How We Got from Twinkies to Tofu | Hacker News Reader

How We Got from Twinkies to Tofu

nytimes.com

49 pointshelloworld21 comments

One thing that Pollan (the reviewer) doesn't discuss here is the degree to which food culture and food habits intersect with regional and class identity formation and tribalism.

Food habits and trends seem to work both for and against those tendencies. On the one hand, foods once associated with hippies like tofu or almond milk can be bought anywhere there is a major grocery store. Even the taste for spicy/piquant food has become quite normalized and not anymore uniquely characteristic of particular ethnic communities.

On the other hand, the kind of places you actually buy your food are highly tribalized, with some socioeconomic classes preferring local and uniquely branded food and groceries, while others prefer chain type fast food and more "common" grocery stores.

It's fascinating that food has both the power to bring people together and also to polarize and separate them.

The book's author was interviewed on the Bite podcast: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2018/01/thank-hippies-for-t....

Perhaps this has been discussed in the past, but it would it be reasonable to mark reviews/promotions as such? It’s certainly clear once landing on the page, but I still went in expecting a discussion of the title, rather than a nudge to read a new book.

Ditto for "news articles" that are written by PR firms for the companies being discussed. Looking at you Forbes/Business Insider.

Advertising falls on a spectrum. Book reviews seem OK, news papers don't get kickbacks for writing positive reviews, while sponsored content on Forbes/BI definitely warrants labeling.

It’s a book review: the article is a discussion of a new book. That’s not the same as an ad. No one paid the NYTimes to publish this and it could have just as easily been a negative review.

> No one paid the NYTimes to publish this and it could have just as easily been a negative review.

NYTimes is primarily ad supported, of course they were paid to publish it.

Articles that are paid content are marked as such. They run under the BrandStudio section. You can look at that content here: http://www.tbrandstudio.com

They issue quarterly updates on their finances which include how much they make from subscription (a bundle): https://nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/new-york-times-compa...

> NYTimes is primarily ad supported, of course they were paid to publish it.

This is not true.

"The company said on Thursday that it added 157,000 net digital-only subscriptions in the fourth quarter of the year, pushing overall subscription revenue to more than $1 billion for the year. Subscription revenue now accounts for 60 percent of the company’s total revenue."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/new-york-times-c...

I mean maybe not for last quarter specifically, but look at the last fifty years overall.

The book under review carries the imprint of William Morrow, which is a brand of HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corp, which was originally a Murdoch property. Another News Corp media property is the New York Post. So is the WSJ.

Which of these entities do you think paid the NYT to publish this review? Because that would be a major story.

Given that the vast majority of books are self published, if the NYT isn’t getting paid for reviews one would expect the vast of their reviews would be of self published books. Is this actually the case?

No, I wouldn’t expect that, as it’s much less likely that a reader of the NYT would be interested in a given self-published book than a traditionally published one. (The reason for that being that in order to be traditionally published, the book has to go through a process intended specifically to ensure that at least some significant segment of readers will likely enjoy it - while there is no such process for self-published books.)

Come on, this is incredibly obtuse. If the mean number of readers of a self-published book is 10, versus an average large-press book being 50K, which review do you publish?

Also, you shifted the argument. You asserted that "of course" someone paid the NYT to publish the review. Who did, and how did you discover this?

> If the mean number of readers of a self-published book is 10, versus an average large-press book being 50K, which review do you publish?

I don't get paid for writing my blog, and I've reviewed books that have probably only ever had ten readers. If they're really not getting paid either way then it shouldn't matter.

I'm not suggesting it's an ad in the sense that someone paid Pollan to write this article (other than the Times), but the article linked is not a discussion of the title; rather, it's a suggestion to the reader that should they find the subject matter interesting, the book would be a great place to learn more.

I will admit to a certain bias in placing reviews on the mental shelf next to certain forms of advertisement (I doubt the author purchased his copy of the book), but I am not trying to project that view onto anyone else.

Nope, this is just the standard book review format: a discussion of a book that links outward into other books and culture and history at large. Pollan is well-qualified to do this.

Maybe it would be better if the HN title was something like: "Book Review: We Got from Twinkies to Tofu"? Like that we could know what to expect clicking on the link.

My personal account:

http://www.sampenrose.net/sprouts/

which I deliberately paralleled with Free Software:

http://www.sampenrose.net/tools/

Why does a busy software engineer cook dinner for his children on a weekday instead of purchasing affordable ready-to-eat meals the way most sensible parents do?

In my case, it's because it really doesn't take that long to put together a simple meal, and living in a rural area far from good grocery stores & restaurants, I don't have many good eating-out choices anyway.

Maybe it's also because I learned to cook at an early age and I'm trying to encourage my sons' interest in cooking by showing them it's not this complicated, time-consuming task it's often made out to be.

I like good food. I raise chickens, the beef I eat is raised by a relative of a friend, I have a garden in summer, but I'm not a foodie. I like basic, peasant food.

But I think that above all, it's because I really just want a simple, relaxed life. Cooking the meals myself is both a means to that end and a way to keep my family happy and fed.

That all makes sense. One of the themes of my piece is how things look when you stand outside of your own perspective and ask how people like you came to behave in the ways characteristic of their culture.

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