BiblioVault - Books about Food

A Rainbow Palate

How Chemical Dyes Changed the West’s Relationship with Food

Carolyn Cobbold

University of Chicago Press, 2020

We live in a world saturated by chemicals—our food, our clothes, and even our bodies play host to hundreds of synthetic chemicals that did not exist before the nineteenth century. By the 1900s, a wave of bright coal tar dyes had begun to transform the Western world. Originally intended for textiles, the new dyes soon permeated daily life in unexpected ways, and by the time the risks and uncertainties surrounding the synthesized chemicals began to surface, they were being used in everything from clothes and home furnishings to cookware and food.

In A Rainbow Palate, Carolyn Cobbold explores how the widespread use of new chemical substances influenced perceptions and understanding of food, science, and technology, as well as trust in science and scientists. Because the new dyes were among the earliest contested chemical additives in food, the battles over their use offer striking insights and parallels into today’s international struggles surrounding chemical, food, and trade regulation.

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Reconstructing Ancient Maya Diet

Christine White

University of Utah Press, 1999

The collapse of classic Maya civilization at the end of the eighth century A.D. is still an enigma, but the story behind it is likely more than a clash of warring city-states. New research indicates that ecological degradation and nutritional deficiency may be as important to our understanding of Maya cultural processes as deciphering the rise and fall of kings.

Reconstructing Ancient Maya Diet integrates recent data from bone-chemistry research, paleopathology, paleobotany, zooarchaeology, and ethnobotany to show what the ancient Maya actually ate at various periods (as opposed to archaeological suppositions) and how it affected the quality of their lives. It is now evident that to feed a burgeoning population the Maya relied on increasingly intensive forms of agriculture.

Exploring the relationship between these practices, ecological degradation, and social collapse, this book uses dietary data to investigate the rise of agricultural systems and class structure; the characterization of social relationships along lines of gender and age (i.e., who ate what); and the later effects of the Spanish conquest on diet and extant modes of agriculture.

Maya subsistence has been investigated intensively for the past two decades, but this is the first volume that unites work across the spectrum of Maya bioarchaeology.

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Rice and Baguette

A History of Food in Vietnam

Vu Hong Lien

Reaktion Books, 2016

The once-obscure cuisine of Vietnam is, today, a favorite for many people from East to West. Adapted and modified over thousands of years, it is probably best known as a particularly delicious result of combining traditional southeast Asian cookery with visible outside influences—notably, the crunchy baguette—from its French-occupied past. Drawing on archeological evidence, oral and written histories, and wide-ranging research, Vu Hong Lien tells the complex and surprising history of food in Vietnam.
Rice and Baguette traces the prehistoric Việt’s progress from hunter-gathers of mollusks and small animals to sophisticated agriculturalists. The book follows them as they developed new tools and practices to perfect the growing of their crops until rice became a crucial commodity,which then irrevocably changed their diet, lifestyle, and social structure. Along the way, the author shows how Việt cuisine was dramatically influenced by French colonial cookery and products, which introduced a whole new set of ingredients and techniques into Vietnam. Beautifully illustrated throughout and peppered with fascinating historical tales, Rice and Baguette reveals the long journey that Vietnamese food has traveled to become the much-loved cuisine that it is today.

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A Rich and Fertile Land

A History of Food in America

Bruce Kraig

Reaktion Books, 2017

The small ears of corn once grown by Native Americans have now become row upon row of cornflakes on supermarket shelves. The immense seas of grass and herds of animals that supported indigenous people have turned into industrial agricultural operations with regular rows of soybeans, corn, and wheat that feed the world. But how did this happen and why? In A Rich and Fertile Land, Bruce Kraig investigates the history of food in America, uncovering where it comes from and how it has changed over time.

From the first Native Americans to modern industrial farmers, Kraig takes us on a journey to reveal how people have shaped the North American continent and its climate based on the foods they craved and the crops and animals that they raised. He analyzes the ideas that Americans have about themselves and the world around them, and how these ideas have been shaped by interactions with their environments. He details the impact of technical innovation and industrialization, which have in turn created modern American food systems.

Drawing upon recent evidence from the fields of science, archaeology, and technology, A Rich and Fertile Land is a unique and valuable history of the geography, climate, and food of the United States.

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Rivers of Change

Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America

Bruce D. Smith

University of Alabama Press, 2007

Organized into four sections, the twelve chapters of Rivers of Change are concerned with prehistoric Native American societies in eastern North America and their transition from a hunting and gathering way of life to a reliance on food production. Written at different times over a decade, the chapters vary both in length and topical focus. They are joined together, however, by a number of shared “rivers of change.”

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Rooted Resistance

Agrarian Myth in Modern America

Ross Singer

University of Arkansas Press, 2020

From farm-to-table restaurants and farmers markets, to support for fair trade and food sovereignty, movements for food-system change hold the promise for deeper transformations. Yet Americans continue to live the paradox of caring passionately about healthy eating while demanding the convenience of fast food. Rooted Resistance explores this fraught but promising food scene. More than a retelling of the origin story of a democracy born from an intimate connection with the land, this book wagers that socially responsible agrarian mythmaking should be a vital part of a food ethic of resistance if we are to rectify the destructive tendencies in our contemporary food system.

Through a careful examination of several case studies, Rooted Resistance traverses the ground of agrarian myth in modern America. The authors investigate key figures and movements in the history of modern agrarianism, including the World War I victory garden efforts, the postwar Country Life movement for the vindication of farmers’ rights, the Southern Agrarian critique of industrialism, and the practical and spiritual prophecy of organic farming put forth by J. I. Rodale. This critical history is then brought up to date with recent examples such as the contested South Central Farm in urban Los Angeles and the spectacular rise and fall of the Chipotle “Food with Integrity” branding campaign.

By examining a range of case studies, Singer, Grey, and Motter aim for a deeper critical understanding of the many applications of agrarian myth and reveal why it can help provide a pathway for positive systemic change in the food system.

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