This text provides a comprehensive and critical exploration of food from the unique perspective of place. It shows that our experiences with food are deeply influenced by their cultural, social, economic, and political contexts. The authors explore a wide range of questions such as: Do GMOs threaten rural livelihoods? Why don’t we eat dogs? Does your neighborhood make you fat? Do community gardens encourage urban gentrification? Can cheese save a local economy? Why are gourmet burgers appearing on menus all over the world? How do immigrants use food to create a sense of place? Does mainstream nutrition stigmatize bodies? Is the kitchen an oppressive place? Can celebrity chefs change the food system? Critically engaged and connected to current activist and academic debates, Food and Place will be an essential resource for students across the social sciences.

Food and cuisine are important subjects for historians across many areas of study. Food, after all, is one of the most basic human needs and a foundational part of social and cultural histories. Such topics as famines, food supply, nutrition, and public health are addressed by historians specializing in every era and every nation. Food in Time and Place delivers an unprecedented review of the state of historical research on food, endorsed by the American Historical Association, providing readers with a geographically, chronologically, and topically broad understanding of food cultures—from ancient Mediterranean and medieval societies to France and its domination of haute cuisine. Teachers, students, and scholars in food history will appreciate coverage of different thematic concerns, such as transfers of crops, conquest, colonization, immigration, and modern forms of globalization.

Many homes in Newfoundland still have well-stocked pantries of bottled moose or rabbit, freezers of corned capelin, and eider ducks at the ready, waiting for a special meal. Food, Culture, Place celebrates the land these foods come from and encourages everyone to put more traditional foods back on their plates. Lori McCarthy and Marsha Tulk have been collecting and cooking their way through the wild foods of Newfoundland for decades. This book showcases their experiences and shares the stories they have captured through their work and the people they have met. Through it all runs a deep love of everything that it takes to harvest, hunt, and prepare these foods to be enjoyed. Fish are caught, game hunted, berries and plants foraged. Food is prepared, preserved, and stored. Throughout are recipes for traditional dishes, regional delicacies, and modern preparations for today's home cook.

Cuisines in Japan have an ideological dimension that cannot be ignored. In 2013, ‘traditional Japanese dietary cultures’ (washoku) was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Washoku’s predecessor was “national people’s cuisine,” an attempt during World War II to create a uniform diet for all citizens. Japan’s Cuisines reveals the great diversity of Japanese cuisine and explains how Japan’s modern food culture arose through the direction of private and public institutions. Readers discover how tea came to be portrayed as the origin of Japanese cuisine, how lunch became a gourmet meal, and how regions on Japan’s periphery are reasserting their distinct food cultures. From wartime foodstuffs to modern diets, this fascinating book shows how the cuisine from the land of the rising sun shapes national, local, and personal identity.

How do we engage with food through memory and imagination? This expansive volume spans time and space to illustrate how, through food, people have engaged with the past, the future, and their alternative presents. Beth M. Forrest and Greg de St. Maurice have brought together first-class contributions, from both established and up-and-coming scholars, to consider how imagination and memory intertwine and sometimes diverge. Chapters draw on cases around the world-including Iran, Italy, Japan, Kenya, and the US-and include topics such as national identity, food insecurity, and the phenomenon of knowledge. Contributions represent a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. This volume is a veritable feast for the contemporary food studies scholar.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. loved the fried catfish and lemon icebox pie at Memphis's Four Way restaurant. Beloved nonagenarian chef Leah Chase introduced George W. Bush to baked cheese grits and scolded Barack Obama for putting Tabasco sauce on her gumbo at New Orleans's Dooky Chase's. When SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael asked Ben's Chili Bowl owners Ben and Virginia Ali to keep the restaurant open during the 1968 Washington, DC, riots, they obliged, feeding police, firefighters, and student activists as they worked together to quell the violence. Celebrated former Chicago Sun-Times columnist Dave Hoekstra unearths these stories and hundreds more as he travels, tastes, and talks his way through twenty of America's best, liveliest, and most historically significant soul food restau­rants. Following the "soul food corridor" from the South through northern industrial cities, The People's Place gives voice to the remarkable chefs, workers, and small business owners (often women) who provided sustenance and a safe haven for civil rights pioneers, not to mention presidents and politicians; music, film, and sports legends; and countless everyday, working-class people. Featuring lush photos, mouth-watering recipes, and ruminations from notable regulars such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, jazz legend Ramsey Lewis, Little Rock Nine member Minnijean Brown, and many others, The People's Place is an unprecedented celebration of soul food, community, and oral history.

“Reading Richard Pillsbury’s remarkable No Foreign Food, like the grand opening of a new restaurant in one’s neighborhood, is an exciting and pleasurable event. He engagingly chronicles the amazing diversity of America’s food ways that are so central to our history and culture, but he also tells us why our eating habits are much more than mere gastronomic experiences.” Karl Raitz UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY “No Foreign Food is the only serious up-to-date treatment of American food habits that I know—a subject unaccountably neglected by most students of the American scene. In Pillsbury’s skillful hands, American food habits become more than just a set of cranky likes and dislikes, but instead a mirror to America’s larger culture. ... It is an indispensable book for any serious student of the American scene.” Pierce Lewis PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY No Foreign Food explores the evolution and transformation of the American diet from colonial times to the present. How and why did our bland colonial diet evolve into today’s restless melange of exotic foods? Why are Hoppin’ John, lutefisk, and scrapple, once so important, seldom eaten today? How has the restaurant shaped our daily menus? These and hundreds of other questions are addressed in this examination of the changing American diet.