Real Food, Fake Food, and Everything in Between: The Only Consumer's Guide to Modern Food

Harrington (The Medicare Answer Book, etc.) warns readers away from packaged, processed and fortified foods, and discusses such topics as artificial sweeteners, irradiated foods, fats, salt, package labeling and the role of government in regulating the food marketplace. Unfortunately, she has an ax to grind, and the work suffers for it. Quick Quaker Oats, a brand of oatmeal, is extolled as ""a cancer-preventing hot cereal.'' Harrington oversimplifies, distilling the risk-benefit ratio of food coloring to ``cancer versus green-colored mint jelly.'' Innuendo is evident as she implies that to enjoy restaurant food one must be innocent of what goes into it. There are also inconsistencies: Harrington condemns bacon as a processed meat high in fat and sodium but also offers a cooking technique that eliminates fat from that ``breakfast treat.'' There is useful information in this volume, but only the most dedicated reader will want to exert the effort required to weed it out from the opinions. Prevention Book Club selection. (May 11)