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The Dark History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee
Princeton University Press
September 2008
On Sale: September 8, 2008
400 pages
ISBN: 0691138206
EAN: 9780691138206
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Bad food has a history. Swindled tells it. Through a
fascinating mixture of cultural and scientific history, food
politics, and culinary detective work, Bee Wilson uncovers
the many ways swindlers have cheapened, falsified, and even
poisoned our food throughout history. In the hands of people
and corporations who have prized profits above the health of
consumers, food and drink have been tampered with in often
horrifying ways--padded, diluted, contaminated, substituted,
mislabeled, misnamed, or otherwise faked. Swindled gives a
panoramic view of this history, from the leaded wine of the
ancient Romans to today's food frauds--such as fake organics
and the scandal of Chinese babies being fed bogus milk powder. Wilson pays special attention to nineteenth- and
twentieth-century America and England and their roles in
developing both industrial-scale food adulteration and the
scientific ability to combat it. As Swindled reveals, modern
science has both helped and hindered food
fraudsters--increasing the sophistication of scams but also
the means to detect them. The big breakthrough came in
Victorian England when a scientist first put food under the
microscope and found that much of what was sold as "genuine
coffee" was anything but--and that you couldn't buy pure
mustard in all of London. Arguing that industrialization, laissez-faire politics, and
globalization have all hurt the quality of food, but also
that food swindlers have always been helped by consumer
ignorance, Swindled ultimately calls for both governments
and individuals to be more vigilant. In fact, Wilson
suggests, one of our best protections is simply to reeducate
ourselves about the joys of food and cooking.
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