Eating History

Food expert and celebrated food historian Andrew F. Smith recounts& -in delicious detail& -the thirty major moments that made contemporary American cuisine. The diet of the modern American wasn't always as corporate, conglomerated, and corn-rich as it is today, and the style of American cooking, along with the ingredients that compose it, has never been fixed. With a cast of characters that includes bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs, and relentless health nuts, Smith pins down the truly crackerjack history behind how America eats.Smith's story opens with early America, which began as an agriculturally independent nation where most citizens grew and consumed their own food. Over the next two hundred years, however, Americans cultivated an entirely different approach to crops and consumption. Advances in food processing, transportation, mechanization, regulation, nutrition, and science introduced highly complex and mechanized methods of production. The proliferation of cookbooks, cooking shows, and professionally designed kitchens also made meals more commercially, politically, and culturally potent. To better understand these trends, Smith delves deeply and humorously into the major moments of their creation. Ultimately he shows how, by revisiting this history, we might reclaim the independent, locally sustainable roots of American food.