Spoiled: The Dangerous Truth About a Food Chain Gone Haywire [Hardcover]

Nicols Fox (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1997

From killer hamburgers to contaminated strawberries, the dangers of food have been placed squarely in the public eye, but people remain critically under informed. Now a seasoned journalist and investigative reporter provides the facts behind the frenzy in an impeccably researched and accessible book about food-borne illnesses.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Despite frequent media accounts of such unpleasant matters as mad cow disease and outbreaks of food poisoning at fast-food restaurants, Nicols Fox argues, we know too little about the threat that current methods of food manufacture and distribution pose to health. Citing Center for Disease Control figures that put the food poisoning count alone at more than 81 million cases a year in the United States, she notes that in many countries it is unsafe to eat the skins of uncooked vegetables, eggs, ground meat, and other staples. Part of the problem lies in advances in transportation and storage technology, which allow us to consume foods grown very far away and at all seasons; part lies in the fact that bacteria are evolving to survive efforts to contain them. Fox's book is alarming--but appropriately so. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Much has been written in journal articles about the increasing dangers faced by consumers when pathogenic microbes contaminate their food. Journalist Fox provides an in-depth analysis on foodborne pathogens; where they originate, how they are spread, why the incidence of foodborne illness is increasing, and what might be done to help alleviate the problem. Using numerous case studies, she examines contaminates such as salmonella, campylobacter, C. botulinum and V. cholerae. The E. coli hamburger outbreaks and "Mad Cow" disease are each allocated a lengthy chapter. Fox skillfully illustrates how changes in our social traditions and in industrial processing methods have provided hospitable niches for new and existing microbes. Competing agendas by the food industries, food regulators, scientists, politicians and the media have delayed improvements to the situation. Written for the lay reader, this frightening volume ends with a very brief listing of ways to minimize foodborne illnesses. Recommended for all libraries.?Tina Neville, Univ. of South Florida at St. Petersburg Lib.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465019803
• ISBN-13: 978-0465019809
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,079,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will change the way you eat, September 14, 2002

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spoiled: The Dangerous Truth about a Food Chain Gone Haywire (Paperback)

This book is a brilliant investigation into the present state of our food supply. Many of us have read scattered news items about food poisoning outbreaks here and there, but have never really noticed what's been happening to our food supply. In this book, Fox brings together hundreds of stories of outbreaks, and through them, brings the elusive big picture into focus. Fox takes us behind the burger counters back to the factory farm, where chickens are sick, and cows are fattened up on the dung and bedding from the sick chickens. The manure from the chicken-dung eating cows is spread on apple orchards, and all of the sudden organic apple cider must be pasteurized to kill the e. coli. Before reading this book, I wondered why eating raw cookie dough never made me sick as a child, but now we're cautioned never even to consider such dangerous habits. As Fox explains, eating raw eggs wasn't dangerous before, but thanks to modern agribusiness practices, chickens have salmonella in their ovaries, so all eggs must be assumed to be tainted As a result, the only safe egg these days is one whose yolk is cooked solid- -eating eggs sunny-side up is akin to Russian roulette.

Fox's main message is that it is vitally important to know who grew your food and how, as well as who cooked your food. If you choose to eat meat, you should know where the meat came from. In the interests of making a profit, factory farms feed meat and milk animals waste products including diseased animal parts and dung. Even if the animals are able to digest such a diet, bacteria and other pathogens from such a diet eventually end up on our plates. Hamburger meat is exceptionally risky since a single pound can include meat from hundreds of individual cows, and if any one of those hundreds carries a pathogen, the entire lot of meat will be tainted. The only way to be reasonably sure of getting healthy meat is to purchase it from a farmer that you know, someone whose farm you can visit in person. Meanwhile, food handlers and preparers seem to be less and less familiar with basic rules of food safety. Fox mentions supermarket workers who don't know the dangers of dented or bulging cans, and teenagers earning minimum wage frying meat at burger joints who have never cooked anything before in their lives. She stresses how important it is not to assume that food is safe just because it is on sale. Sure, the USDA, FDA, and threat of lawsuits give the consumer some protection, but a lawsuit is of little use in bringing a child back to life after a little case of food poisoning.

Living in Dubai, my husband and I experience at least one incidence of food poisoning per month, despite being cautious about where and what we eat. We have learned to inspect every package carefully in the supermarket, considering the country of origin, the condition of the container, and the manner in which the goods are stored. In restaurants, we choose our food not by what looks tastiest, but instead by what is least likely to be tainted. We've seen supermarket food handlers at the deli counter blithely lift dripping raw chickens over cooked ones and we've become vegetarians out of necessity. In this book, Fox argues that it's up to American consumers to see that their food supply doesn't continue to go the same way.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What You Don't Know Will Hurt You, March 25, 1999

By 

David Kleist - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spoiled: The Dangerous Truth about a Food Chain Gone Haywire (Paperback)

Fox's well-researched book is shocking. Mad Cow Disease is a trivial problem compared to some of the others revealed in this fascinating investigation into the underbelly and oversights of America's food industry.

But also check out Peter Phillips' CENSORED 1999's top censored news story for an additional jolt: a government near you soon will be wholly beholden to any corporation which chooses to violate the already-established food laws. If the powers that be get their way, the stories in fox's SPOILED will be barely the tip of the iceberg in a few short years.

Wake up, America! Read this book and raise some hell! How? Call your local, state, and federal representatives and tell them you're not going to take it any longer!

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Important reading for everyone., March 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Spoiled: The Dangerous Truth about a Food Chain Gone Haywire (Paperback)

I found out about the book because it was referenced at the end of Robin Cook's book Toxin. The author gives detailed accounts of numerous outbreaks of contaminated food. She shows that what we were lead to believe was an isolated incident, is not an isolated incident. I was amazed to find out that Russia demanded higher standards for the chickens that are shipped to their country, but as American citizens we have not asked for higher standards.

She points out that consumers have been blamed for not using proper food handling when in fact the food producer is at fault for not providing safe food.

While I really liked the book, I gave it only 4 stars because at times the book can be a little too detailed. I found it difficult to keep reading the book at times.