books | The Vitamin Murders by James Ferguson

I came to The Vitamin Murders by James Ferguson, by way of the Gastropod podcast's episode on the history of Vitamins. It sent them off on an interesting tangent so when I spotted it in the library I was pretty excited to read it. Unfortunately, while it was interesting it was less about what I was interested in than I expected. (Jack Drummond was a pioneering food scientist during the interwar period and especially during WWII, arguably responsible for rationing actually improving the nation's health.) It's much more of a investigation into a murder than it is a book about healthy eating and vitamins, or even food science more generally. It's more the story of a journalist investigating an old murder and the weird tangents of research and somewhat horrifying discoveries on related subjects that he makes along the way. I enjoyed reading it, but I kept wanting the author to focus more on particular parts of it. Basically, there's a much better book in there somewhere, and I really wish I could have read that one.