How We Eat: The Brave New World of Food and Drink by Paco Underhill

How We Eat: The Brave New World of Food and Drink Reviews

• 
  Tiffany Lee

  Overall, How We Eat has many interesting tidbits about grocery stores and food supply. My biggest complaint was that Underhill didn't do a good job tying all his observations into one coherent narrative. Most of the time, it felt like "oh here's one thing" and "oh here's another thing." I learned a bunch of trivia, but not really a full picture of the "brave new world of food and drink," as the subtitle so boldly advertised.
• 
  Nancy

  This was a fascinating look at various aspects of the food we eat and how we choose it. Broader than Secret Life of Groceries, this one also explored eating out and how food is marketed to us rather than the supply chain aspect of eating. It also looked at new ways of shopping for food and growing food. Very interesting and engaging.
• 
  Elyse Lawson

  3 ⭐️ I love anything to do with food so the opportunity to learn more about our food system, where it has been and where it is going, sounded right up my alley.
  
  I enjoyed the interesting facts about food supply and grocery stores that Underhill shared, but the anecdotal nature of this book wasn’t for me. My interest began to wane about half way through, as it felt like Underhill was regurgitating transcripts and struggling to synthesize the research. In the end, I did appreciate the worthwhile facts shared and poignant questions posed that caused me think about how we all buy and eat our food — for that reason I would recommend it to others!
• 
  Natalie Park

  3.5 stars. I found the parts about how the shopping experience is set up and gets to markets to be interesting but at points the book seemed to lose its way especially in the middle and end.
• 
  Noëlibrarian

  Paco!
  
  He's so good. If you haven't given much thought to the whys of food shopping, this book is a good place to begin. And if you're up for further reading, pick up The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr.
• 
  Patrick Pilz

  The book starts very promising on grocery retail but drifts into mediocrity when it starts to print page upon page dialogues to illustrate a point. It talks a lot about shifts on the demand side but lacks a view on the changes on the supply side almost completely.
  
  When it comes to changes on How we eat, this feels not timely at all.
• 
  Jan Peregrine

  How We Eat~~~
  
  Paco Underhill's 2022 book, How We Eat: The Brave New World of Food and Drink may make you think of Aldous Huxey's classic novel Brave New World, but I promise you he doesn't talk about a frightening new drug called soma that everybody's hooked on. Honestly, a case could be made that way too many of us are hooked on opioids, which is tragic, or on cannabis, which might be more similar to soma and yet isn't addictive. His book is instead about the present and future consumption of food and drink.
  
  The least interesting chapter for me was about our love of alcohol and how every place offers libations, including movie theaters and airports. I can't see public libraries following the trend to offer food or drink. I would have rather heard that places would offer chilled water in the future instead.
  
  Twenty percent of the book had to be rewritten because of how the pandemic has changed our social and culinary habits.
  
  Underhill has been studying and writing about our food and drink choices around the world for decades. He's been in supermarkets on every continent and major city. Often he checks out Farmer's Markets, making me anxious for my local one to begin. The locally-grown food industry has grown significantly and will continue to do so everywhere.
  
  While he talks about the problems of supermarket design, he says it won't completely go away as online grocery shopping keeps becoming more popular. Picking out produce is much more satisfying than relying on a stranger or robot.
  
  I was intrigued to hear that grocery store parking lots will soon offer greenhouses where you can choose your growing plant food.
  
  He interviewed many people at the forefront of what's going on in the changing food industry, including someone training hydroponic farmers and providing great produce at a fraction of the resources and with much more to offer a wasteful, warming, hungry world. Also a woman who knows all about Farmer's Markets and another woman I've read, Marion Nestle.
  
  It's not a book advocating veganism, if you're wondering.
  
  In fact, when he's talking with supermarket customers about the growing popularity in plant-based meats, they wondered why vegans need them to taste like animal meat. Great question and I have no great answer. I don't eat plant-based meat and have never wanted to. For some new vegans they need transition food or want to be social with non-vegans. I hope they don't remain junk food vegans or hooked on lab-grown meat, but you know what?
  
  Maybe junk food is our soma. It's not so much a brave new world as it is a cowardly old world dressed up for the next party!
• 
  Susana

  Una muy interesante reflexión sobre cuál puede ser el futuro de las compras de comida (groceries), desde un punto de vista muy norteamericano, donde pareciera una "nueva moda" cocinar desde los ingredientes crudos (cook from scratch), que en nuestros países latinoamericanos, quiero pensar, nunca se perdió, que los mercados a cielo abierto, con productos directo desde el campesino o al menos desde un centro de acopio mayor, nunca se ha perdido.
  
