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Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won't Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It
Food is at the center of national debates about how Americans live and the future of the planet. Not everyone agrees about how to reform our relationship to food, but one suggestion rises above the din: home-cooked meals. Amid concerns about obesity and diabetes, unpronounceable ingredients, and the environmental footprint of industrial agriculture, food reformers implore parents to slow down, cook from scratch, and gather around the dinner table. Voting with your fork, they argue, will lead to happier and healthier families. But is it really that simple?
Informed by extensive interviews and observations with families, Pressure Cooker takes seriously the difficulties and dilemmas of feeding a family that food reformers and writers often ignore. From picky eaters and ill-equipped kitchens to hectic schedules and stretched budgets, Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott consider the deep-seated differences that pass through the kitchen and profoundly shape what and how we eat. This book looks closely at the lives of nine diverse families to examine the class inequality, racism, sexism, and xenophobia that shape the work done in kitchens across America. Parents from all backgrounds have heard the relentless advice to take the time to put fresh food, preferably locally-sourced organic fruits and vegetables, on the dinner table each night, but only the most advantaged families can manage it.
Romantic images of family meals are inviting, but they create a fiction that does little to fix the problems in the food system. Even worse, such notions put pressure on families--especially mothers--to strive for an ideal that has never been simple to achieve. Pressure Cooker demonstrates that if we want a food system that is fair, equitable, and nourishing, we must look outside the kitchen for answers.
Informed by extensive interviews and observations with families, Pressure Cooker takes seriously the difficulties and dilemmas of feeding a family that food reformers and writers often ignore. From picky eaters and ill-equipped kitchens to hectic schedules and stretched budgets, Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott consider the deep-seated differences that pass through the kitchen and profoundly shape what and how we eat. This book looks closely at the lives of nine diverse families to examine the class inequality, racism, sexism, and xenophobia that shape the work done in kitchens across America. Parents from all backgrounds have heard the relentless advice to take the time to put fresh food, preferably locally-sourced organic fruits and vegetables, on the dinner table each night, but only the most advantaged families can manage it.
Romantic images of family meals are inviting, but they create a fiction that does little to fix the problems in the food system. Even worse, such notions put pressure on families--especially mothers--to strive for an ideal that has never been simple to achieve. Pressure Cooker demonstrates that if we want a food system that is fair, equitable, and nourishing, we must look outside the kitchen for answers.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published February 4, 2019
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February 22, 2019
Pressure Cooker is the book version of an anthropological study examining how families (primarily low-income) in Raleigh, North Carolina shop, prepare food, and eat. It attempts to rebut the idea that our eating habits can substantially reform the food system, arguing that people we might judge for making seemingly less-than-perfect choices are hampered by overwhelming systematic factors and are doing the best they can.
To do this, the book chooses the following structure:
• List a commonly heard food commandment – “Make time for food,” “Shop Smarter, Eat Better,” – next to a few quotes from well-known food writers (Michael Pollan, Jamie Oliver) who preach said gospel.
• Provide three quick vignettes narrating, blow-by-blow, a scene from the daily life of one of the nine featured families, typically focusing around some element of food (cooking, grocery shopping, trying to eat as a family).
• Throw in a bit of research that, in combination with the everyday-life narration, supposedly demonstrates why said food commandment is ridiculous and out-of-touch with the realities of most everyday Americans.
In the vein of Mathew Desmond’s Evicted, Pressure Cooker attempts to use an anthropological study to argue home cooking is not the solution to our country’s food access problems. The authors present, without comment, illustrations of people’s everyday lives, using storytelling to let the reader draw their own conclusions and thus ostensibly have greater buy-in to the perspective. But it doesn’t quite work. Evicted managed to pull this off because house hunting and evictions are clear, defined time points: the reader connects the dots between Event A and Outcome B. Food and health outcomes, however, are the sum of a thousand daily choices, making it difficult to infer what precisely about a family’s day is supposed to be rebutting one of the food commandments the authors want us to think is misguided.
I’m not critiquing complex connections– it’s good to have nuanced data, and “A unconditionally causes B” is extremely rare. The larger problem is the author’s claims can lack evidence. For example, in the segment “Bring Good Food to Others,” the authors assert that food non-profits, such as attempts to bring gardens to low-income urban areas, are often unwelcome by the people they’re meant to help. Then they describe efforts at urban farms in Detroit – no commentary, just mentioning they exist. Then they present the daily lives of three families…none of whom mention anything about gardens. There is no research cited about anyone disliking gardens, or that one would be unwelcome. But I as the reader am supposed to finish the section have concluded such non-profits and programs are ineffective, even though no real evidence suggesting such as been presented.
Pressure Cooker has many valid points. When you don’t have reliable access to a car, even getting to a grocery store can be impossible; you can’t exactly cook when your family is living in a hotel room; kids are bombarded with temptations for unhealthy food that even the most dedicated parents are powerless to combat. But these points (in addition to being pretty sufficiently covered in previous literature such as $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America) don’t actually negate the argument that cooking healthy food from scratch when you can is a good idea. It would be most successful if used to argue that cooking health food from scratch isn’t sufficient to solve all the challenges of our food system – but it fails to show that home cooking shouldn’t be a proposed solution.
There were a few other problems. The narration is highly repetitive, stating the same facts about the same people over and over and across multiple chapters (ironically, despite the repetition, it was hard to keep the families straight). Ideas would contradict themselves: the authors mentioned repeatedly than people across socioeconomic statuses all want organic food, but then discussed how organic offerings at an interviewee’s restaurant were ignored because the surrounding neighborhood was low socioeconomic status. And if you aren’t a reader already sympathetic to the argument of systematic factors, this book can at times leave you MORE convinced the problem is people making poor personal choices.
