The shopper’s food fact guide
Michael Larsen – Penguin Books - $12.95

I saw a customer at my supermarket the other day holding this pocket-size book while reading the ingredients on a tin of cannellini beans. I thought to myself, aha, I had better check out that book. After all Michael Pollan, (In Defense of Food), and others are always urging us to check the ingredients of any processed foods we eat.

The shopper’s food fact guide proved to cover quite a range of food matters including:
*Popular foods and their contents
*What “no added sugar”, “low fat”, and “ GE free” really mean
*An explanation of the Nutrition Information Panel on food products
*How to be aware of technical terms like “food additives”, “preservatives”, “antioxidants” etc.

And of course it fits neatly in a handbag or pocket so ideal to produce when doing the supermarket shopping. I’m expecting to see more people doing just that.

Michael Larsen is a freelance writer living in Auckland. He has written three non-fiction titles for Penguin, of which the Shopper’s Food Fact Guide is the latest. See Me Go, a collection of interviews with New Zealand music personalities was published in 2003 while Kiwi Gold, a guide to panning for gold in New Zealand’s glistening rivers, was released in 2006. An ability to write knowledgably and interestingly on a wide range of subjects is one of Michael’s key strengths, as witnessed by the ‘it’s factual but it’s entertaining’ Shopper’s Guide. Many years spent in the hospitality industry, both in New Zealand and overseas gave Michael the necessary passion and knowledge of food and its constituent parts to pen the Shopper’s Guide with insight and understanding of all things culinary.