  La comparación de como se aproximan al hecho de comprar los ingredientes para preparar la comida entre países es fascinante:
  
  

  de los italianos "And there you have it—a conversation about the future of the supermarket that begins with Calvino and ends with Dostoevsky. Just more evidence that when it comes to food, Italians really are different. But what will all this mean for the rest of the world?"
  
  en Estados Unidos "I think people are naturally suspicious of too much innovation where food is concerned."

  
  Algunos comentarios que pueden sonar sexistas fuera de contexto, pero que expresan el cambio en el papel de la mujer en la cocina, en el trabajo y en su aproximación a la comida:
  
  

  "Whenever I go to a restaurant today, I’ll always look around to measure the gender ratio. If the diners are mostly women, you can bet that the food and atmosphere will be very good."
  
  "But just as women were fleeing the kitchen, men were tentatively entering it."

  
  De lo que los compradores esperan de la experiencia de compra, cuando compran los ingredientes de su cocina:
  
  

  "Today, we all desire food narratives; we want to know the things we eat and drink in a way we never could (or cared to) before."

  
  De la necesidad de transformar la experiencia de compra, de gigantescos supermercados, almacenes verticales de comida masiva con cientos de miles de productos diferentes, a una verdadera experiencia, algo divertido y diferente:
  
  

  "When people consistently say they are pressed for time and want to spend less of it shopping for food, will they fall in love with stores that offer experiences instead of efficiencies? Or do we want both? Don’t we always?

  
  En cualquier caso, los libros de Paco Underhill siempre son interesantes, bien escritos y entretenidos, con un punto de vista no convencional, basado en la observación, de años de observación de compradores, en todo el mundo.
• 
  Casey

  Fascinating and incredibly specific research about the evolution of food consumption. Half on the supermarket, half on home cooking v fast food.
  
  Shout out to golden pantry! He doesn't say the name, but mentions how someone in GA told him that the best chicken biscuit could be found at a gas station.
• 
  Roxanne

  I did not really know what to expect from this book, but I loved everything about it!
  
  Excellent and unique insights into consumers' interactions with food presented in an understandable manner.
  
  Can't wait to read more by Paco Underhill.
• 
  Anna

  A very thoughtful and thought provoking book from an author I have enjoyed from his first book (
  Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping).
• 
  Erin Cloutier

  I wasn’t the target audience for this, but there were points that were interesting. My biggest frustration was the lack of synthesis on his research, everything felt anecdotal, especially the long running dialogs. It was fun in the one focus group chapter, but all chapters (especially the Musk one) made this lose its charm. I would like to see more sources and other background facts to mix the qual with some quant.
• 
  Venky

  The founder of Envirosell Inc, a global research and consulting firm, and bestselling author, Paco Underhill in his new book, How We Eat elucidates how removed we as a collective humanity are from the primary source of our sustenance, food. While the elaborate and intricate process of how we produce, procure, and consume our food is undergoing, or has already undergone a paradigm shift, we blissfully continue to be oblivious of such far reaching changes that have immense and intense ramifications on our health and well-being.
  
  The distinction between urban and rural eating is fast blurring with the consumer’s preference to source food ‘locally.’ Even in a teeming urban sprawl such as New York, could be found on a weekly basis, farmer’s markets that lure customers seeking produce that are freshly transported to the market. The onion or garlic with soil still stuck to their sides bear testimony to the freshness of a produce. Supermarkets, on the other hand, tempt shoppers with some carefully – and professionally – constructed psychological maneuvers.
  
  At the very front of the supermarket would be displayed a dazzling array of flowers and plants. But as Underhill argues, the ‘secret in-store weapon’ of every supermarket is its alluring bakery. No olfactory nerve can escape the seductive lure of the myriad aromas wafting from the bakery and its assemblage of delicacies. The formidable troika of flowers, bakery and produce act upon our connected sense of smells and taste thereby exacerbating our proclivity to make a purchase – or two!
  
  The bewildering choice that stares a consumer in her face is an information overload that confuses than convinces a potential purchaser. Take eggs for instance. A supermarket these days offers a bewildering choice of eggs. What once was a simple box of eggs is now a concoction of labels. “Cage-free” eggs, “free-range eggs,” “all-natural” eggs, and “gluten-free” eggs all compete with one another for a customer’s wallet. There is even a variety that boasts about its chickens having bred on a strictly “vegetarian” diet!
  