I recognize that this was a comprehensive study that took thousands of hours of work and will likely help continue to shed light on how difficult it is to get all people access to healthy, delicious, affordable food. It excels at pointing out that there are so many more challenges in today’s world than food: our society has crazy expectations about succeeding in every area of life, we’re awash in marketing, many people lack strong social support systems. It makes a contribution to the literature on food access, and it’s not bad to push back on the narrative of “personal choice will solve everything.” It just doesn’t accomplish these tasks in any astonishingly successful way.
To do this, the book chooses the following structure:
• List a commonly heard food commandment – “Make time for food,” “Shop Smarter, Eat Better,” – next to a few quotes from well-known food writers (Michael Pollan, Jamie Oliver) who preach said gospel.
• Provide three quick vignettes narrating, blow-by-blow, a scene from the daily life of one of the nine featured families, typically focusing around some element of food (cooking, grocery shopping, trying to eat as a family).
• Throw in a bit of research that, in combination with the everyday-life narration, supposedly demonstrates why said food commandment is ridiculous and out-of-touch with the realities of most everyday Americans.
In the vein of Mathew Desmond’s Evicted, Pressure Cooker attempts to use an anthropological study to argue home cooking is not the solution to our country’s food access problems. The authors present, without comment, illustrations of people’s everyday lives, using storytelling to let the reader draw their own conclusions and thus ostensibly have greater buy-in to the perspective. But it doesn’t quite work. Evicted managed to pull this off because house hunting and evictions are clear, defined time points: the reader connects the dots between Event A and Outcome B. Food and health outcomes, however, are the sum of a thousand daily choices, making it difficult to infer what precisely about a family’s day is supposed to be rebutting one of the food commandments the authors want us to think is misguided.
I’m not critiquing complex connections– it’s good to have nuanced data, and “A unconditionally causes B” is extremely rare. The larger problem is the author’s claims can lack evidence. For example, in the segment “Bring Good Food to Others,” the authors assert that food non-profits, such as attempts to bring gardens to low-income urban areas, are often unwelcome by the people they’re meant to help. Then they describe efforts at urban farms in Detroit – no commentary, just mentioning they exist. Then they present the daily lives of three families…none of whom mention anything about gardens. There is no research cited about anyone disliking gardens, or that one would be unwelcome. But I as the reader am supposed to finish the section have concluded such non-profits and programs are ineffective, even though no real evidence suggesting such as been presented.
Pressure Cooker has many valid points. When you don’t have reliable access to a car, even getting to a grocery store can be impossible; you can’t exactly cook when your family is living in a hotel room; kids are bombarded with temptations for unhealthy food that even the most dedicated parents are powerless to combat. But these points (in addition to being pretty sufficiently covered in previous literature such as $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America) don’t actually negate the argument that cooking healthy food from scratch when you can is a good idea. It would be most successful if used to argue that cooking health food from scratch isn’t sufficient to solve all the challenges of our food system – but it fails to show that home cooking shouldn’t be a proposed solution.
There were a few other problems. The narration is highly repetitive, stating the same facts about the same people over and over and across multiple chapters (ironically, despite the repetition, it was hard to keep the families straight). Ideas would contradict themselves: the authors mentioned repeatedly than people across socioeconomic statuses all want organic food, but then discussed how organic offerings at an interviewee’s restaurant were ignored because the surrounding neighborhood was low socioeconomic status. And if you aren’t a reader already sympathetic to the argument of systematic factors, this book can at times leave you MORE convinced the problem is people making poor personal choices.
I recognize that this was a comprehensive study that took thousands of hours of work and will likely help continue to shed light on how difficult it is to get all people access to healthy, delicious, affordable food. It excels at pointing out that there are so many more challenges in today’s world than food: our society has crazy expectations about succeeding in every area of life, we’re awash in marketing, many people lack strong social support systems. It makes a contribution to the literature on food access, and it’s not bad to push back on the narrative of “personal choice will solve everything.” It just doesn’t accomplish these tasks in any astonishingly successful way.
May 1, 2019
This isn't a book about cooking. It's a book about how what we say, think, do, preach, and spend public money around food, health, and family puts more and more pressure on families, especially on mothers.
The book is a result of a research project, following multiple families of various socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. It looks at how they eat, why they make their choices, and how they try to balance time, money, health, conflict in the family over food choices.
Everyone parent wants their children to be healthy, and wants to feed them in a healthy way. It's not that simple even for well-off families, though, and for the economically struggling, it gets even more complicated. Food isn't just nutrition. It's also culture, family tradition, personal memories and feelings, and a way that people assert identity. None of this is easy on the families deciding what are the best choices.
And making these choices is further complicated by the fact that fruits and vegetables are expensive. If you're on a limited income, especially if your food budget is SNAP benefits, it can be difficult or impossible to afford the recommended number of fruits and vegetables for the family. At the bottom end of the economic ladder, there is food insecurity--families who can't provide every member enough food to keep them healthy and active. In these families, adults have to decide who eats, and get enough calories into their children to keep them healthy and growing.
With money so limited, there is also the painful reality of deciding what bills to pay. If you have a medical emergency and need care, that's a large bill you probably can't pay, at least not and pay the rent and the electric and the phone, as well. Yet food is not a need that can be deferred. I'm an aging woman with no kids, but I've been through some of this myself, thank God with no one but me depending on my ability to balance things. When you have to feed others, especially children young enough that they can't even understand the issues, it's much worse. It's all well and good to say that this is what we need, this is what we can afford, so this is what you have to eat--but in real life, you can't make kids eat what they've decided they're not going to eat. I recall one memorable incident from my early teens. My younger sister was three. She liked peas. Really, she did. We all knew that, and had observed her liking of peas on a regular basis.
But that night, she had decided she was not going to eat peas.
My parents had a rule, I think an easy and flexible rule compared to many families around the subject of family dinner and food. Anything that was put on your plate, you had to eat three bites. Not finish it, just eat three bites. That night, my sister decided she was not eating any peas. At all. My dad, who backed down on nothing, backed down to the extent of insisting on, not three bites, but three peas. And my sister still refused. My mom and I watched in amazement, and distress, and inability to come up with anything that would make either of them budge, as this confrontation went on for nearly four hours. In the end, my sister did not eat the peas.
