fertilisers existed is also not pointed out. Good points in this book were it's expose how little we know about the food that gets on our plate, the frighting relevence of oil and air miles in it.
Overall an Excellent book but ruined by bias.

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

I wish the whole world would read this book, 23 Feb 2006

Reviewer:

"brightondebs" - See all my reviews

I read this book when it first came out and the changes it made to my life continue. I don't shop in supermarkets and I eat local, organic, seasonal produce wherever possible. I think I can safely say it has forever changed my outlook on the food I eat. I found the book incredibly accessible - unlike some others I have read on this topic. I truly believe that if everyone read this book the world would be a better place. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

A must-read for anyone concerned about the food they eat., 19 Dec 2005

Reviewer:

Mrs. Joan V. Cecil (Gloucestershire UK) - See all my reviews

I have always thought of myself as very aware of the pitfalls surrounding the food we eat - I thought I knew most of them. This book has changed my shopping & eating habits drastically. I thought that at least the salad & vegetables on my plate were pretty safe - Not So! I now only buy my fruit & vegetables from a local source, with the (clean) dirt still on them - the question I now ask myself is, "How many hands?" How many people have handled the produce in the cleaning, packing & grading? More than 2 and I start to worry.No more out of season imported vegetables, we now live only on seasonal stuff.The free range organic chickens I have always bought don't have the same ring of confidence since I found that they could pass through the same production lines as the battery birds. I live in France for part of the year, and so look forward to my local markets where the person who grew or reared the food also sells to you.Minimum presentation,maximum taste. Read this book, & pass it among your friends, but be aware - it could change your food habits for ever (& for the better)

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4 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

READ IT ALL BEFORE..., 19 Sep 2005

Reviewer:

"menina15" - See all my reviews

Anyone who paid attention to the Guardian's 3-part Food supplement a year or two ago will be well-familiarised with Felicity Lawrence's revelatory style of journalism. Having read these supplements keenly at the time, I subsequently found the book to be recycled from her original Guardian pieces, which was highly disappointing. The style of the book flits inconsistently between many topics, making it hard to keep track. Lawrence's style works well in journalistic pieces, where punchy facts are necessary. Expanding a series of facts into a patchy and poorly-threaded-together book makes this a letdown. Anyone who takes an interest in this type of thing will probably be familiar with most of her supposed "revelations". Having read "Fast Food Nation", a similar stye of book, I find "Not On the Label" inferior and a let-down.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Sane and balanced analysis and good research, 1 Sep 2005

Reviewer:

Chie Higashino - See all my reviews

The author does an excellent job of showing why the power that supermarkets exert on our lives should be feared. She does the legwork and talks from knowledge. She presents a balanced account, but the message is clear. We eat junk and the supermarkets actually encourage the production of junk food and use every trick in the book that is not actual illegal to get us to think that we are getting value and quality. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I do not agree with the food scientist reviewer. To be sure, many journalists are not qualified scientists. However, food is too important a social issue to be left to arrogant 'experts'. Lay people are also entitled to informed opinions about what we put in our bodies and our children's. Moreover, we should have learnt by now that trusting scientists entirely is folly, especially if they are employed by the industry that wants a particular result. Just as we do not trust the results of 'scientific' tests produced by scientists who are funded by the pharmaceutical industry, so should we not believe the messages that additives and chemicals that food scientists put in our food and spray on our crops are safe so long as the people producing and inventing the chemicals are employed by the food industry.

The most worrying aspect of the supermarket industry is that it destroys local economies that have taken centuries to develop and makes us more and more dependant on supplies from unstable regimes thousands of miles away. This structure of our food economy looks more and more insane and ill-planned as oil prices skyrocket. We have no back-up plan when the cargo jets stop flying food to us from half way round the world when the cost becomes prohibitive.

I personally like the seasonality of food. Food in season tastes better and requires less energy to produce. It adds variety to the diet and gives an appreciation of the fluctuation of the seasons. Force-grown strawberries or tomatoes are tasteless and expensive to grow. Their cost in fuel miles show that it is a false choice.

Lawrence is right all the way through with her conclusions. It is important not to be too dogmatic, but we can make sensible, rational choices for ourselves and our children. I am prepared to pay a bit more for healthier food grown locally if it takes power away from supermarket bosses, who do not really care about the nation's health and wellbeing. And the more of us who follow this strategy the more likely alternative supply prices are to come down and become competitive. Read Leo Dickman's "A Life Stripped Bare" for how to start changing lifestyles in a positive, rational way.

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