  For the eager and the intrepid, there are provided QR codes on the packages of various products. Scanning the QR codes will at times take the consumer to a video elaborating not just on the organic sources of the ingredient and the method of their preparation or harvesting, but also enlist the services of a chef to magnanimously provide a couple of recipes which may be dished up using the product under question.
  
  The way in which our food is being produced is also undergoing a significant transformation. Square Roots, a ‘modular farm’ in Brooklyn founded by Tobias and Kimbal Musk, the brother of Elon Musk, uses hydroponic techniques to grow various produce throughout the year with lot less land and water that is otherwise, the preserve of a conventional farm. The plants at Square Roots enjoy perfect environmental conditions, such as humidity, light, and temperature levels, all year round. Thus, replication of conditions for a particular produce grown in any part of the world can be reproduced to the “T” in a modular farm, thereby ensuring the presence and availability of even non-seasonal products at any point in time.
  
  One of the biggest, if not the biggest changes that is apparent in the method of consumption, especially post the COVID-19 pandemic, has been the total absence of human interaction between the producer/supplier and the customer. An already app-infested world where products were delivered at the buyer’s doorstep has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Earlier, we used to at least greet the delivery personnel as he/she dropped off our orders with a smile and a wink. A well-deserved tip at times also embellished the goodwill between patron and producer. However, in a post-COVID scenario, even this bare minimum contact has come to an unfortunate end. Packages are now left in the lobby to be collected at convenient times.
  
  “How We Eat” is a much-needed wake up call for resuming a connection between the consumer and the food that is being consumed in such a way that makes the relationship much more meaningful and fulfilling.
• 
  Jill Furedy

  I enjoyed the first couple of books by Paco Underhill. I learned a lot from Why we Buy that I still use in the retail side of my work today. Call of the Mall - well, I don't remember much, but I think I still found it interesting. What Women Want really disappointed me. I found that one mostly useless and he felt out of date and out of touch to me. This one falls somewhere in between. There were bits and pieces that I found interesting and others that reminded me that maybe the author is rather out of date and out of touch.
  
  For instance, he writes about people driving through the drive through at restaurants and then pulling over to eat in the parking lot. He hypothesizes about why that might be. But his job is that kind of research, right? Why is he just hypothesizing? I don't think we saw any research about it. I also found it strange that his guess is that women eat in their cars so as not to be bothered by strange men. Rather than many other options that might contribute - them wanting peace and quiet with no screaming children, or music they didn't choose, etc. Lots of people aren't comfortable eating somewhere by themselves (or attending movies by themselves, etc) as they see that as a social activity and feel out of place or uncomfortable doing that on their own. Also, there is the fact that most fast food places are understaffed and the tables and chairs are often filthy. No mention of that.
  
  Another thing I found odd is that in a section where they are looking at an article called 'Is the Kitchen Dead'? he discusses how millennials are three times more likely than their parents 'to eat meals made by someone else'. Which sounds like delivery, take out, meal prep etc. But if I recall, aren't there studies showing more people living in multigenerational households now? Kids who move back in with their parents after college because the housing market is ridiculous and they are weighed down by student loans, etc. So maybe someone else in the house is doing the cooking, just not them. It doesn't mean the kitchen is unused, does it? (Though if you judge by HGTV shows, everyone on there wants a giant professional grade chef's kitchen). But again, it seemed like general musing by the author and no facts.
  
  One last oddity - there is a section about the future of grocery stores where he discusses working with an Italian client and trying to set up the store about meals - a breakfast section, etc, instead of the current set up with bread on one aisle, milk in another section, etc. And he says it failed - sales dropped. I would have liked a better look at how they set things up, and what happened after sales dropped - did they scrap everything entirely, or did they retain any changes? And what did Underhill's company learn from the experience that was useful? What were customers doing when they entered the store, what did they stop to look at, were they confused or frustrated by the set up?
  
  Anyway, there were a few useful or interesting points in there, and it was a fairly easy read. But to stick with the food terminology - I would have liked a little more to sink my teeth into.
• 
  Renato

  I fear my expectations were too high upon picking this up; I had expected this book to focus on the science of eating and food preferences. What I got instead was the sociology of how we obtain food, as told by a corporate consultant from a market research standpoint. If you are interested in facts about how supermarkets are designed (inside and out) with a look of what we can expect/aspire to for the future, this would be the book for you.
  
