Benjamin Lorr graduated from Columbia University with a degree in environmental biology and creative writing. He lives in a small apartment in the West Village of Manhattan. Prior to his writing career he taught high school science in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He has spent the last five years debriefing grocerymen, eating his way through specialty food expos, riding shotgun with a long-haul trucker, even working undercover in the seafood department of a downtown Whole Foods to research his latest book The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket.