Grocery

April 24, 2017
In this savory investigation of grocery stores, the supermarket is no cesspool of mindless consumerism but a dynamic embodiment of changing diets and mores. Ruhlman (The Soul of a Chef) profiles Cleveland’s Heinen supermarkets, interviewing the owners, shadowing buyers at new-product expos, even bagging groceries at checkout (an astonishingly sophisticated art). Inspired by his father’s love of shopping, Ruhlman’s view of supermarkets is a sympathetic one that debunks many bad raps foisted on food retailers—the milk is in the back because the dairy cases fit there, not to make shoppers walk past the other products—and revels in the sheer abundance that supermarkets offer and the logistic miracles that make this abundance possible. Ruhlman is less sanguine about the processed foods supermarkets sell, which he feels are ruining our health—“breakfast cereal,” he warns, “is a kind of unseen, underground threat, humming endlessly away, like missiles”—and launches ill-considered admonishments to buy organic and beware of GMOs. Much of the book is a fascinating portrait of how the sustainability movement is revolutionizing groceries with an avalanche of local produce, grass-fed meat, organic everything, and nutritional supplements. (Heinen’s “wellness department” is advised by a chief medical officer.) The soapboxing sometimes overreaches, but Ruhlman’s lively reportage yields an engrossing tour of the aisles.