Paleonutrition is the analysis of prehistoric human diets and the interpretation of dietary intake in relation to health and nutrition. As a field of study, it addresses prehistoric diets in order to determine the biological and cultural implications for individuals as well as for entire populations, placing archaeological interpretations into an anthropological context. Throughout history, and long before written records, human culture has been constantly in flux. The study of paleonutrition provides valuable insights into shifts and changes in human history, whatever their causes.

This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date book on the topic. Intended for students and professionals, it describes the nature of paleonutrition studies, reviews the history of paleonutrition research, discusses methodological issues in the reconstruction of prehistoric diets, presents theoretical frameworks frequently used in paleonutrition research, and showcases examples in which paleonutritional analyses have been successfully conducted on prehistoric individuals, groups, and populations. It offers an integrative approach to understanding state-of-the-art anthropological dietary, health, and nutritional assessments. The most recent and innovative methods used to reconstruct prehistoric diets are discussed, along with the major ways in which paleonutrition data are recovered, analyzed, and interpreted.

Paleonutrition includes five contemporary case studies that provide useful models of how to conduct paleonutrition research. Topics range from ancient diets in medieval Nubia to children’s health in the prehistoric American Southwest to honey use by an ethnographic group of East African foragers. As well as providing interesting examples of applying paleonutrition techniques, these case studies illustrate the mutually beneficial linkages between ethnography and archaeology.

The Roman poet and satirist Persius (34–62 CE) was unique among his peers for lampooning literary and social conventions from a distinctly Stoic point of view. A curious amalgam of mocking wit and philosophy, his Satires are rife with violent metaphors and unpleasant imagery and show little concern for the reader’s enjoyment or understanding.

In Persius, Shadi Bartsch explores this Stoic framework and argues that Persius sets his own bizarre metaphors of food, digestion, and sexuality against more appealing imagery to show that the latter—and the poetry containing  it—harms rather than helps its audience. Ultimately, he encourages us to abandon metaphor altogether in favor of the non-emotive abstract truths of Stoic philosophy, to live in a world where neither alluring poetry, nor rich food, nor sexual charm play a role in philosophical teaching.

As recent stories in the news have shown, maintaining the integrity of the food supply is of critical importance to the consumer. Thousands of Americans die each year from food-borne illnesses, and millions more get sick. Tremendous strides have been made to reduce the incidence of food-borne diseases originating from animal-derived foods, but food safety and food-borne pathogens continue to remain problematic throughout the world. Food-safety scientists from around the nation continue to conduct groundbreaking research not only to understand causative factors in food-borne pathogen prevalence but to develop novel intervention strategies for limiting contamination in all phases of food animal production. The twenty-four essays in this book highlight research efforts of researchers from the tristate Food Safety Consortium established in 1988 by Congress as a research alliance of food-safety scientists at the University of Arkansas, Iowa State University, and Kansas State University. Members of the consortium conduct research through an annual grant approved by Congress and administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Its mission is to conduct extensive investigation into all areas of poultry, beef, and pork meat production, from the farm to the consumer’s table. In addition to the consortium researchers, collaborative university researchers, government officials, and industry personnel provide timely reviews of their latest findings with regard to five significant subject areas: preharvest food-borne pathogen ecology and intervention strategies, postharvest food-borne pathogen ecology, rapid methods and detection strategies for food-borne pathogens, antibiotics and antimicrobials in food safety, and emerging issues in food safety. Progress in these research areas provides opportunities to further enhance protection of animal-derived foods from farm to fork.

When you boil it down, one of the most important things we do each day is eat. The question of eating—what, and how—may seem simple at first, but it is dense with complex meanings, reflecting myriad roles that food plays and has played over the centuries. In fact, as Raymond D. Boisvert and Lisa Heldke show in this book, it’s difficult to imagine a more philosophically charged act than eating. Philosophers at Table explores the philosophical scaffolding that supports this crucial aspect of everyday life, showing that we are not just creatures with minds, but also with stomachs. 

Examining a cornucopia of literary works, myths, histories, and film—not to mention philosophical ideas—the authors make the case for a bona fide philosophy of food. They look at Babette’s Feast as an argument for hospitality as a central ethical virtue. They compare fast food in Accra to the molecular gastronomy of Spain as a way of considering the nature of food as art. And they bite into a slug—which is, unsurprisingly, completely gross—to explore tasting as a learning tool, a way of knowing. A surprising, original take on something we have not philosophically savored enough, Philosophers at Table invites readers to think in fresh ways about the simple and important act of eating. 

