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Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats
of the Americas set in motion a transformation of food cultures around the world, this look at the five-hundred-year revolution in food history explains how Europeans, Americans, and Asians came to eat what they eat today.
Paperback, 254 pages
Published
April 5th 1993
by Touchstone
(first published 1991)
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The title was intriguing (arousing the curiosity or interest of).
On page 237 of my 1991 edition, the book is intended not "For most people
in the world this is of no direct importance, but to food-mad novelty seekers
in the industrial nations" is the presumed intended audience for the book,
and thus a motivation for the style of presentation (and hence the style
of this review).
There is a fair bit of useful information, though most of it is concentrated
in the later pages, where it became (for...more
On page 237 of my 1991 edition, the book is intended not "For most people
in the world this is of no direct importance, but to food-mad novelty seekers
in the industrial nations" is the presumed intended audience for the book,
and thus a motivation for the style of presentation (and hence the style
of this review).
There is a fair bit of useful information, though most of it is concentrated
in the later pages, where it became (for...more
Raymond Sokolov's Why We Eat What We Eat is a fascinating account of the modern American diet. I've never read a book quite like it, and what immediately comes to mind isn't more food writing but rather Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, a more general history of why certain cultures (rather than cuisines) came to be dominant. Sokolov's book is, likewise, concerned with domination, though here it's food rather than society that ultimately reigns supreme.
Unfortunately, Sokolov's thesis is a...more
Unfortunately, Sokolov's thesis is a...more
I would have given it 5 stars, except for the irritating tic of praising/exculpating Columbus every couple of chapters, as an intro to assessing the impact of his voyage (and the others it is standing in for) on what we eat. This is a book about how eating habits, and food sources, changed after the Columbian "exchange," which is to say, after new world and old world exchanged and fused grains, vegetables, animals, roots, and other edible matters ("exchange" is a euphemism also for slavery, dise...more
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Interesting. I'm glad I read this selection of food ethnography, but damned if it isn't an odd little book. Based on the title I thought it would be a tracing of commonplace American menus back through history; instead, it opens with chapters on a number of different Spanish countries and their culinary traditions. Okay, I thought, perhaps it's an examination of how Spanish-speaking countries' commonplace culinary habits were formed by los conquistadores - but no, then we start to veer to non-Sp...more
A quick and very enjoyable read on global food patterns and how they came to be is Why We Eat What We Eat: How the Encounter Between the New World and the Old Chnaged the Way Everyone on the Planet Eats(published 1991) written by Raymond Sokolov, the former Travel and Culture writer for the Wall Street Journal. This is an easy, accessible entry point for those interested in food history as opposed to the more academic volume by historian Alfred Crosby entitled The Columbian Exchange, written in...more
Mouth-puckeringly dry humour... "Columbus may have been history's best example of someone who did great things without knowing what they were." Succinct and acerbic observations about the movement of food across nations, carried by explorers, and how the French tried to take credit for everything. A must-read if you love food and want to know the provenance and politics of what's on your plate.
A great, if somewhat verbose, look at how food cross borders and influences culture. Sokolov at one point wonders if the potato famine in Ireland hadn't occured, the course of history in America might have looked quite different.
Journalist Raymond Sokolov sets out to examine the origins of commons foods and dishes. Fascinating mix of anthropology, linguistics, genetic research, and gastronomy.
Mar 13, 2010
Debbie
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
friends-of-the-library-purschase
Often quite speculational, this book was still richly informational. It was fun to read about a foodie's inspirations and investigations. I've looked at olives, corn, potatoes and newer (to me) foods in a new light. What could be more fun than food?!!
One of the classics of food history, Sokolov traces the Columbian Exchange through food products and their wide ranging effects--chilies from South America to India via Portugal, corn in Europe with the major downside of pellagra, potatoes, cows and horses on the plains of North America, quinine from cinchona bark, Moorish Spanish food crossed with tropical resources in the Philippines and the long saga of tomatoes.
Never again will I question the authenticity of food. The author explains how dramatically the world's cuisine changed in just 50 years after Columbus came to the New World. The world is an every-evolving place, even before global warming,airplanes, and the Internet.
Dapet di toko buku bekas juga, harganya cuma 10 rb perak. Oh no! hahahha... Tertarik ngeliat judulnya en pengen aja membaca sesuatu yang lain. Dan ternyata isinya gak mengecewakan, ternyata makanan pun punya banyak mata rantai..
I've only just started this book and am about 2 chapters in. I'm loving his politics and his perspective on the convergence of "old world" and "new world" foods, language, and culture.
Jun 12, 2013
Wynn
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“To the chefs who pioneered the nouvelle cuisine in France, the ancienne cuisine they were rebelling against looked timeless, primordial, old as the hills. But the cookbook record proves that the haute cuisine codified early in this century by Escoffier barely goes back to Napoleon's time. Before that, French food is not recognizable as French to modern eyes. Europe's menu before 1700 was completely different from its menu after 1800, when national cuisines arose along with modern nations and national cultures.”
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1 person liked it
“The exchange of foodstuffs began as a deliberate policy of the Spanish crown. Old World crops and livestock were introduced to Mexico and Peru to support a civilized (that is, Spanish) way of live for the colonists, and New World exotica were sent to Spain as novelties and for agricultural exploitation. But once tomatoes had taken root in Italy, once cattle provided beef and gave milk in Mexico, then local cooks put these wonderful new foods to new uses. And the world changed.”
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1 person liked it
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