On other nights, later, she did eat peas.
That's one personal example. The simple fact is that there is no way to force a child to consume food they have decided they will not eat, and if you are already struggling to put enough food on the table, you can't waste money on what you know won't be eaten. The kids get no benefit from what they refuse to eat anyway.
Moreover, nearly all of the advice about what to eat, how to cook it, the central importance of the nightly family dinner, and how to afford good food is coming from white, male, upper income foodies and chefs who will never themselves have to figure out how to feed everyone with $1.45 per person per meal, in an urban center that may have no close supermarkets, and where costs are relatively high.
There is so much more in here, and I can't talk about even everything that moved or disturbed me greatly. Please, read the book, and think about it.
Highly recommended.
I bought this book.
The book is a result of a research project, following multiple families of various socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. It looks at how they eat, why they make their choices, and how they try to balance time, money, health, conflict in the family over food choices.
Everyone parent wants their children to be healthy, and wants to feed them in a healthy way. It's not that simple even for well-off families, though, and for the economically struggling, it gets even more complicated. Food isn't just nutrition. It's also culture, family tradition, personal memories and feelings, and a way that people assert identity. None of this is easy on the families deciding what are the best choices.
And making these choices is further complicated by the fact that fruits and vegetables are expensive. If you're on a limited income, especially if your food budget is SNAP benefits, it can be difficult or impossible to afford the recommended number of fruits and vegetables for the family. At the bottom end of the economic ladder, there is food insecurity--families who can't provide every member enough food to keep them healthy and active. In these families, adults have to decide who eats, and get enough calories into their children to keep them healthy and growing.
With money so limited, there is also the painful reality of deciding what bills to pay. If you have a medical emergency and need care, that's a large bill you probably can't pay, at least not and pay the rent and the electric and the phone, as well. Yet food is not a need that can be deferred. I'm an aging woman with no kids, but I've been through some of this myself, thank God with no one but me depending on my ability to balance things. When you have to feed others, especially children young enough that they can't even understand the issues, it's much worse. It's all well and good to say that this is what we need, this is what we can afford, so this is what you have to eat--but in real life, you can't make kids eat what they've decided they're not going to eat. I recall one memorable incident from my early teens. My younger sister was three. She liked peas. Really, she did. We all knew that, and had observed her liking of peas on a regular basis.
But that night, she had decided she was not going to eat peas.
My parents had a rule, I think an easy and flexible rule compared to many families around the subject of family dinner and food. Anything that was put on your plate, you had to eat three bites. Not finish it, just eat three bites. That night, my sister decided she was not eating any peas. At all. My dad, who backed down on nothing, backed down to the extent of insisting on, not three bites, but three peas. And my sister still refused. My mom and I watched in amazement, and distress, and inability to come up with anything that would make either of them budge, as this confrontation went on for nearly four hours. In the end, my sister did not eat the peas.
On other nights, later, she did eat peas.
That's one personal example. The simple fact is that there is no way to force a child to consume food they have decided they will not eat, and if you are already struggling to put enough food on the table, you can't waste money on what you know won't be eaten. The kids get no benefit from what they refuse to eat anyway.
Moreover, nearly all of the advice about what to eat, how to cook it, the central importance of the nightly family dinner, and how to afford good food is coming from white, male, upper income foodies and chefs who will never themselves have to figure out how to feed everyone with $1.45 per person per meal, in an urban center that may have no close supermarkets, and where costs are relatively high.
There is so much more in here, and I can't talk about even everything that moved or disturbed me greatly. Please, read the book, and think about it.
Highly recommended.
I bought this book.
March 9, 2019
Those of us who feed other people on a regular basis are familiar with the regular hectoring to get back to the kitchen and cook, and the promises of psychological, social, and nutritional benefits of doing so. If we all just pulled up our bootstraps and got to the frying pans, we would be better, healthier people. And 90% of the women I know look at these articles--often written by men--and say, "Good luck with that. Come into my life and make your perfect family dinners." Pressure Cooker is a study by three sociologists into what really goes into getting that dinner on the table, and why it doesn't look like Michael Pollan's lovingly simmered sugo. (I loved that they highlighted examples of the most noxious writing on the topic; they included a column of Mark Bittman's that I've repeatedly shared with swear words attached.)
The book is structured around the real stories of 9 women and their families. The women represent a cross section of ethnicities and class (ranging from homeless to middle class). The fieldwork and interviews are the heart of the book, but the stories serve as an entry point into the different factors surrounding mealtime in American families. The women all largely share a belief in feeding their families well, but their vision of what that looks like, and their ability to put it into practice, varies. Physical and financial obstacles to obtaining fresh food, time constraints, government programs, culture, family preferences, and equipment all play a role. The constraints have secondary effects; for example, on a tight food budget, parents can't afford to buy things that might go to waste. Familiar foods that will get eaten are a better use of money.
At its root, food crusaders get it wrong because they assume people don't cook because they don't want to. These women do want to eat well--they aren't serving Ho-Hos for dinner because they don't care. They are not meeting the ideals of foodie life because of circumstances that they cannot fully control.
The researchers were clearly sympathetic to their subjects and are generally nonjudgmental. (I did wind up disliking one of them--the middle class white woman whose daughter had never seen M&Ms.) The stories do an excellent job of showing how the constraints on their lives work out in practice for families and the field work is backed by research. The work was all home focused, so the influence of food consumed elsewhere is not looked at--another interesting line of questioning would be whether and how school food programs impact eating habits at home.
One slightly nitpicky point: I felt like a lot of the information in the notes was not just sources, but was valuable information that could have been put in the body text. It seems like they didn't want to disrupt narrative flow, but a lot of important details could be lost. As well, the setup was slightly confusing; the introduction says that the extended observations were done only with the lower class families, but the profiled families do include what I would consider middle class ones.