  That said, I felt that Mr Underhill used too many "We" statements when making vague generalizations about foodseeking behaviours - the entire book is rife with them. Also, this book could have been two chapters shorter, namely the chapter where he speaks to two influenceers, and the chapter where it is a round table on what people think their preferences are for the grocery store of the future. Both of these chapters were pure dunnage.
  
  One topic that I did enjoy was the one with the Walmart quality expert, and how they discussed 'redesigning produce' in a manner without genetic modification (i.e. controling the growth conditions of cantelope to determine that they maximize the cantelope-like features).
  
  All in all, if you want a book from people who derive their data by literlaly following and watching people while they shop, then
  How We Eat: The Brave New World of Food and Drink would be the read for you!
  
• 
  Meghan

  This book was received as an ARC from Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.
  
  Processed food has been the norm plus an issue with nutrition since the beginning of time. It's mind-blowing the ingredients used to manufacture and manipulate some of our favorite snacks, sauces, meats, and unfortunately produce. Paco Underhill did an informative and optimistic approach into tackling this issue to increase awareness to the American people. Now, there are more trends sweeping the nation like farm to table, city living like the country and growing own food saving calories and money. This book will make you not only appreciate food more but life in general.
  
  We will consider adding this title to our Non-Fiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.
• 
  Gregory

  Although not currently employed in food service, at one point in my life I did work in the accounting department of a now defunct natural foods chain, and have always had an interest in how we make, sell, and eat food. This book scratches some of that itch. Its very chatty with pages of dialogue transcriptions (or recreations of conversations). It can be amusing and interesting but sometimes a little tedious. There are some interesting observations on changing food buying and marketing habits. However, not sure what to do with it all though as a consumer. Produce might be grown in a container instead of on a farm. Ok. Women are buying more alcohol. Ok. Authenticity counts. Agree. Ok. But then what? Most of our food system doesn't feel all that authentic anyway (and its worse if you start peeling back the layers).
• 
  Sofya

  May be it's the wrong timing or my high expectations from the author or the title, but the book is unexpectedly mediocre...
  
  There are a lot of good titles and authors skilled on the topic (both food supply chains, retail and foodservice business and sociology of consumption) mostly in Europe. I would not recommend this book neither for HoReCa and retail professional nor for general public interested in a topic.
  
  It's dull, hard to read, narrative is jumping from theme to theme, transcripts of conversations are excessive and it's hard to cover the lack of understanding of the subject by cheerful dialogues or anecdotes.
  
  Also I found Underhill' style of storytelling that fascinated me in mid-2000s very annoying.
• 
  Josiah Richardson

  Paco Underhill, the founder of Envirosell, has studied the science of shopping, the lure of retail stores, and now pointed his sights towards one of America's favorite pastimes - eating. The title might make you think this is related to the anatomical process of eating food, but it's truly about how we buy food itself, where we find places to get that food, how they grow and manufacture the food we like, and what the future has in store for us in agriculture. Interesting journey throughout, a few sections where the words went by like an army of ants - just one after another and it was at times a slog.
• 
  Andrea Patrick

  Good stuff by Paco Underhill, whose Why We Buy is a classic. The blurb here on Goodreads makes this book sound way more depressing than it actually is. Underhill does a great job of being informative without being alarmist, and shows that real-world solutions are not only possible but already in motion.
  
  This is a book that ought to be interesting to just about everyone. If you shop at supermarkets, you'll be interested. It's a quick read, very informal in style, and, rare for a state-of-the-world-today book, it won't leave you feeling depressed.
• 
  Aaron

  This is an entertaining if a bit depressing account of human behavior as it pertains to marketing and consuming food. Paco has spent his professional life studying food retailing and provides a lot of great insights with sometimes startling habits and biases we harbor. The book is easy to read, most of us can relate to much of the environments described. I found his discussion of packaging very hard to see happening in my lifetime, but it would be a welcome change.
• 
  Matt

  Paco's "Why we buy" is one of those rare books that makes you look at something you do nearly every day in a totally different way. It sticks with you and you see its lessons in your day-to-day dealings with the world of retail. "How we Eat" aims to follow in that tradition. It's a breezy read full of personal detail and conversation. Insightful, as always.
• 
  John Papeika

  This book was very disappointing. I’ve read all of Underhill’s books and loved them, especially Call of the Mall; however, this book just doesn’t seem to have a flow. It’s a hodge podge of ideas and recaps of discussions without the research to support the information which has been a staple of his other books.