Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee - The Dark History of the Food Cheats

Remember Love Hearts? Those pastel tablets of sherbert with a message printed on each one, like a British version of the fortune cookie? I expected Swindled to be about the brain rotting consequences of the hideous chemicals used in delicacies just like these. I settled down, full of delightful anticipation of statistics proving that consuming Jammie Dodgers makes other people's children (not mine of course) uncontrollable psychopaths.

I was disappointed. Not Swindled (the title is a tempting target, but just too easy), because the book is about food counterfeiting, but not the kind I was expecting to read about. Instead I got an account of the attempts of some early chemists to find out what was actually happening to the food that people were sold during Victorian times and a cautionary tale of how laissez faire politics allows the unscrupulous to prosper. It was, nevertheless, illuminating to discover that in France, where the government maintained strict food standards (no French person, whatever their political beliefs, can countenance interference with la baguette) additions of bone meal, sawdust and potato to the daily staple were unheard of, although commonplace across La Manche during the same period. The parallels between the Thatcher years with their multiple food crises (BSE and salmonella anyone?) are easy to draw.

Still, it's a well researched and clearly written read and there are of some modern day examples towards the end, including the wonderful, but sadly apocryphal tale of the mass manufacture of fake eggs in China. Complete with fake wax shell. These wily foreigners...

My BOOK OF THE YEAR? (4/4 people found this helpful)

This could quite easily become my BOOK OF THE YEAR.

We are all familiar with the frequent reports of food crises which are the bread and butter of journalists from both tabloids and broadsheets, and many of us can remember the Salmonella in eggs scare that Edwina Currie was involved in, and John Gummer feeding his child beef during the BSE crises - the sensationalism of the media and the way in which the stories were covered sold a lot of newspapers.

There is however not one whiff of sensationalism in this rather splendid book by Bee Wilson which, despite some considerable delving into the politics and industrial games involved in food production, is an absolute page turner.

I think the average reader will finish reading this book having learnt a great deal more than he or she expected, and no doubt feeling more alert to his or her environment.

Despite the nastiness of some of the swindles and the unsavoury qualities of some of the adulterants that Bee Wilson writes about, this book does not leave a bad taste in the mouth, on the contrary I rather feel happier about going out to buy my food.

I cannot recommend this book enough.

Gripping story of food, greed and corruption (12/12 people found this helpful)

This is a fantastic book. If you have enjoyed reading any of hte various other recent accounts of what has gone wrong with food in the course of the past hundred years -- such as Michael Pollan's In Praise of Food -- then this will be a mnst-buy. But Iw ould recommend reading Wilson over Pollan and the others. Wilson lacks Pollan's smugness, and writes more wittily., and takes a much longer (and betteer-informed) historical view She reminds us that attempts to "taint" food with false ingredients are almost as old as human history: there have always been greed and avarice, and food sellers have always been out for a quick buck. This historical and sociological awareness allows her to put her finger on precisely what is distinctive about modern food scares and modern junk food. Wilson makes a convincing case that we in the west, perhaps especially in Britain (for distinctive historical reasons), have lost even a concept of what real food should be: what, for instance, are the proper ingredients of a loaf of bread. A particularly illuminating chapter reminds us that for most ofhuman history, wine has been adulterated (to hide the fact that it was usually very bad), but bread wa usually pure -- when people put sand in hte bread, it was an obvious adulterante. Now, things are the other way around We hardly know what it would mean to purchase "pure" bread; all supermarket loaves are full of mysterious e-numbers. If you have any interest in what you eat, you have to read this book; buying a loaf of bread will never be the same. I am not a foodie or a food history buff, but I found this book totally gripping, both as an account of food, and also as a study in human nature. It reads like a detective story: the kind where you know that everybody is out to cheat everybody else, but there is some guiding and charming intelligence, in this case Wilson's, which will make it all make sense; , and even turns a story of corruption into something like comfort reading. Wilson is both earnedly serious about social and ethical evils, and also very funny. Swindling is one of the great comic subjects of all time, maybe because it's so horrid to get swindled. I couldn't put this book down till I finished it. An easy five stars!

Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee - The Dark History of the Food Cheats

Bee Wilson

Reader Reviews:

Sweets for the sweet (1/1 people found this helpful)

My BOOK OF THE YEAR? (4/4 people found this helpful)

Gripping story of food, greed and corruption (12/12 people found this helpful)

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