Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do About It

“Olmsted makes you insanely hungry and steaming mad--a must-read for anyone who cares deeply about the safety of our food and the welfare of our planet.” —Steven Raichlen, author of the Barbecue! Bible series

“The world is full of delicious, lovingly crafted foods that embody the terrain, weather, and culture of their origins. Unfortunately, it’s also full of brazen impostors. In this entertaining and important book, Olmsted helps us fall in love with the real stuff and steer clear of the fraudsters.” —Kirk Kardashian, author of Milk Money: Cash, Cows, and the Death of the American Dairy Farm

You’ve seen the headlines: Parmesan cheese made from wood pulp. Lobster rolls containing no lobster at all. Extra-virgin olive oil that isn’t. So many fake foods are in our supermarkets, our restaurants, and our kitchen cabinets that it’s hard to know what we’re eating anymore. In Real Food / Fake Food, award-winning journalist Larry Olmsted convinces us why real food matters and empowers consumers to make smarter choices.

Olmsted brings readers into the unregulated food industry, revealing the shocking deception that 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 in which counterfeiting is rampant and in which 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 craft. Part cautionary tale, part culinary crusade, Real Food / Fake Food is addictively readable, mouthwateringly enjoyable, and utterly relevant.

Larry Olmsted writes the “Great American Bites” column for USA Today and is the travel and food columnist at Forbes.com, where his column was named one of the World’s Top 100 Travel Sites. A longtime member of the Society of American Travel Writers and Golf Writers Association of America, he covers food, wine, and spirit topics, including regional food specialties, production, health, consumer issues, celebrity chefs, and restaurants worldwide. He appears regularly on radio and television and is a frequent contributor to the Dr. Oz Show. Olmsted, who has visited more than forty countries around the globe, is of the author of two books on golf and Getting into Guinness. (In the process of writing that book he personally set or broke three Guinness world records). He teaches nonfiction writing at Dartmouth College and lives with his wife live in Vermont.