Swindled

Bee Wilson

£9.99

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John Murray Pub Ltd
8 January 2009
ISBN: 9780719567766
Paperback
384 pages

From the publisher

Salmonella . . . toxins . . . additives . . . food scares . . . Have you ever wondered how our food has become so untrustworthy? Have we ever been able to trust what we eat?

Via a fascinating mix of food politics, history and culinary detective work, Bee Wilson uncovers the many methods by which swindlers have tampered with our food throughout history.

From the leaded wine of ancient Rome to the food piracy of the twenty-first century we see the extraordinary ways food has been padded, poisoned, spiked, coloured, substituted, faked and mislabelled everywhere it has been sold.

Bee Wilson reveals the strong historical currents which enable the fraudsters to flourish; the battle of the science of deception against the science of detection; the struggle to establish reliable standards. She also suggests some small ways in which we can all protect ourselves from swindles and learn to trust what we eat again.