The solutions section is a little weak; fixing our food problem requires fixing a lot of things about our culture, from the way we begrudge poor people a decent diet, to ad hoc work schedules that make planning difficult, to city planning that leaves shopping inaccessible. There's simply too much to tackle, but I can't fault the authors for it, and they have some good ideas.
I did not find this book to be groundbreaking, but I enjoyed it and feel that the researchers had the correct approach to the topic.
The book is structured around the real stories of 9 women and their families. The women represent a cross section of ethnicities and class (ranging from homeless to middle class). The fieldwork and interviews are the heart of the book, but the stories serve as an entry point into the different factors surrounding mealtime in American families. The women all largely share a belief in feeding their families well, but their vision of what that looks like, and their ability to put it into practice, varies. Physical and financial obstacles to obtaining fresh food, time constraints, government programs, culture, family preferences, and equipment all play a role. The constraints have secondary effects; for example, on a tight food budget, parents can't afford to buy things that might go to waste. Familiar foods that will get eaten are a better use of money.
At its root, food crusaders get it wrong because they assume people don't cook because they don't want to. These women do want to eat well--they aren't serving Ho-Hos for dinner because they don't care. They are not meeting the ideals of foodie life because of circumstances that they cannot fully control.
The researchers were clearly sympathetic to their subjects and are generally nonjudgmental. (I did wind up disliking one of them--the middle class white woman whose daughter had never seen M&Ms.) The stories do an excellent job of showing how the constraints on their lives work out in practice for families and the field work is backed by research. The work was all home focused, so the influence of food consumed elsewhere is not looked at--another interesting line of questioning would be whether and how school food programs impact eating habits at home.
One slightly nitpicky point: I felt like a lot of the information in the notes was not just sources, but was valuable information that could have been put in the body text. It seems like they didn't want to disrupt narrative flow, but a lot of important details could be lost. As well, the setup was slightly confusing; the introduction says that the extended observations were done only with the lower class families, but the profiled families do include what I would consider middle class ones.
The solutions section is a little weak; fixing our food problem requires fixing a lot of things about our culture, from the way we begrudge poor people a decent diet, to ad hoc work schedules that make planning difficult, to city planning that leaves shopping inaccessible. There's simply too much to tackle, but I can't fault the authors for it, and they have some good ideas.
I did not find this book to be groundbreaking, but I enjoyed it and feel that the researchers had the correct approach to the topic.
July 14, 2021
Disappointing. Despite the subtitle, there is little on "what we can do"--one short chapter recommending that we do stuff like end poverty. Thanks a lot. As for the "why," that is based mainly on stories that undermine foodie myths, as if foodies were in charge of the world and so it would be bold and fascinating to contradict them. Might be interesting to readers who don't know about poverty in America.
A better recent book on food issues:
The Way We Eat Now
A better recent book on food issues:
The Way We Eat Now
February 17, 2019
Amazing look at food issues
This book is a very well-cited study of food, its acquisition, preparation, and consumption. It follows several families, mostly low income families, as they navigate feeding themselves. Women's roles and the perceptions around them are central, as are our country's policies about welfare. I was hoping to keep reading forever, but I've got a list of many other works to find out more thanks to the references section in this book. Definitely a must read for anyone concerned about our food supply, hunger, poverty, welfare, and policy and its outcomes.
This book is a very well-cited study of food, its acquisition, preparation, and consumption. It follows several families, mostly low income families, as they navigate feeding themselves. Women's roles and the perceptions around them are central, as are our country's policies about welfare. I was hoping to keep reading forever, but I've got a list of many other works to find out more thanks to the references section in this book. Definitely a must read for anyone concerned about our food supply, hunger, poverty, welfare, and policy and its outcomes.
June 20, 2019
The authors succeeded in convincing me not that "home cooking won't solve our problems," but rather that "home cooking is not a possibility for many of the impoverished." Or, even when it does happen, it isn't always appreciated.
Alternating repeatedly among nine families who I got all mixed up, the book gives the reader a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the challenges facing various women (only a couple are married) trying to feed their families. It's pretty danged discouraging. Without the advantages of affluence and education and access and time, making sure everyone gets *something* to eat, much less something "healthy" is sometimes impossible.
The "what we can do about it" part of the book was pretty minimal, came at the end, and was peopled by the usual suspects: universal health care, living wage, parental leave, and so on. I think it would also help if NO ONE had babies until they finished high school, got a job, and managed to save up some money, but that's my middle-classness showing, I know. And, ladies, help yourselves out by leaving some of those men unclaimed! If they can't help you along, at least don't fasten them like millstones around your neck. Sigh.
Alternating repeatedly among nine families who I got all mixed up, the book gives the reader a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the challenges facing various women (only a couple are married) trying to feed their families. It's pretty danged discouraging. Without the advantages of affluence and education and access and time, making sure everyone gets *something* to eat, much less something "healthy" is sometimes impossible.
The "what we can do about it" part of the book was pretty minimal, came at the end, and was peopled by the usual suspects: universal health care, living wage, parental leave, and so on. I think it would also help if NO ONE had babies until they finished high school, got a job, and managed to save up some money, but that's my middle-classness showing, I know. And, ladies, help yourselves out by leaving some of those men unclaimed! If they can't help you along, at least don't fasten them like millstones around your neck. Sigh.
March 21, 2020
Man, this book will give you a lot to think about. About our food system, how we care for our families, how we care for those in need. And what a time to be reading this book, during a pandemic, when hundreds of thousands of people in the food service industry have lost their jobs and when food banks are more important than ever. I will think about some of these families for years to come, and am worried about their situations right now with the pandemic. I hope to god they are able to get food and the necessities they need.
It made me realize that I don’t want anyone to have to scrape to get food on the table for themselves and their children. Even if it’s hard to find work, we should always be able to find food. Will be thinking about what this means in terms of giving to local food banks and volunteering in the weeks to come.
