Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

Food crimes--adulteration, fraud, slavery and exploitation, and bioterrorism, to name a few--have received comparatively little scholarly attention. Gray (Univ. of Windsor, Canada) and Hinch (Institute of Technology, Univ. of Ontario) gather an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars who consider food, immorality, and illegality from a variety of perspectives. Authors hail from Canada, the US, France, Australia, Brazil, Italy, the Philippines, the UK, the Netherlands, and China, and from disciplines as diverse as sociology, marketing, criminology, food studies, law, planning, and public health. Building on the work of Hazel Croall, the editors broadly define crime "beyond legalistic anthropocentric definitions" to include "economic and physical harms, issues of personal safety and health, and many different kinds of frauds" (from the introduction). The volume's 24 chapters are divided into eight equal sections, which roughly follow the food from farm to consumer. The quality of the scholarship is strong, and despite the rigorously multidisciplinary approach the editors make the text accessible to general academic readers. The first of its kind, A Handbook of Food Crime is a focused consideration of foundational work like Rob White's Environmental Crime: A Reader (2009).Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

This is a well-written, engaging book that explores a host of issues related to food processing. Temple, an independent scholar, begins by defining processing as "any action, chemical or mechanical, that is done to food in order to change it or to preserve it." The introductory chapter considers the evolution of food processing from its original purpose (to avoid starvation or food poisoning) to current techniques intended to optimize a food's convenience, taste, and aesthetic appeal. Subsequent chapters specifically address the history of processing for various kinds of foods and consider current controversies. Cheese and bread, two foods that have a long history of being processed, are considered first. Later chapters examine arguments regarding packaging, preservation, and transport of fresh fruits and vegetables; processing techniques for meat and protein; sugar; development of convenience foods; nanotechnology; and the future of processing. Temple touches on timely concerns throughout. For example, the chapter on bread provides an extended discussion of the growing prevalence of gluten intolerance. While references are not comprehensive, chapter citations provide enough information for the interested reader to pursue specific topics.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates, faculty, and general readers.