The Edible Man: Dave Nichol, President’s Choice & the Making of Popular Taste

The Edible Man: Dave Nichol, President’s Choice & the Making of Popular Taste is the story of how the former Loblaws executive spurred a  private-label revolution in the food industry — and how mass-market  tastes are created and manipulated.

“I was fascinated by how a seemingly unprepossessing guy became a  taste arbiter,” says Anne Kingston, winner of this year’s National  Business Book Award, about the subject of The Edible Man. “But as I delved into Dave Nichol, I found the last thing he is is unprepossessing.”

Kingston’s The Edible Man skillfully weaves an intriguing personal profile into a wider socio-cultural history.

As she worked on The Edible Man, Kingston discovered that  Nichol — the executive who transformed the once-stodgy Loblaws grocery  chain into an aggressive food retailer — considers himself to be “on a  higher taste plane.”

“The mass market found him to be its champion and put its trust in  him — even though his interests were commercial and personal,” she adds.

 
Anne Kingston, a University of Toronto graduate in comparative literature, worked as a copy editor at Harlequin and in corporate communications on  Bay Street before becoming senior editor of Your Money. Previously, Kingston was also a columnist and senior writer at the Financial Times of Canada, where she reported on socio-economic and marketing issues. Since 1992, Kingston has been a contributing editor at Report on Business magazine. The Edible Man is her first book.

“Somebody told me writing a book is like writing 12 magazine  articles, but it’s much more difficult than that,” the first-time author  says. “A book is so wide-ranging in themes — in fact, The Edible Man is a series of investigations, with Dave Nichol as the thread.”