It made me realize that I don’t want anyone to have to scrape to get food on the table for themselves and their children. Even if it’s hard to find work, we should always be able to find food. Will be thinking about what this means in terms of giving to local food banks and volunteering in the weeks to come.
February 15, 2019
A rebuttal to crackers
I liked how this research intense book was basically pointing out why white me foodie pundits are clueless about what goes on in family kitchens in the United States.
I liked how this research intense book was basically pointing out why white me foodie pundits are clueless about what goes on in family kitchens in the United States.
May 30, 2019
Such an important book. It was great to experience the lives of so many different families. The common sense policies recommended at the end basically made me want to cry. They're so obviously good for children, families, and our country as a whole, and yet so very far from ever being a reality here.
August 9, 2019
well, actually, is there a category for "Tried to read, pushed through about half of it, then gave up?" Reads like a graduate school sociology thesis.
July 22, 2019
This wasn't exactly what I was expecting - but it wasn't bad. I think I was expecting more persuasive discussion and evidence to support each argument, as the book moved through refuting or agreeing with various bits of wisdom from various food-policy gurus. Instead, despite the format, which does organize the information in response to food policy maxims like 'eat more plants' and 'don't eat things your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food,' the book is essentially a compilation of a long multi-year sociological research project with the result, in total, of illustrating the idea that those ideas might be well-meaning but reality is much more complicated. The work does not do a good job of deconstructing or refuting specific pieces of advice; rather, it argues, by presenting illustration after illustration, that parents and specifically mothers already face a great deal of pressure to feed their families well and that individuals are already exerting a great deal of effort toward that end. If we are not seeing the widespread success that we would like, the work suggests, the fault is not down to laziness and ignorance on the part of people, but rather because the systems of food in America are not optimized to make success a likely outcome.
Despite the general failure of the book to argue specifics about policies or present really comprehensive suggestions of its own in regards to how to improve matters, there is a great deal of valuable information contained within. The glimpses inside the personal lives of low-income families in regards to their relationships with food and food insecurity alone are important for well-meaning middle-class activists. The overall message- that scolding families about their food choices and ignoring systemic inequalities and problems is unworkable as a method for improving nutrition and food systems in America - is a good one. And also to relax the pressure we feel, a little bit. We can't solve these problems as individuals just by trying harder. We need systemic solutions, not just more guilt.
Despite the general failure of the book to argue specifics about policies or present really comprehensive suggestions of its own in regards to how to improve matters, there is a great deal of valuable information contained within. The glimpses inside the personal lives of low-income families in regards to their relationships with food and food insecurity alone are important for well-meaning middle-class activists. The overall message- that scolding families about their food choices and ignoring systemic inequalities and problems is unworkable as a method for improving nutrition and food systems in America - is a good one. And also to relax the pressure we feel, a little bit. We can't solve these problems as individuals just by trying harder. We need systemic solutions, not just more guilt.
January 13, 2020
I enjoyed reading this but it was not what I expected based on the title. I was drawn to the claim that home cooking won't solve my problems because I refuse to cook...ever. So I thought it was going to be some magical excuse to get women out of the feeling that we need to keep up with our hectic schedules PLUS still provide our families with three square, healthy, ethically sourced and environmentally responsible meals. (No Thanks!)
Instead, this book's whole premise is to convince you that poor people's health problems would not be solved by home cooking and are not just because they don't make good food decisions or are lazy. Instead, it attempts to draw comparisons across all economic levels by profiling a dozen different families in the Raleigh, NC area (from the highly educated and financially comfortable to a family living out of a motel for months) and showing how each of those women struggle with how to feed their families and the guilt and expectations heaped on women who are seen as bad mothers if their kids are overweight or incorrectly nourished. All of that was an interesting read from a sociological perspective.
They save the "what we can do about it" for the last eleven pages. And how many solutions could anyone fit in 11 pages? Not many. But it certainly points out things that the government could be doing to ease the burden, like make it easier for mid to low income families eat healthy meals. Think school lunch-type meals available three meals a day for all Americans. They also need to make reasonable food sources more plentiful in remote areas, etc. It also suggested that the same churches/community centers that run food pantries could also organize community meals with sliding scales of payment that would ensure a healthy meal and encourage various economic levels to mix socially. I wish the book had been a more nuanced and thoughtful expansion of its last 11 pages. But I don't regret reading it.
Instead, this book's whole premise is to convince you that poor people's health problems would not be solved by home cooking and are not just because they don't make good food decisions or are lazy. Instead, it attempts to draw comparisons across all economic levels by profiling a dozen different families in the Raleigh, NC area (from the highly educated and financially comfortable to a family living out of a motel for months) and showing how each of those women struggle with how to feed their families and the guilt and expectations heaped on women who are seen as bad mothers if their kids are overweight or incorrectly nourished. All of that was an interesting read from a sociological perspective.
They save the "what we can do about it" for the last eleven pages. And how many solutions could anyone fit in 11 pages? Not many. But it certainly points out things that the government could be doing to ease the burden, like make it easier for mid to low income families eat healthy meals. Think school lunch-type meals available three meals a day for all Americans. They also need to make reasonable food sources more plentiful in remote areas, etc. It also suggested that the same churches/community centers that run food pantries could also organize community meals with sliding scales of payment that would ensure a healthy meal and encourage various economic levels to mix socially. I wish the book had been a more nuanced and thoughtful expansion of its last 11 pages. But I don't regret reading it.
December 23, 2020
I wish this book had a different subtitle. Really, this book is about poverty, and how the dissolution of the American social safety net has harmed and held back a lot of people. This is a sociological study of dietary consequences of poverty, not a set of policy recommendations. Bowen et al are arguing that American culture has intensified an expectation of individual choice and self-reliance in expecting all people, but especially the poor, to eat healthful, nourishing meals, while completely ignoring the structural issues that make it difficult or impossible for many people to do so. They also highlight the ways in which the current assistance programs are inefficient and humiliating for the recipients. Plus, there's a good examination of how all of these expectations and the labour of cooking falls almost completely on women. Their recommendations are more implied than suggested: institute policies that allow people to be paid a living a wage, strengthen and expand the social safety nets, and increase supports for families with young children, both in terms of expanding food stamps and child tax credits, but also in terms of making it easier for all lower and middle income families to work and care for their children.
