At one time or another you have probably wondered what some of the ingredients listed on a package really are.  And, if you are like me, you soon forgot you were curious because a) the item is tasty good, b) who has time to look that stuff up, or more than likely c) do you really want to know?

Author Patrick Di Justo wrote the articles called What’s Inside for the magazine Wired.  He took his investigation of products to the CEO’s of companies (who may or may not get back to him with his questions).  He also researched deep into the archives on Google and followed products back to their beginning.

The result?  Patrick discovered some interesting things about the foods we put in our mouth.  Some are interesting, some are disgusting, some are funny… and some… involved a call (or two or three) to the FDA.

So what really does make that Cheese Whiz can eject that line of cheese product?  If I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter isn’t butter…. what is it?  And do we want to know what is in a Slim Jim or would we rather just enjoy the spicy snappy flavor and not think about it?

 

 

Now before you decide this book if this book is for you, hear me out.

This Is What You Put In Your Mouth is actually an interesting read and not necessarily as disgusting as you may initially think.  Sure there is talk about dies that are not good for us, and ingredients that are not only in chewing gum that can also inflate a tire…but for the most part you are not reading about to many gross and disgusting things.

The layout of the book is a product will be listed with its ingredients and a description laid out of what the ingredients are.  Occasionally Patrick will add his own funny take on an ingredient.  Then, there will be a “backstory”.  This is where Patrick shares what steps he took on this product to track down the makers for more information.  AT first they would be excited to hear that their product would be featured in a magazine.  That is, until they read the magazine and seen what Patrick really wrote about.  The cooperation of the company or not did not change the fact that Patrick would write about it.

Not everything in the book is for eating.  Patrick also talks about cleaning products, fire starter logs and gasoline.

Here is a fun little video – see below to get what is going on here.

 

This video is actually about one of the products that Patrick had written about (and he talks about in the book about this product, and this video).  What happened was PBS ran a segment called What’s Inside.  Watch between 1:30 and 1:33 on the video.  You will see there is a product on the table that Chris does not talk about.  At the end of the video there are clearly 10 items on the table by Chris only talks about 9 of them.  The item that was deleted off the video (cut during those three seconds) was sexual lubricant.  PBS did not want this talked about on air so it was cut before the show aired.

While the book was interesting, it is more of a book you want to skim and look for items you are interested in knowing more about than trying to read like a regular book.

I will be adding this to Weekend Cooking as this post is about food.  Sort of.  😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Print Length: 272 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (February 3, 2015)
• Sold by: Random House LLC