Grocery

Michael Ruhlman takes a close look at how Americans buy and think about food by turning his attention to the supermarket, a place most shoppers pass through without a second thought. Our national fixation on food is intense: we argue over its appearance and flavor, its origins, and its effects on our health, yet the answers rarely come easily. Ruhlman suggests that practical guidance on eating thoughtfully may already be within reach, on the shelves of the store down the road.

To ground his reporting, Ruhlman follows Heinen's, a family-owned grocery chain in the Midwest, and uses its story to explore the largely unseen world of supermarkets and the way food is grown, sold, and eaten. The book traces how these stores, and the food culture around them, have changed since the days when shoppers knew the person behind the counter.

Rather than longing for that earlier era, Ruhlman asks why Americans' needs from food shifted after the mid-twentieth century, and how those shifts reflect broader changes in the culture itself.