I wish Bowen et al were better writers. In more deft hands, this could have been similar to Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. If you're not quite interested in these things, it's a bit of a slog. But it is a thorough and important examination of the ways in which the message to just cook more at home can be unrealistic for many Americans.
I wish Bowen et al were better writers. In more deft hands, this could have been similar to Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. If you're not quite interested in these things, it's a bit of a slog. But it is a thorough and important examination of the ways in which the message to just cook more at home can be unrealistic for many Americans.
April 5, 2020
I have mixed feelings about this book.
Listed as over 330 pages, the last 100 pages is all notes on research methods, so the actual reading is 230 pages for the average reader.
Although I did like this book, the title seems a bit misleading. Most of the book tells stories of nine women living near Raleigh, North Carolina. The women are predominantly of minority race and low income, and this feeds the overall narrative of food insecurity. One higher income woman talks about how she must downplay words like “organic” in order to make her restaurant enticing to the locals. Her story seems out of place, but I wish it wasn’t. There are plenty of women who can afford to feed their families, but still struggle with family meals, and realize that family meals won’t solve all their problems. Where are the soccer moms hitting the drive-thrus? Where are the upper class women who hire cooks? I wish there were a few more narratives included that showed the full economic spectrum of families and their different problems.
As a book about food insecurity, food deserts, and issues with government assistance programs, I found this decently informative! A good primer on these issues. I’d recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t know a lot about these issues.
Listed as over 330 pages, the last 100 pages is all notes on research methods, so the actual reading is 230 pages for the average reader.
Although I did like this book, the title seems a bit misleading. Most of the book tells stories of nine women living near Raleigh, North Carolina. The women are predominantly of minority race and low income, and this feeds the overall narrative of food insecurity. One higher income woman talks about how she must downplay words like “organic” in order to make her restaurant enticing to the locals. Her story seems out of place, but I wish it wasn’t. There are plenty of women who can afford to feed their families, but still struggle with family meals, and realize that family meals won’t solve all their problems. Where are the soccer moms hitting the drive-thrus? Where are the upper class women who hire cooks? I wish there were a few more narratives included that showed the full economic spectrum of families and their different problems.
As a book about food insecurity, food deserts, and issues with government assistance programs, I found this decently informative! A good primer on these issues. I’d recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t know a lot about these issues.
December 14, 2019
What I enjoyed most about this book was the ethnographic aspects of it--diving into the women's actual lives and seeing them trying to cook. I really enjoyed all the women in the book, though would sometimes get them confused or felt that they had been clearly pegged into a certain "role" for the narrative. I did find the overall structure of the book a bit perplexing though. It's hypothetically centered around various foodie myths but the content of most of the chapters felt very similar to prior ones. That being said, I still really enjoyed the book.
March 9, 2019
Huge disappointment. Instead of an actual breakdown and discussion of the problems regarding cooking, food acquisition, and nutrition in the US, this book is basically a collection of stories about a bunch of families and their struggles with food scarcity, lack of cooking space, etc. The stories may illustrate the problems, but they're tedious to read when they take up the majority of the book, and leave practically no space for serious analysis or suggestions about how to fix things. I found myself skimming, which is very unusual for me, trying to find a section that focused on analysis, and made it to the end of the book without finding one. Furthermore, over 40% of the book (per the Kindle pages) is made up of Notes. This was not the book I was expecting at all.
April 12, 2022
Found this book in the sociology office a few weeks ago while I was holding my office hours, which have still seen zero attendance. I started it then put it away for a few weeks before finishing up today. My usual desk-mate during my morning shift at work got a new full time job :( so I had more time to read this morning because we weren't talking.
This book was written as a response to books like Cooked, which talk about the value of home cooking and family time. While these are important, many Americans do not have the privilege of the time and money needed to take time to plan meals and shop organically. This book told the stories of mothers trying to navigate how to feed their family on food stamps and with little time or resources. I thought the section on the myth of food deserts was interesting- food means something different for everyone and the data shows that even when healthy food is available people don't always choose to eat it. I'm not sure what can really be done to help this because you can't just tell someone that their cultural food is wrong or bad.
The book's conclusion left me with a classic sociology and social policy issue: solving private problems with collective responses. The book discussed how food banks are great local solutions, but don't fundamentally change the the fact that in the US people don't have a "right to food." My professor's book on motherhood addressed similar issues with the gendered parts of cooking too. Food bank lines were filled with women who felt responsible to feed their families. Not sure what we can do about this, hoping next year when I am in a school I'll get the chance to learn about their lunch programs and how they teach nutrition. I was thinking about trying to get a nutrition certification while reading the book, but it sounds like a lot of work right now.
This book was written as a response to books like Cooked, which talk about the value of home cooking and family time. While these are important, many Americans do not have the privilege of the time and money needed to take time to plan meals and shop organically. This book told the stories of mothers trying to navigate how to feed their family on food stamps and with little time or resources. I thought the section on the myth of food deserts was interesting- food means something different for everyone and the data shows that even when healthy food is available people don't always choose to eat it. I'm not sure what can really be done to help this because you can't just tell someone that their cultural food is wrong or bad.
The book's conclusion left me with a classic sociology and social policy issue: solving private problems with collective responses. The book discussed how food banks are great local solutions, but don't fundamentally change the the fact that in the US people don't have a "right to food." My professor's book on motherhood addressed similar issues with the gendered parts of cooking too. Food bank lines were filled with women who felt responsible to feed their families. Not sure what we can do about this, hoping next year when I am in a school I'll get the chance to learn about their lunch programs and how they teach nutrition. I was thinking about trying to get a nutrition certification while reading the book, but it sounds like a lot of work right now.
