This Is What You Just Put in Your Mouth?
From Eggnog to Beef Jerky, the Surprising Secrets of What's Inside Everyday Products
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Based on his popular Wired magazine column What's Inside, Patrick Di Justo takes a hard and incredibly funny look at the shocking, disgusting, and often dumbfounding ingredients found in everyday products, from Cool Whip and Tide Pods to Spam and Play-Doh.
What do a cup of coffee and cockroach pheromone have in common? How is Fix-A-Flat like sugarless gum? Is a Slim Jim meat stick really alive? If I Can't Believe It's Not Butter isn't butter, what is it? All of these pressing questions and more are answered in This Is What You Just Put In Your Mouth? Patrick shares the madcap stories of his extensive research, including tracking down a reclusive condiment heir, partnering with a cop to get his hands on heroin, and getting tight-lipped snack-food execs to talk. Along the way, he schools us on product histories, label decoding, and the highfalutin chemistry concepts behind everything from Midol to Hostess fruit pies.
Packed with facts you're going to want to share immediately, this is infotainment at its best—and most fun!—it will leave you giving your shampoo the side-eye and Doritos a double take, and make you the know-it-all in line at the grocery store.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this lively, informative, and sometimes downright disturbing collection, Make: magazine editor Di Justo reprints columns from his former "What's Inside" feature for Wired, in which he took everyday products edible and otherwise and broke them down by ingredient and purpose. Though this project skews heavily toward scientific description, he injects humor and accessibility into each entry, explaining the form and function of everything from ethanol to zinc carbonate ("natural flavor"). He also provides newly written backstories for many of the previously published entries, describing his research process and the pitfalls of dealing with uncooperative companies such as the time he almost brought down the eggnog industry just before Christmas, his attempts to obtain real pictures of heroin, and an ultimately fruitless quest to discover just how potato starch is modified. Nothing is sacred: Di Justo dissects coffee and Cool Whip, Hot Pockets and Slim Jims even golf balls and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. The goal, he explains, isn't to scare readers or enrage them, but to inform and educate. Readers will never take the products around them for granted again.
