Now in paperback, this New York Times bestselling work ofundercover journalism offers “a compelling and cogent argument that eating healthily ought to be easier”( The Cleveland Plain Dealer ). In this “clear and essential” ( The Boston Globe ) work of undercover reportage, award-winning journalist Tracie McMillan makes the simple case that—city or country, rich or poor—everyone wants good food. Taking jobs in the fields of California, a Walmart produce aisle outside of Detroit, and the kitchen of a New York City Applebee’s, McMillan leads us into the heart of America’s meals through this “moving first-person narrative” ( The Wall Street Journal). With startling intimacy she portrays the lives and food of Mexican garlic crews, Midwestern produce managers, and Caribbean line cooks—and chronicles her own attempts to live and eat on meager wages. Along the way, McMillan asks the questions still facing America a decade after the declaration of an obesity epidemic: Why do we eat the way we do? And how can we change it? To find out, she goes beyond the food on America’s plates to examine the national priorities that put it there. Fearlessly reported and beautifully written, The American Way of Eating goes beyond statistics and culture wars to deliver a book that is fiercely intelligent and compulsively readable. Talking about dinner will never be the same again.