April 8, 2023
Pressure Cooker is an insightful and thought-provoking book that challenges the popular notion that cooking at home can solve all of our problems, from obesity to economic inequality. The authors are sociologists who conducted a five-year study of how families in the United States navigate the challenges of feeding themselves and their loved ones.
The book is structured around several key themes, including the challenges of juggling work and family responsibilities, the economic pressures that make it difficult for many families to afford healthy food, and the social norms and cultural expectations that shape our attitudes towards food and cooking. Through a series of in-depth interviews and case studies, the authors illustrate how these factors interact to create a complex and often frustrating landscape for families trying to feed themselves.
One of the book's strengths is its ability to dispel common myths about home cooking. While cooking at home can certainly be healthier and more affordable than eating out, the authors argue that it is not a silver bullet that can solve all of our food-related problems. They point out that cooking at home requires time, money, and skills that many families simply do not have, and that it can be difficult to find the motivation to cook when we are surrounded by an abundance of cheap and convenient processed foods.
Overall, Pressure Cooker is a compelling and engaging book that offers a fresh perspective on the challenges of feeding ourselves and our loved ones. It is well-written and accessible, making it a valuable resource for anyone interested in food, health, and social justice. While it may not provide easy answers or simple solutions, it offers a nuanced and thoughtful analysis of the complex factors that shape our food choices and our lives.
The book is structured around several key themes, including the challenges of juggling work and family responsibilities, the economic pressures that make it difficult for many families to afford healthy food, and the social norms and cultural expectations that shape our attitudes towards food and cooking. Through a series of in-depth interviews and case studies, the authors illustrate how these factors interact to create a complex and often frustrating landscape for families trying to feed themselves.
One of the book's strengths is its ability to dispel common myths about home cooking. While cooking at home can certainly be healthier and more affordable than eating out, the authors argue that it is not a silver bullet that can solve all of our food-related problems. They point out that cooking at home requires time, money, and skills that many families simply do not have, and that it can be difficult to find the motivation to cook when we are surrounded by an abundance of cheap and convenient processed foods.
Overall, Pressure Cooker is a compelling and engaging book that offers a fresh perspective on the challenges of feeding ourselves and our loved ones. It is well-written and accessible, making it a valuable resource for anyone interested in food, health, and social justice. While it may not provide easy answers or simple solutions, it offers a nuanced and thoughtful analysis of the complex factors that shape our food choices and our lives.
March 22, 2019
It feels a little odd to review this book, as reading it felt like some combination of a textbook and a bunch of magazine articles. The stories themselves were very easy to read, but the (usually interesting and worthwhile) endnotes made it somewhat laborious - especially while reading in bed! I wonder if there might have been some better combination of these two styles.
As far as the content goes, even as a recent MSW graduate I learned quite a bit from this book. From learning how one might cook in a hotel room, as one grandmother does for her grandchildren in this book, fo feeling the judgement of another mother whose daughter’s weight and iron levels are regularly tested at their local WIC - these are aspects of the food system in the US that may be under the radar but are certainly not out of the norm.
It goes far beyond the kitchen and discusses gender inequities and poverty. The concept of “contaminated time” rang especially true to me. Women’s “leisure” time is often not as leisurely as our male counterparts - we spend even our downtime making mental lists, organizing and planning for the future, and doing the often invisible work of running a household.
As far as the content goes, even as a recent MSW graduate I learned quite a bit from this book. From learning how one might cook in a hotel room, as one grandmother does for her grandchildren in this book, fo feeling the judgement of another mother whose daughter’s weight and iron levels are regularly tested at their local WIC - these are aspects of the food system in the US that may be under the radar but are certainly not out of the norm.
It goes far beyond the kitchen and discusses gender inequities and poverty. The concept of “contaminated time” rang especially true to me. Women’s “leisure” time is often not as leisurely as our male counterparts - we spend even our downtime making mental lists, organizing and planning for the future, and doing the often invisible work of running a household.
November 14, 2019
This sociological text, through extensive interviews with working class women, challenges arguments put forth by high-minded foodies like Mark Birman, Michael Pollen, and Jamie Oliver. By watching these women cook, shop with food stamps and struggle with their weight and health, we see that the struggle to eat healthier and hold family dinner is advice that, while we’ll intentioned, completely ignores the reality of these families—mostly families of color. It’s not that these women aren’t aware of the advice about cooking fresh and healthy and eating vegetables with every meal, it’s that they are poor, sometimes homeless, and have neither the time nor the equipment to really pull off the idyllic advice. Finally the book deals the ultimate blow. When we talk about failings of food, we are ultimately talking about failings of women. Women still cool most meals for families, do most of the food shopping, and increasingly feel guilty about all the ways they are falling short. It gave me a lot to think about.
December 6, 2019
I really loved this look at how families really eat, especially with the focus on women of color in a smaller city. There is a lot of pressure for each of us to feed our families and ourselves properly in order to make ourselves healthier and change the world. But it's often too much pressure, and it's hard for everyone, and harder the less money and time you have.
They followed 9 different families in this book and while I appreciated the diverse perspectives, it was sometimes hard to keep track of all the people. But seeing them grocery shopping and cooking and interacting with family provides important insights. There are research notes at the end of this book which I appreciate but didn't read as a lay person reading this book.
There's also no answers in here, which is okay. It's not billed as a book of answers. And it does critique the white men out there who are all so surprised and shocked to learn that we can't all make all of our food from scratch with local ingredients. Thank you for calling them out as you share the circumstances of some real folks.
They followed 9 different families in this book and while I appreciated the diverse perspectives, it was sometimes hard to keep track of all the people. But seeing them grocery shopping and cooking and interacting with family provides important insights. There are research notes at the end of this book which I appreciate but didn't read as a lay person reading this book.
