Eat, Drink, and Be Wary

Charles Duncan is the Upton Sinclair of his day, delivering a searing, groundbreaking investigative look into the U.S. food industry that is as important as it is disturbing. Eat, Drink & Be Wary is must reading for consumers and those government inspectors tasked with keeping our food safe. Duncan reveals stunning shortfalls in the quality and inspection of domestically grown and imported foods and herbs that are jaw dropping. This is investigative reporting at its best.
— Peter Van Sant, Correspondent, CBS News


Charles Duncan has written a lively account of the many chinks in the armor meant to protect the safety of our foods and beverages. Globalization, concentration, industrialization, misuse of antibiotics in food animal production, political power of big agriculture, underfunding and ineffectiveness of regulatory agencies – it’s all here in this informative book by a seasoned journalist.
— Robert S. Lawrence, MD, Director, Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health


Eat, Drink, & Be Wary exposes the ill-gotten gains of the food industry in exhaustive, sometimes stomach-churning detail. The results may shock or surprise you.
— Ed Bark, former longstanding TV critic of The Dallas Morning News and proprietor of the unclebarky.com TV website since 2006


Eat, Drink, & Be Wary comes as a rude awakening to the fact that our government is asleep at the wheel in safeguarding our foods. In this book, Charles Duncan has reminded us about the horrifying truth of the deteriorating quality of foods we consume daily. He also informs us, the consumers, as to what we can do to reverse this destructive trend.
— Chensheng Alex Lu, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Environmental Exposure Biology, Harvard School of Public Health


In Eat, Drink, & Be Wary, Duncan offers us a gruesome panorama of the global food industry, its frailties and its dangers. If we considered food to be a more critical factor in health, we might inspect and care for this system differently. But as Duncan shows, food is but a commodity, inspected and monitored by a lackadaisical political system, created and sold at minimal cost to consumers who are anonymous and replaceable. This book is a quick overview, product by product, crisis by crisis, of the current dangers in our industrial foods.
— Carolyn Smith-Morris, Ph.D., M.S., LPC, Associate Professor, Southern Methodist University


A great repository of facts for anyone who is concerned about food safety. It is a much needed outcry for transparency in our food production.
— Mark Post, MD, PhD, professor and chair of Physiology, Maastricht University


Foodborne illnesses and the quality of food production and preparation are major issues in the US. This is a must read for every parent and for anyone interested in their general health. The more knowledgeable we are, the more transparent and accountable the industry must become. The quality of our food should always be held to the highest standards and not allowed to continue to be a form of culinary Russian roulette.
— Bill Macatee, announcer for The NFL on CBS, US Open Tennis, Golf


In his carefully researched book, Charles M. Duncan comprehensively addresses hazards as they come with our daily food. Based on solid facts, figures, and references, he fascinatingly discusses nutritional safety and security across the board: from bioterrorism over food imports and genetically modified organisms to outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, and others. The book also includes honed criticism of the dispersion of responsibility an the U.S. system of government, as well as practical tips how to mitigate food-related risks in our everyday lives. This work is an excellent contribution to fostering homeland and civil security debates in an all-hazards context, as well as to increasing societal awareness and preparedness.
— Alexander Siedschlag, Ph.D, Professor and Chair of Homeland Security and Public Health Preparedness, The Pennsylvania State University, Penn State Harrisburg


For Americans, eating healthy may only be a challenge at the start of our daily routine. Finding a variety of safe, healthy, and available foods impacts the health of us all. As some of our everyday interactions have been marked with more invasiveness, Duncan brings questions food safety, trends in risk management with nutrition and concerns with the oversight needed to prevent food threats from natural hazards to terrorism. Information on eating safely may be a new top of the food pyramid.
— J. Eric Dietz, PhD, PE, Director, Purdue Homeland Security Institute and Professor, Computer and Information Technology


Charles Duncan has provided a sobering, and potentially stomach-churning, look at the gaps in our food safety system. Controls on food imports are negligible, domestic controls are too lax, and food producers are taking short-cuts and risks that should alarm every consumer.
— Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO, The Humane Society of the United States


A must read for policy makers and elected officials – while they are eating! Duncan documents one of the most important crises in America – the safety of our food.
— David A. Sterling, Ph.D., CIH, Professor and Chair Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Director Doctoral PhD Program, School of Public Health, University of North Texas Health Science Center


A lot of the information Charles Duncan includes in Eat, Drink, & Be Wary, is scary as hell! However, by reading this book, we will all be better informed about the choices we made and the foods we eat. Thank you Charles and “BON APPETIT” ya’ll!
— Ruta Lee, Canadian actress, Hollywood, CA


Charles M. Duncan has assembled a significant amount of data on the problems with allowing uninspected and untested food products to enter the marketplace. Duncan outlines the major failures of the Government agencies in allowing healthy food to reach the tabletop.
— John Ubelaker, Ph.D., Southern Methodist University


Eat, Drink, & Be Wary is a detailed examination of the failure of government oversight agencies to protect consumers from food companies that place profit above everything else. This failure of the agencies that are supposed to oversee the food industries leads to horrible cruelty to farm animals and a polluted food supply. You will cry and, if you have a dark sense of humor, you will laugh. My hope is that you will also be spurred to action.
— Bruce Friedrich, director, Farm Sanctuary