Download Free A Short History Of The American Stomach Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online A Short History Of The American Stomach and write the review.

Traces the history of food and the ethics of eating in America from the Puritans to the present day, discussing such topics as colonial epicures, diet gurus of the nineteenth century, and the current production of bio-engineered foods.
A Financial Times most anticipated read for 2024 'A fascinating, erudite and entertaining journey through the gut-brain connection' TIFFANY WATT SMITH, author of The Book of Human Emotions 'A thrilling and surprising journey into the science and culture of an organ that refuses to be civilised' PAUL CRADDOCK, author of Spare Parts Have you ever had a gut feeling? Found something hard to stomach? Have you gone belly up under pressure? Did you pull yourself together and show some guts? The growls and gurgles of our digestive system are a constant reminder of the physical work it does to keep our bodies running. But throughout history, humans have puzzled over how this rowdy organ might influence us in other ways, from our emotional states and mental well-being to the decisions we make and even our sense of self. Through Ancient Greece and Victorian England, eighteenth-century France and contemporary America, cultural historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a lively tour of all the ways we've tried to make sense of this endlessly fascinating (and sometimes embarrassing) body part. From etiquette guides and diet advice to medieval alchemy and microbiology, she reveals that the gut-brain connection may be a modern obsession, but the question of whether we are ruled by our stomachs is as old as humanity itself.
Throughout American history, ingestion (eating) has functioned as a metaphor for interpreting and imagining this society and its political systems. Discussions of American freedom itself are pervaded with ingestive metaphors of choice (what to put in) and control (what to keep out). From the countryÕs founders to the abolitionists to the social activists of today, those seeking to form and reform American society have cast their social-change goals in ingestive terms of choice and control. But they have realized their metaphors in concrete terms as well, purveying specific advice to the public about what to eat or not. These conversations about Òsocial change as eatingÓ reflect American ideals of freedom, purity, and virtue. Drawing on social and political history as well as the history of science and popular culture, Dangerous Digestion examines how American ideas about dietary reform mirror broader thinking about social reform. Inspired by new scientific studies of the human body as a metabiomeÑa collaboration of species rather than an isolated, intact, protected, and bounded individualÑE. Melanie DuPuis invokes a new metaphorÑdigestionÑto reimagineÊthe American body politic, opening social transformations to ideas of mixing, fermentation, and collaboration. In doing so, the author explores how social activists can rethink politics as inclusive processes that involve the inherently risky mixing of cultures, standpoints, and ideas.
This book uses food as a lens through which to explore important matters of society and culture. In exploring why and how people eat around the globe, the text focuses on issues of health, conflict, struggle, contest, inequality, and power. Whether because of its necessity, pleasure, or ubiquity, the world of food (and its lore) proves endlessly fascinating to most people. The story of food is a narrative filled with both human striving and human suffering. However, many of today's diners are only dimly aware of the human price exacted for that comforting distance from the lived-world realities of food justice struggles. With attention to food issues ranging from local farming practices to global supply chains, this book examines how food’s history and geography remain inextricably linked to sociopolitical experiences of trauma connected with globalization, such as colonization, conquest, enslavement, and oppression. The main text is structured alphabetically around a set of 70 ingredients, from almonds to yeast. Each ingredient's story is accompanied by recipes. Along with the food profiles, the encyclopedia features sidebars. These are short discussions of topics of interest related to food, including automats, diners, victory gardens, and food at world’s fairs. This project also brings a social justice perspective to its content—weighing debates concerning food access, equity, insecurity, and politics.
This book follows the development of industrial agriculture in California and its influence on both regional and national eating habits. Early California politicians and entrepreneurs envisioned agriculture as a solution to the food needs of the expanding industrial nation. The state’s climate, geography, vast expanses of land, water, and immigrant workforce when coupled with university research and governmental assistance provided a model for agribusiness. In a short time, the San Francisco Bay Area became a hub for guaranteeing Americans access to a consistent quantity of quality foods. To this end, California agribusiness played a major role in national food policies and subsequently produced a bifurcated California Cuisine that sustained both Slow and Fast Food proponents. Problems arose as mid-twentieth century social activists battled the unresponsiveness of government agencies to corporate greed, food safety, and environmental sustainability. By utilizing multidisciplinary literature and oral histories the book illuminates a more balanced look at how a California Cuisine embraced Slow Food Made Fast.
In How America Eats, Food historian Jennifer Wallach examines how Americans have produced food, cooked, and filled their stomachs from the colonial era to the present. Due to the complex history of conquest, enslavement, and immigration, the United States has never developed a singular cohesive culinary tradition. U.S. food practices have been shaped by the various groups that have called a certain geographical space home. However, more than fusion and friction between different racial and ethnic groups went into creating American foodways. Wallach demonstrates that technological innovations and ideas about industrialism and progress have also impacted what and how Americans eat. Moreover, the American diet is the product of more amorphous factors, the outgrowth of both shared and competing values. The history of food in America reveals changing and contradictory ideas about subjects including nationality, race, technological innovation, gender, politics, religion, and patriotism.
"The story of Chinese Americans through the lens of food. From Canton Restaurant in 1849 to Panda Express today, Chinese food history in America spans over 150 years. Chinese 'Forty-niners' were mostly merchants and restaurateurs who migrated here not to dig gold but to do trade. Racism against the Chinese slowed down the growth of the Chinese restaurant business in the late 19th century, but it made a rebound in the format of chop suey. From 1900 to the 1960s, chop suey as imagined authentic Chinese food attracted numerous American customers including Jewish Americans as its collective fan. Then the real Chinese food such as Hunan, Sichuan or Shanghai cuisine replaced chop suey houses in the 1970s following the arrival of new Chinese immigrants after immigration reform in 1965. Those regional-flavored Chinese restaurants were brought in and established by immigrants from Taiwan rather than mainland China. As Chinese restaurants in America turned Chinese in flavor, P.F. Chang's and Panda Express rose fast in the 1990s to meet the need of constantly changing and often multi-ethnically blended eating habits of American customers. Chinese food in America is a fascinating history about both Chinese and Americans. Embedded in this history is the story of human migration, culinary tradition, racial politics, ethnic identity, cultural negotiation, Chinese Diaspora and transnational life, and Chinese cuisine as a global food. Though a scholarly work, this book aims at all readers who are interested in food history and culture"--Provided by publisher
Food Television and Otherness in the Age of Globalization examines the growing popularity of food and travel television and its implications for how we understand the relationship between food, place, and identity. Attending to programs such as Bizarre Foods, Bizarre Foods America, The Pioneer Woman, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, Man vs. Food, and No Reservations, Casey Ryan Kelly critically examines the emerging rhetoric of culinary television, attending to how American audiences are invited to understand the cultural and economic significance of global foodways. This book shows how food television exoticizes foreign cultures, erases global poverty, and contributes to myths of American exceptionalism. It takes television seriously as a site for the reproduction of cultural and economic mythology where representations of food and consumption become the commonsense of cultural difference and economic success.
The field of food studies has been growing rapidly over the last thirty years and has exploded since the turn of the millennium. Scholars from an array of disciplines have trained fresh theoretical and methodological approaches onto new dimensions of the human relationship to food. This anthology capitalizes on this particular cultural moment to bring to the fore recent scholarship that focuses on innovative ways people are recasting food in public spaces to challenge hegemonic practices and meanings. Organized into five interrelated sections on food production – consumption, performance, Diasporas, and activism – articles aim to provide new perspectives on the changing meanings and uses of food in the twenty-first century.