The Secret Life of Groceries

Description

The Secret Life of Groceries looks past orderly supermarket aisles to examine the people, negotiations, and supply chains that produce American abundance. Drawing on five years of research and hundreds of interviews, Benjamin Lorr follows products toward the shelf and asks how their prices—and their less visible social costs—are determined. His investigation moves among Trader Joe’s business model, truckers’ working lives, certification labels, food entrepreneurs competing for placement, and exploitation in the shrimp industry. Together, these subjects reveal how convenience and efficiency depend on labor performed far from the shopper’s view. Rather than treating the grocery store as a neutral marketplace, Lorr presents it as the endpoint of a human system in which ambition, pressure, ingenuity, and inequality shape everyday choices.

Themes