Category: Book Reviews

Real Food/Fake Food

Real From Fake: Is There Really Any Harm?

 

 

 

Red snapper in an ice bin.
Red Snapper in an ice bin. Is it really red snapper? Hard to tell without seeing the tail.

Buying fish was one of my most favorite jobs. Cutting that fish was the second. I find cutting fish a zen place to be and can disappear for hours and never move my feet. We ordered our fish skin on and often whole so we could see what we were buying. Whole fish I knew, but a filet of something white, well, even the fishmonger might find that a challenge.

Olmsted does an excellent job of making a heady and bothersome topic, faking our food sometimes at the risk of our health or life, easy to read and understand.

A mound of shrimp.
A mound of fresh caught (maybe) shrimp. But, is it safe? Where did it come from?

You don’t need to be a chef or a food purchasing manager for a restaurant to be affected by the choices of someone else somewhere else. What you don’t know can hurt you and there is little better armament for guarding one’s health than knowledge.

Shrimp, nearly everyone’s favorite, might be less wholesome than you prefer.  A sushi fan are you?  There are about even odds that fish you are eating isn’t what you were told it is.  So, what is it?

More than meets the eye

There is more fake food than we know.  Fake doesn’t always mean inedible (but sometimes it does), but fake in that it isn’t what it claims to be.  Champagne can only come from Champagne, France.  Port only from Portugal.  Yet, you can go to your local mega grocery store and buy California Port and Champagne and get nothing like their namesakes suggest.  Fake.  It’s a big problem and one that Congress has been none too eager to help fix, even to go as far as help perpetuate the problem.

Perhaps the most vexing part of the problem, even more so that borrowing names for things that aren’t, the stealing of your money for inferior products at high prices, trusting that the box reads right about what’s in there is that the FDA has apparently little interest in doing what they are supposed to do and there is little we can do to solve that problem.

Is there any way to fix this?

Olmsted’s purpose seems to show the problems with for reals fake food and the only mislabeled or misidentified.  Sometimes those problems lead to real health issues, sometimes just lightening your wallet.

A libertarian solution is the disband the FDA which seems content to do as little as possible and employ 3rd party systems of verification, much like those mentioned in the book who sleuthed out the fish and sushi problem.

Between then and now, those two things almost never happening, being informed, which Olmstead does very well, and attending carefully to what you buy, grow your own, and be vigilant, the fake food in your house can give way to the real stuff and the market pressure to make the good goods will at least exert some pressure in the right places. Complaints might be that the market works too slowly: have you seen the speed of Congress?

Never Split the Difference

What A Hostage Negotiator Can Teach You

 

I learned of Chris Voss on The Tom Woods Show and was surprised in spite of myself at just how much his specialized skill, a hostage negotiator, applies to the rest of the world.

My copy of Never Split the Difference just came in the mail and I’m really excited. As Voss said, and I’ve seen supported in various FaceBook groups, hostage negotiation skills apply to any situation in which two people have discordant wants. I have read posts supporting the ideas in the book for sales. The prime job for the negotiator is to find the pain, what is so bad that a person took hostages and made demands? In sales, what is so special about the widget you sell that any customer needs it? I am going to learn how that happens and I will share my successes with you.

Once Isn’t Enough

Having finished the book, I remain a big fan.  Astute readers will recognize that negotiations are just two people talking.  Sometimes it is about why your clothes never seem to make it to the hamper.  Or why can’t the kids just do the chores.  There are skills and techniques here which will help you land that client, negotiate with your landlord or get a better deal on a car.

I plan to reread this book just to make sure the ideas are cemented into my noggin.  Plus, there is a vernacular to negotiation which makes more sense as you work you way through the text.  A refresher with that vocabulary is a good plan.

Self help is a funny thing, but the fastest way to learn what you don’t know. Reading Emerson is self-help, it just isn’t presented that way. Buy this book and give yourself some self-help.

Update

I have reread the book.  I’ve also listened to it on audio and watched dozens of videos of Chris on podcasts and speeches.  Just like making a croissant, negotiation takes practice. Repeated practice and consistent practice.

Chris talks often in interviews about the high stakes of real estate deals.  That’s a pretty high-stakes moment. What is high stakes, but invisible, is the guy at the watercooler or making dinner and trying to get through the evening peacefully. For interpersonal relations, the day-to-day doesn’t get higher stakes.  The skills of the deal of releasing the hostage or closing the deal also apply to our daily lives.