A STUDENT REVIEW of THE SAFE FOOD HANDBOOK

I had a student review of my book forwarded to me today. If I remember correctly, the book was given to the senior seminar class in this Los Angeles school to read over the Christmas vacation, along with Food, Inc. and In Defense of Food. I am cut-and-pasting it as sent to me, with no editing. A refreshing change from the more formal reviews in Library Journal and other publications.

"I found this book to be the most important that we have read so far. It wasn’t geared towards our food system so much as the risks hiding behind the health claims and cartoon mascots. There are so many dangers involved with our eating that we are completely unaware of, for good reason. I think this book did a great job giving the information in a very straight forward manner. The things I found most off putting about the previous books was their tendency to feel a bit repetitive and one sided. They focused mainly on how the food industry fails to do what is necessary to keep our food healthy and safe but without all the specifics mentioned in this book. It is important to know the exact ways in which people are failing to keep up the standards we need in order to have safe food. But it is even more important to know what the risks are in the first place because they are conveniently kept from us to make sure profits remain high and complaints remain scarce. Even though I completely believe the previous books have it right, I would rather read books that do not feel biased when it comes to food safety. There is enough confusion when it comes to food safety as it is. This book in every way just tells the honest truth about the serious food safety issues that the public has every right to be knowledgable about. It really enlightened me, especially about the dangers involved with seafood. I wish there were more books out there that gave such an unvarnished and unbiased viewpoint on these food problems."

Nice.. thank you, whoever you are. I especially like the fact that the review is actually based on reading the book. Some on Amazon are not! How can you intelligently and fairly review a book you have not even flipped through?

TSF