EATING DANGEROUSLY

Americans are afraid of their food. And for good reason. In 2011, the deadliest food-borne illness outbreak in a century delivered killer listeria bacteria on innocuous cantaloupe never before suspected of carrying that pathogen. Nearly 50 million Americans will get food poisoning this year. Spoiled, doctored or infected food will send more than 100,000 people to the hospital. Three thousand will die. We expect, even assume, our government will protect our food, but how often do you think a major U.S. food farm gets inspected by federal or state officials? Once a year? Every harvest? Twice a decade? Try never. Eating Dangerously sheds light on the growing problem and introduces readers to the very real, very immediate dangers inherent in our food system, and the lack of oversight and understanding it garners.

This two-part guide to our food system's problems and how consumers can help protect themselves is written by two seasoned journalists, who helped break the story of the 2011 listeria outbreak that killed 32 people. Michael Booth and Jennifer Brown, award-winning health and investigative journalists and parents themselves, answer pressing consumer questions about what's in the food supply, what "authorities" are and are not doing to clean it up, and how they can best feed their families without making food their full-time job. Both deeply informed and highly readable, Eating Dangerously explains to the American consumer how their food system works—and more importantly how it doesn’t work. It also dishes up course after course of useful, friendly advice gleaned from the cutting-edge laboratories, kitchens and courtrooms where the national food system is taking new shape. Anyone interested in knowing more about how their food makes it from field and farm to store and table will want the inside scoop on just how safe or unsafe that food may be. They will find answers and insight in these pages.

Michael Booth is the lead health care writer for The Denver Post, and has covered health, medicine, health policy and politics throughout his 20-year journalism career. He has made frequent appearances on commercial and public television and radio, and has won the National Education Writers’ Award, Best of the West and numerous other awards. He was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Columbine school shootings in 1999. He, also, co-led the coverage of the most deadly food-borne illness outbreak of the past century, the cantaloupe listeria illnesses of 2011, with Jennifer Brown and their work for The Denver Post on that story has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Their coverage of the listeria outbreak became the outline for a Congressional committee’s scathing report about what went wrong at the source farm and the grocery stores that sold the tainted melons. Their coverage of the outbreak also became the source for American consumers worried about listeria poisoning, as their Denver Post articles were repeatedly picked up by wire services, websites and blogs from California to Florida to Australia. They have also recently consulted on a CNN documentary investigation of the Colorado listeria outbreak.

Jennifer Brown is an investigative reporter with The Denver Post and has covered health, medicine and health policy for the last decade. Brown led the team covering the two-year debate over national health care reform in 2009 and 2010. She has worked at The Associated Press, The Tyler Morning Telegraph in Texas and The Hungry Horse News in Montana, and has won a National Headliner Award, three Katie Awards and honors from numerous other national and state groups. Brown has also covered the Colorado Legislature, the 2008 Democratic National Convention, criminal justice and education. She, also, co-led the coverage of the most deadly food-borne illness outbreak of the past century, the cantaloupe listeria illnesses of 2011, with Michael Booth and their work for The Denver Post on that story has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. (See above for more on this.)