Real Food, Fake Food

Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do About It

By: Larry Olmsted

Narrated by: Jonathan Yen

You've seen the headlines: Parmesan cheese made from sawdust. Lobster rolls containing no lobster at all. Extra-virgin olive oil that isn't. Fake foods are in our supermarkets, our restaurants, and our kitchen cabinets. Award-winning food journalist and travel writer Larry Olmsted exposes this pervasive and dangerous fraud perpetrated on unsuspecting Americans.

Real Food, Fake Food brings listeners into the unregulated food industry, revealing that this shocking deception extends from high-end foods like olive oil, wine, and Kobe beef to everyday staples such as coffee, honey, juice, and cheese. It's a massive bait and switch where counterfeiting is rampant and where the consumer ultimately pays the price.

But Olmsted does more than show us what foods to avoid. A bona fide gourmand, he travels to the sources of the real stuff to help us recognize what to look for, eat, and savor: genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano from Italy, fresh-caught grouper from Florida, authentic port from Portugal. Real foods that are grown, raised, produced, and prepared with care by masters of their crafts.

©2016 Larry Olmsted (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Narrator Jonathan Yen's conversational, expressive style makes it easy for listeners to absorb the sometimes surprising information about the food they think they're purchasing.... Yen deftly handles the required accents as author Olmsted travels around the world...." ( AudioFile)

I'm going to buy several of this book to give to friends

Wow, so much I didn't know in here! I'm grateful the author gave some tips and alternatives, otherwise it would have been pretty bleak. Overall, riveting and informative.

If you can get past the narrator...

Any additional comments?

I have to disagree with those who enjoyed this narration. Maybe it’s just a personal thing, but to me he Over. Emphasized. EV-ER-Y-THING! Every utterance of the word “delicious” was stretched out to 4 or 5 syllables. Every sentence seemed to end with an exclamation point. This was exhausting to listen to; it was harder to root out any emphasis intended by the author, because EVERYTHING was emphasized, and so nothing was. (This was one of the few times I found myself wondering if this would have been better read by the author.) If the excellent “Parmesan” chapter hadn’t come so early in the book, I might not have persevered.

The book itself gets a little repetitious, and spends a lot of time on foods I cannot currently eat, let alone afford; but that doesn’t mean I don’t like learning about them. And some of its points could perhaps have been explained more clearly. But it’s hard to say for sure, because I found the narration so obnoxious. Imagine being read to by someone who assumes you don’t speak English very well, or are hard of hearing, or are very stupid. And the attempts at accents (especially Australian) were just unfortunate… especially since they foist that overenthusiastic style of speaking onto every person quoted. It was jarring.

There is important information here, if you’re the type to care about what you’re eating. One begins to wonder just what they DO get done on the food side at the FDA, and what the USDA is even there for. It’s disheartening to realize I’ll have to read labels even more carefully now. But I’m also looking forward to visiting the cheese counter soon.

A note on those who found the book elitist, because so many of the “real” foods are too pricey for most of us to afford: I think they’re missing the point, or maybe just don’t care that much about whether something is what it says it is. In one enlightening but too-short bit, the author mentions the sad case of bologna (rare and special in Italy, “punishment” food in the US, all because its name was so successfully coopted and devalued). Those people can enjoy their crappy Korbel “champagne” at New Years. I’ll take water if those are my only choices.

Also, the author states (in the conclusion, so perhaps too late for some) that he is not wealthy himself and only aspires to someday reach “upper middle class”. Food is obviously a priority for him, and he’ll save up for the good stuff, or the best he can afford. I certainly can’t begrudge him that, though I may envy him his trips to Italy and Japan.

Very good information

I loved this audio book! I spent 30 minutes in my local supermarket and left with only olive oil.

fascinating and educational

Any additional comments?

This is part travel book, part foody book, part health book, but all enjoyable. See my full review at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfr9p5KhEX8

learned so much!!

I loved thus book! Every human, especially women bringing up the next generation should read this book! Don't be duped. our government is not protecting us. Know where you food comes from and made it yourself!!