2024 Inaugural Mary Beaudry Book Award for the Archaeology of Food

"This comprehensive, definitive volume, the result of 25 years of research on food archaeology, archaeobotany, and ethnobotany in Greece, surpasses other works on this topic, whether regional in focus or encompassing the whole world, for its detail, clarity, and assemblage of data sources. Highly recommended." —CHOICE
 
In Plant Foods of Greece, Greek archaeologist Soultana Maria Valamoti takes readers on a culinary journey, reconstructing the plant foods and culinary practices of Neolithic and Bronze Age Greece. For more than thirty years, she has been analyzing a large body of archaeobotanical data that was retrieved from nearly twenty sites in mainland Greece and the Greek islands, with an additional analysis of other sites as referenced by published colleagues. Plant foods were the main ingredients of daily meals in prehistoric Greece and most likely of special dishes prepared for feasts and rituals.

Valamoti’s approach allows an exploration of culinary variability through time. The thousands of charred seeds identified from occupation debris correspond to minuscule time capsules. She is able to document changes from the cooking of the first farmers to the sophisticated cuisines of the elites who inhabited palaces in the first cities of Europe in the south of Greece during the Late Bronze Age. Along the way, she explains the complex processes for the addition of new ingredients (such as millet and olives), condiments, sweet tastes, and complex recipes. Valamoti also addresses regional variability and diversity as well as detailing experimentation and research using occasional input from ancient written sources.

Comprehensive and synthetic coverage encompasses bread/cereals, pulses, oils, fruit and nuts, fermented brews, healing foods, cooking, and identity. In addition, Valamoti offers insight into engaging in public archaeology and provides recipes that incorporate ancient plant ingredients and connect prehistory to the present in a critical way. A definitive source for a range of food scientists and scholars, it will also appeal to foodies.
 

Far from being passive elements in the landscape, plants have developed many sophisticated chemical and mechanical means of deterring organisms that seek to prey on them. This volume draws together research from ecology, evolution, agronomy, and plant pathology to produce an ecological genetics perspective on plant resistance in both natural and agricultural systems. By emphasizing the ecological and evolutionary basis of resistance, the book makes an important contribution to the study of how phytophages and plants coevolve.

Plant Resistance to Herbivores and Pathogens not only reviews the literature pertaining to plant resistance from a number of traditionally separate fields but also examines significant questions that will drive future research. Among the topics explored are selection for resistance in plants and for virulence in phytophages; methods for studying natural variation in plant resistance; the factors that maintain intraspecific variation in resistance; and the ecological consequences of within-population genetic variation for herbivorous insects and fungal pathogens.

"A comprehensive review of the theory and information on a large, rapidly growing, and important subject."—Douglas J. Futuyma, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Political Appetites: Food in Medieval English Romance is the first book-length examination of the cultural and theoretical resonances of food and cooking in medieval English literature, offering a new assessment of the vexed and critically underappreciated genre of romance. Aaron Hostetter moves beyond the critical assumptions of the food practices of medieval English culture as only reflecting Eucharistic preoccupations. Focusing on the romance literature of England, from tenth-century hagiographic verse to fifteenth-century courtly adventures, he also engages the politics of secular eating. Focus on the edible allows Political Appetites to apply fresh insights from cultural studies and critical theory to these narratives—to adumbrate their unique political perspectives. The analysis of food reveals these stories to be sophisticated responses to the material and political conditions of their day.
  
If humanity has attempted through its brief history to render the material world edible, then food and food practice not only influence our aspirations but also shift focus to the limits of human existence on this planet. In studying the foodways of the past as a fundamental economic activity, Political Appetites questions contemporary attitudes towards consumption as their proliferation and abuses create social inequities, menace ecosystems, and threaten to bring about the end of the Anthropocene Era.
 

Growing up in a Norwegian American community imbued with the customs and foods of the Old Country, Carrie Young recalls how her mother and her neighbors skillfully blended Scandinavian with what they always called the American style of cooking. Young recounts how her mother, Carrine Gafkjen—after homesteading as a single woman in 1904—cooked for a large threshing crew during harvest season. Living and cooking around the clock in a cook car the size of a Pullman kitchen, she delighted the crew with her soda pancakes and her sour cream doughnuts, her fattigman (Poor Man's Cookies) and her fabulous North Dakota Lemon Meringue Pie.

During holidays lutefisk and lefse reigned supreme, but when the Glorified Rice fad swept the country in the thirties women broke new ground with inventive variations. And the short-lived but intensely experienced Three-Day Bun Era (when the buns became so ethereal they were in danger of floating off the plate) kept the Ladies Aid luncheons competitive. Whatever the times, in good years or bad, there was always the solace ofKaffe Tid, the forenoon and afternoon coffee time, when the table was set with smor og brod (butter and bread) and something sweet, like a Whipped Cream Cake or Devil's Food Cake with Rhubarb Sauce.

This book will appeal to those who feel nostalgia for a parent's or grandparent's cooking, to those who have a longing for the heartier fare of times past. The author's daughter, Felicia Young, who has "cooked Scandinavian since she was old enough to hold a lefse stick," has compiled and tested the seventy-two recipes accompanying this joyful memoir.