Larry Olmsted

Harvard Book Store welcomes food and travel writer LARRY OLMSTED for a discussion of his book Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do about It.

About Real Food/Fake Food

You’ve seen the headlines: Parmesan cheese made from sawdust. Lobster rolls containing no lobster at all. Extra-virgin olive oil that isn’t. Fake foods are in our supermarkets, our restaurants, and our kitchen cabinets. Award-winning food journalist and travel writer Larry Olmsted exposes this pervasive and dangerous fraud perpetrated on unsuspecting Americans.   

Real Food/Fake Food brings readers into the unregulated food industry, revealing that this shocking deception 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 where counterfeiting is rampant and where 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, mouth-wateringly enjoyable, and utterly relevant. Larry Olmsted convinces us why real food matters.

Praise

“Larry Olmsted makes you insanely hungry and steaming mad in this provocative account of how fraud threatens not just the world’s great craft foods (think caviar, Kobe beef, and Parmigiano-Reggiano) but our everyday diet. A must-read for anyone who cares deeply about the safety of our food and the welfare our planet.” —Steven Raichlen, author of the Barbecue Bible cookbook series and host of Project Smoke and Primal Grill on PBS

“In his solidly researched new book, USA Today food and travel columnist Olmsted, a well-traveled and knowledgeable food writer, takes readers on an enlightening but frequently disturbing culinary journey. While providing fascinating insights into where and how some of the most delicious food products are produced, the author also reveals how often these are imitated to detrimental effect. . . . A provocative yet grounded look at the U.S. food industry.” —Kirkus Reviews