Review of: How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America

Abstract

How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food Inequality in America joins the ranks of a flourishing sociological scholarship that examines how food is implicated in the (re)production of inequality. Drawing on data from one hundred and sixty interviews with parents and teens and ethnographic participant observations with four racially and economically diverse families living on the US West Coast, Fielding-Singh offers readers her “earnest attempt to expose and explore a largely hidden truth: that parents across society undertake sacrificial, complicated, and frustrating work to feed kids.” The book is a compelling read, in part because Fielding-Singh—a biracial, second-generation South Asian American woman having grown up eating well, but also eating “junk”—chooses to write herself into the story. In the preface she notes, “For a scientist there can be safety in hiding behind a third-person voice and vulnerability in exposing one’s own subjectivity through a first-person narrative.” The author chooses the latter, chronicling the birth of her first child, the way she ate growing up, and her family’s experiences fostering children. Fielding-Singh acknowledges the advantages and limits of her point of view, and in doing so encourages the reader to see her rendering of her reserach participants' lives as thoughtful, and ultimately fair and balanced.