Technically Food

Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change What We Eat

By: Larissa Zimberoff

Narrated by: Larissa Zimberoff

Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

The full inside story of the technology paradigm shift transforming the food we eat and who is making it

Ultraprocessed and secretly produced foods are roaring back into vogue, cheered by consumers and investors because they are plant-based and help address societal issues. And as our food system leaps ahead to a sterilized lab of the future, we think we know more about our food than we ever did, but because so much is happening so rapidly, we actually know less. In Technically Food, investigative reporter Larissa Zimberoff pokes holes in the marketing mania behind today’s changing food landscape and clearly shows the trade-offs of replacing real food with technology-driven approximations with news-breaking revelations.

©2021 Larissa Zimberoff. Published in 2021 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS, New York. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

Its a great introduction into the new food industry

Great introduction to the industry. As a person who is following the developments in the industry, I didn’t get much of the new knowledge. But I thinks it’s good for newbies.

Information dense, fascinating look at modern food tech

Larissa Zimberoff takes a compelling look at all the different new food technologies that have arisen in the last decade - with many (like algae & mushrooms) still being actively developed right now. Zimberoff does a good job balancing the promise of these new high tech foods with her critique of food tech in general. Would highly recommend this audio book wanting to better understand food innovations.

hard to hear

while interesting, it was hard to listen to. The volume at which the narrator speaks trails off often, and I found myself constantly rewinding to try to hear what she said.

Bad science and nutrition advice

As a book about the food industry it is fine or at least I don’t see the errors in this part of the book but as a nutrition or food science book it is pretty bad. There is lots of talk about “chemicals”, “bad food”, “clean ingredients”, and “processed foods” in ways that are at best slightly biased by current attitudes about food and diets and worst is just absolutely incorrect (incorrectly describing pH of foods and swapping the meaning of macro and micronutrients). I’m pretty interested in the food manufacturing industry as a food scientist who works in this field but I just can’t get past the absurd biases and errors to hear the story about Silicon Valley Food start ups. The writing is engaging but often veers into language that has no place in journalistic writing (lots of moralizing and extreme over-generalizing).

Author repeatedly very wrong about nutrition.

Investigation and reporting is good, on a very important topic.

The author's presumptions of what's unhealthy reflect all the bad science of the 20th century's misguided "heart health" recommendations. The patterns in her incorrectness reveal some familiar wishful thinking.

One thing in particular that bothered me is how the author credited "a plant based" diet to reverse type 2 diabetes, when the important factor is which carbs you consume and how. It's well established, type 2 diabetes is what happens when you literally saturate your body with glucose (ie your insulin response is insufficient to move glucose out of the blood), and operate that way over time, building up an insulin resistance.

Yet somehow she claims animal products, low in sugars, have something to do with the disease caused by your body perpetually drowning itself in glucose. No clue.

Author makes equally bogus claims about the relative health of different types of fats and oils. Her assertions are consistent with what industrial food oil interests promoted for a century, and which have been thoroughly debunked.

Sell as: "Type 1 diabetic doesn't understand insulin response, fats, proteins; Writes analysis of food tech and healthy eating based on common sense from our unhealthiest century".

"Not too harmful, for a fast food nation" is the best I can say.

Caution! Anti-populace slant!

The nuanced details are fabulous. Be wary, however, for this author is of the mind that our population is too big, that we will outgrow our ability to feed ourselves.

The details of the analog foods industry is useful, and very interesting. She tells many details of different aspects of the bioengineering of food-like products. It's terrifyingly evil, which is brushed over by the author. There is an acknowledgement that current farming practices are not healthy or sustainable, but, then the author goes too far afield to assign blame. The answer is not a burgeoning population, and the problem is not that we are all facing death by metabolic syndrome while in Africa whole countries are starving to death.

There is no discussion of historical food distribution methods, but we are brought back to the Great War, the Depression, and WWII. This is used to bolster the acceptable used of fake food. The author, as a Juvenile diabetic, never discusses the difference of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, and the difference required in treatment. A low carbohydrate, zero sugar diet will treat, possibly reverse Type 2 diabetes, but the author attempts to tow the government line of adjusting insulin levels by increasing insulin injections, not by the gold standard of don't cause a glucose spike which requires additional insulin if ever you can help it.

But, she definitely has the industry figured out, and for that, it's worth a listen.

Information Dump

Larissa is clearly an insider to the industry with lots of information - but this book is poorly unstructured and overloads detailed information. This information is nitty-gritty food science or tech related company info. These details don’t create a clean narrative and she rarely makes stances at length. If you’re a food tech founder, maybe this is a good listen - otherwise avoid.

Too Political

The author blames white males for unhealthy diets - Yes, we know the standard American diet is unhealthy. Calling for the “distribution” of nutrition, while demonizing a group of people (white males) spoils one’s appetite. Some propaganda was expected, but why would the phrase “white males” show up so often Zimberoff?