Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Recently with all the press that India has been receiving because of vicious assaults on women, I've been interested in learning more about the country. I recently saw a documentary on Netflix about the dichotomy between a forward-moving India and the India that still holds on to the beliefs of the past, as it relates to women.  If you're interested seeing it, it's called The World Before Her. But this is a blog about books. I put this book on my list of non-fiction for this year, because I've heard really good things about it and I have a genuine interest in reading more about India. 

 

I may take this for granted, but I think most people know there is a substantial amount of poverty in India, even as it rises as a global power. Regarding Mumbai, the city on which the author focuses, the statistics are there to back that up. I've also heard this from multiple friends who have family there or who have traveled there. Even as it Mumbai advances, there are still millions living in poverty there.

In this book, the author follows a handful of people in one slum in Mumbai. Her main focus is this underlying question: Is it even possible to break the cycle of poverty under these conditions?  She goes deep into how corruption is the name of the game. At the heart of the story is one family who falls apart at the seams because a neighbor blames them for her self-inflicted misfortune. The justice system is a joke. The education system is tragically broken. The living conditions are not even fit for wild animals.

I enjoyed the book because it actually reads like a novel and the writing style is light for such a multi-layered topic. It's the first non-fiction book I've read this year that felt easy even though it was tackling some very difficult themes.

In the end we are left with more questions than solutions, but I think a good book is supposed to challenge you to think differently about the world in which you live. There is no happy ending, and not everyone makes it to the end of the book alive. It was disheartening to read about these broken lives, and even more disheartening to realize that the solutions are not forthcoming. It is worth a read for a candid look at the underbelly of one of worlds fastest growing cities. 

Love in the Time of Cholera

This is the first book by Marquez that I have ever read. I fully intended to read One Hundred Years of Solitude first because I've heard more about that one, but life intervened. I was looking for books to read while in Costa Rica and thought about getting this book. I ended up reading other books, but I pushed Love in the Time of Cholera up on my list to read early this year.

Finally got a hold of it at the library (of course) and started reading it about a month ago. I know recently I've been lamenting about how long it takes me to read non-fiction, but it took me a little over a month to read this and it's fiction. The big difference here is that I purposely read this slowly. It's a story that is so deserving of your time. The story takes place over almost sixty years and it's about love, life, commitment, human nature, deferred dreams, and patience. The oversimplification of the plot is this: boy falls in love with girl, girl seemingly falls in love with boy, girl's father rejects boy, girl then rejects boy, boy waits patiently for fifty-plus years to once again express his undying love for girl.

The book spans the lives of these two individuals as they live them separately, but always with the notion of the other person coloring their thoughts directly or indirectly. The longer chapters and the span of the story practically implore you to take your time reading and absorbing the details. There are so many layers to the story, I can't even begin to dissect it or it would turn into a PhD dissertation. Marquez writes beautifully, lyrically. Even when a character does things that may seem deplorable, you can't help but feel empathy and sadness for the pitiful state of affairs. Sometimes when I was reading the book, I thought about Lolita. That was another book in which the writing is so beautiful that regardless of what happens in the story, you have to continue reading. In the end, the book makes you seriously think about love, life, death and what defines each of those ideas.

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Okay you may have to settle in because I get the feeling that this post may be long.

I really enjoyed this book. Although it still takes me longer to read a non-fiction book than fiction (and I fully recognize that it should) this one was more engaging than the two previous food books I read.

First let me say that if you read this book and then go to the grocery store you will be disgusted.  If you already try to pay close attention to what you eat, you probably already know that food additives can be harmful to your health.  I still offer that if you read this book and then go to the grocery store you will shop with contempt towards the food industry. This book tackles one of those topics everyone has a vague idea about, but nobody really addresses. We all know (or at least the majority of us probably know) that junk food is full of crap that's not real food. It's chemicals mixed up to imitate food. We have all heard that too much salt can lead to high blood pressure. Too much fat can lead to obesity and heart disease. Too much sugar can lead to obesity and all the complications that arise from obesity.

This book starts out assuming you know all that.  So what it's really about is how the big food companies like Nestle, PespiCo, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Frito-Lay, Oscar Mayer, General Mills, Kellogg, etc... try to walk this fine line of appeasing shareholders and the government.  Their true purpose in life is to make money for the shareholders.  Every once in a while, though, we pesky consumers speak up and say that this "food" is crap and needs to be fixed. Well then they try to fix it, or at least make a half-hearted attempt to look like they are going to fix it.  What they are really doing is trying to buy time for the storm to clear up so they can continue on, business as usual.

The author talks to food scientists who, over the years, have created, developed, or 'improved' upon products such as Tang, Instant Jell-O, Lunchables, Oreos, Lays, Campbell's Soup....the list goes on and on. After reading about it all, you really see how much the specialty of Food Science is really mostly science and not a lot of food. What I really appreciated about the book was how the history of companies was explored and how he really dug deep (even using the FOI Act several times) to obtain government records of meetings between the food industry and the government to address the problems of crap food that is making the population sick. Another aspect that I appreciated was how he raised the question: How can the government - USDA and FDA - simultaneously get money and favors from food industry lobbyists yet also supposedly be an advocate for the United States population? The answer, of course, is that they can't. You can't serve two masters. It's clear by this book, that the consumer is the loser in this deal.

There are so many salient points made in this book. I really could just go on and on about how the food companies target minorities and young children for certain products. How there are laws in place that make it easy for unaccountability to be the status quo when things go south. How they try to manipulate the USDA daily recommendations for nutrients. How they continue to add salt, sugar, and fat to foods creating a pseudo-addiction. What's most alarming is there is data out there now about what specifically needs to change if we are ever to consider processed food edible, but the big players are unwilling to budge. Incidentally, while reading this book I went to the grocery store on two occasions and never before was I so hyper vigilant of the horrible options on the shelves. I highly recommend this book if you want to further open your eyes to the travesty that is the United States food industry.

Their bottom line is money. My bottom line is to take good care of myself. So I guess we will be at odds with one another for quite some time.

This quote sums up the book quite nicely:  

"It's simply not in the nature of these companies to care about the consumer in an empathetic way."