There's also no answers in here, which is okay. It's not billed as a book of answers. And it does critique the white men out there who are all so surprised and shocked to learn that we can't all make all of our food from scratch with local ingredients. Thank you for calling them out as you share the circumstances of some real folks.
July 8, 2019
The nine women profiled in this book were part of a 5-year longitudinal study in Wake County, North Carolina. The study looked at how 168 families, mostly low and middle income, fed their families. All the women loved their children and wanted them to eat well but had varying means and ability to put a "home-cooked" meal on the table. Even those families at the upper end of the income spectrum struggled with time and ingredients to put the idealized meal on their family table. Through these compellingly written profiles, the reader learns how "class inequality, racism, sexism, and xenophobia converge at the dinner table". Unending messages about the ideal from all forms of media only exacerbate the situation. The authors' conclusions at the end of the book provide much fodder for thought and discussion. This work would be a good companion piece to Evicted by Matthew Desmond and Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.
August 30, 2019
I really liked the stories of the different families and how they illustrated the overall premise of this book: that most people want to eat healthy and be able to provide good meals for their families, but there are a lot of different obstacles besides just lack of willpower. I enjoyed that a lot of structural and systemic problems were highlighted. However, I do wish there had been more analysis in the conclusion about what things can be done to mitigate or solve some of these problems. The last chapter felt a little conclusory and there wasn't enough policy arguments or suggestions for me.
Also, minor quibble, but I really hated that the footnotes were endnotes. There were things I wanted to check out, but I didn't want to be constantly skipping between the appendix and the chapter I was on.
Also, minor quibble, but I really hated that the footnotes were endnotes. There were things I wanted to check out, but I didn't want to be constantly skipping between the appendix and the chapter I was on.
September 1, 2019
A book that should be in discussions everywhere, but it hits squarely on the uncomfortable truths underlying the "back to home cooking family dinners" movement prescribed by white male celebrity foodies, chefs, farmers, and journalists. Regardless of income, the burden fell to women who are already beyond taxed physically, mentally, financially, and socially.
A ton of research went into this book; a fifth of it at the end is just citations. Each chapter follows a participating family from Raleigh, NC, and those stories destroy the idea that women are not doing enough to feed their families "properly." Instead of pinning the responsibility for our food, environmental, and societal ills on individuals to fix, we need to address the systemic problems for which these issues are only a symptom, not the cause.
A ton of research went into this book; a fifth of it at the end is just citations. Each chapter follows a participating family from Raleigh, NC, and those stories destroy the idea that women are not doing enough to feed their families "properly." Instead of pinning the responsibility for our food, environmental, and societal ills on individuals to fix, we need to address the systemic problems for which these issues are only a symptom, not the cause.
May 25, 2019
A deeply compassionate book, thoughtfully structured and researched, sensitive about its limitations. The book is dense with detail but well written. I very much enjoyed reading it, even as I got frustrated or saddened at the conditions affecting these women. My life is very different from theirs but I felt so much resonance in our shared concern (sometimes obsession) with planning meals, feeding my family, and making good food choices. I loved the way the authors/researchers took us inside these families’ lives; even friends are not always privy to this kind of intimacy with each other’s mealtime decisions and routines, so it was a pleasure to spend time with these other women and moms as they grappled with questions that consume so much of my own thought these days.
April 9, 2021
2.5 stars. The authors followed nine families closely to write about the act of cooking and feeding ourselves. The bulk of the book is stories of individual snippets of daily life from these families. Yes, you get an idea of some of the challenges they face, but the book provides very little analysis, and it doesn't deliver on the promise to reveal "What We Can Do about It."
The authors discuss their research process. I would be interested to see actual papers published from this research, because the book itself doesn't appear to include data from that research, simply stories from a handful of the families studied.
The authors discuss their research process. I would be interested to see actual papers published from this research, because the book itself doesn't appear to include data from that research, simply stories from a handful of the families studied.
January 30, 2020
Everyone needs food to survive, so why don’t we all have access to it? This book really makes you think about the one thing you might take for granted, basic nutrition.
Nine families (mostly low-income from North Carolina) are interviewed “in front of our eyes”, allowing us to see a snippet from their daily lives. We learn the whys behind their lack of proper nutrition, and maybe what we can do about it, although I didn’t feel that point was discussed enough.
Overall, thought provoking read, but I feel it fell short in the conclusion.
Nine families (mostly low-income from North Carolina) are interviewed “in front of our eyes”, allowing us to see a snippet from their daily lives. We learn the whys behind their lack of proper nutrition, and maybe what we can do about it, although I didn’t feel that point was discussed enough.
Overall, thought provoking read, but I feel it fell short in the conclusion.
March 1, 2020
An excellent sociological study packaged as a book. I can’t say I necessarily learned anything “new,” but it was very insightful to see how regular women (and it’s always women) attempt to feed their children within the confines of their incomes, circumstances, and beliefs. As per usual though, having more children than you can afford, particularly when you also have a selfish and unreliable male partner, certainly compounds the problem of access to affordable and nutritious food for your family.
January 3, 2021
This book is a series of 26 essays that summarize the results of a sociology study on home cooking. That makes it sound really dry though. In reality it's a collection of detailed stories about a group of women who are the primary cooks in their household and all the different challenges that go into home cooking. At times the book was depressing because home cooking is something challenging and impacted by one's class and economic situation and a whole host of other things, but I am glad to have read it.
June 5, 2019
I don't like reading about food, but I got snookered into this because it's full of slice-of-life true stories about regular people. Sort of like peeking between the blinds to watch your neighbors, except these are all people who live in the vicinity of Raleigh, North Carolina.
This book draws some philosophical conclusions about the place of food in our lives through detailed sociological field work. Which interests me very little. I just liked the stories.
This book draws some philosophical conclusions about the place of food in our lives through detailed sociological field work. Which interests me very little. I just liked the stories.
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