|
Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine by Andrew F. Smith was the third of three books I recently read that trace American food and agricultural history (the other two are The War on Bugs by Will Allen and Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis). As I said before, the three books provided complementary information to give readers a full picture of how our food and agriculture came to be as they are today. That said, if you have to skip one of the three books, skip this one.
The 30 turning points chosen traced several different plotlines - manufacturing, packaging, and transportation advances; war; the making and defining of gourmet food in America; the roles of nutrition reformers; and the role of marketing. Surely those broad categories leave out many of the 30 chapters in the book, but they also encompass quite a few of them. In some parts, the book reads like the TV show "Unwrapped," and it's written from an impartial point of view (thus not criticizing a number of developments that play roles in making food less healthy). In most cases, I feel that it was probably just fine to provide an unbiased view (as the book is intended as a history book, not a call to action), but in the section on genetically modified foods, "unbiased" turns into "overly favorable" and in fact, wrong.
|
