The Bookshelf: Feb. 2, 2017

Trib+Edu is joining with respected books authority Kirkus Reviews to bring you select reviews of books of note in the field of education. For more book reviews and recommendations, visit Kirkus.com. 

FAST-FOOD KIDS: French Fries, Lunch Lines, and Social Ties

By Amy L. Best

A cultural analysis of what kids eat and why. To understand what food reveals about the cultural and economic factors of young peoples’ lives, Best observed young people in urban and suburban school cafeterias and nearby fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s and Chipotle. … In the first chapter, she focuses on food and family life, followed by a few chapters on the school cafeteria setting, with all its social inequalities, and a chapter on behaviors in commercial settings. Best reports that school food “holds little if any sacred value" and that understanding commercial fast-food consumption “requires attention to the role and relevance of social-spatial relations.” There is a nod to the problems of childhood obesity, but solutions are not the author’s forte.

For the full review, visit kirkus.com.