ENG 101: On Food and Culture

"A century ago, a plump child was considered a healthy child. No longer. An overweight child is now known to be at risk for maladies ranging from asthma to cardiovascular disease, and obesity among American children has reached epidemic proportions..."

"...explores the ethical distinctions between animal rights and animal welfare. A variety of views are presented in the debate over the way in which humans use and exploit animals for clothing, food (e.g. factory farming, live exports), scientific research, entertainment, sport and companionship."

Are we what we eat? To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artfulmix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning. Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from the California subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. He hangs out with the teenagers who make the restaurants run and communes with those unlucky enough to hold America's most dangerous job -- meatpacker. He travels to Las Vegas for a giddily surreal franchisers' convention where Mikhail Gorbachev delivers the keynote address. Heeven ventures to England and Germany to clock the rate at which those countries are becoming fast food nations...

Food and drink have provided fascinating insights into cultural patterns in consumer societies. There is an intimate relationship between food and identity but processes of identity formation through food are far from clear. This book adds a new perspective to the existing body of scholarship by addressing pivotal questions: is food central or marginal to identity construction? Does food equally matter for all group(ing)s? Why would, in people's experience, food become especially important at one moment, or, on the contrary, lose its significance? The origin of food habits is also interrogated...

"In the past year, over four million Australians have run out of food and have been unable to buy more. Conversely, we also waste a lot of food right through the supply chain, costing the economy a staggering $20 billion annually. How can Australia address the needs of people who are food insecure, and by the same token minimise waste, to achieve an equitable and sustainable approach to food?"

"The aim of this book is to highlight the many exciting advances being made in the science of foods, and to show their application for solving important problems related to the modern food supply, such as tackling chronic diseases, feeding a global population, reducing food waste, and creating healthier and tastier foods."

This book explores the changing food culture of the urban American South during the Jim Crow era by examining how race, ethnicity, class, and gender contributed to the development and maintenance of racial segregation in public eating places. Focusing primarily on the 1900s to the 1960s, Angela Jill Cooley identifies the cultural differences between activists who saw public eating places like urban lunch counters as sites of political participation and believed access to such spaces a right of citizenship, and white supremacists who interpreted desegregation as a challenge to property rights and advocated local control over racial issues...

"sheds light on the ways that food insecurity prevails in women's experiences of migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States.."

The foods eaten by a nation's population play a key role in shaping the health of that society. This book presents country-specific information on how diet, food security, and concepts of health critically impact the well-being of the world's population. * Provides concise, accessible information in a ready-reference format that covers most major countries as well as a variety of non-country populations.

"...looks at food systems globally and historically to explain how food production, diets, and nutrition science have changed across time. It will begin with chapters on contemporary diets and nutritional problems, food revolutions (from the birth of agriculture to genetic food technologies), basic concepts in nutrition science, food choices and the evolution of human taste preferences, the politics of food environments, modern food production and its effects on human health, and the environmental costs of food production. The book will then dive into the nutrition and ethics of animal-based diets, beverages, plant-based diets, nutrition guidelines and food labels, and food technologies. Ultimately this book provides an overview of the contemporary relationship between humans, land, and food, and explores the sustainability of consumption patterns on our health."

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, is one of the most controversial forms of social welfare in the United States..."

"When it comes to food, Americans seem to have a pretty great deal. Our grocery stores are overflowing with countless varieties of convenient products. But like most bargains that are too good to be true, the modern food system relies on an illusion..."

A culinary history of the seven food staples that have shaped human history, including 63 original recipes The Seven Culinary Wonders of the World is a global culinary history told through the stories of seven essential ingredients found in cuisines all over the world: honey, salt, chile, pork, rice, cacao, and tomato. Each of these foundational ingredients has played a long and valuable role in human foodways and culture, and each has its own fascinating history.

David Fairchild, a young botanist with an insatiable lust to explore and experience the world, set out in search of foods that would enrich the American farmer and enchant the American eater. Fairchild's finds weren't just limited to food: From Egypt he sent back a variety of cotton that revolutionised an industry, and via Japan he introduced the cherry blossom tree, forever brightening America's capital. Along the way, he was arrested, caught diseases, and bargained with island tribes. Through him, America transformed into the most diverse food system ever created.

A provocative look at how and what Americans eat and why--a flavorful blend of The Omnivore's Dilemma, Salt Sugar Fat, and Freakonomics that reveals how the way we live shapes the way we eat. Food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan takes readers on an eye-opening journey through the American food psyche, examining the connections between the values that define our national character--work, freedom, and progress--and our eating habits, the good and the bad...