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(More customer reviews)Whether you lived in a small town or rural area in the 17th, 18th, and even 19th centuries here in the US, it was likely that you would have been involved in some way with producing food for your family. People had their own gardens and many people, even in towns and cities, kept a few chickens or other poultry and perhaps even their own cows--remember Mrs. O'Leary in Chicago? When you sat down to eat, you knew exactly where almost every part of the meal had come from.
By the 20th century, however, all that had changed, as more and more food came from cans or boxes, and even fresh produce was shipped from far off states and even countries. People were removed farther and farther from their food, and their food was processed almost beyond being clearly identifiable (just what food group would you put Jello in? Diet soda?).
In Kitchen Literacy, Ann Vileisis has traced the changes that led to our having become a nation of *consumers* rather than *producers*, and her narrative is well-researched and entertaining. The gradual introduction of more and more processing to food is described, along with the generally valid reasons for these changes. Being able to buy a can of corn processed immediately after picking in the Midwest certainly was better than having to choose from three or four-day old tired ears of corn brought from southern New Jersey to midtown Manhattan.
Vileisis also provides a lot of hitherto uncovered explanations for why convenience foods first took off in the middle of the 20th century. Rationing of basic staples during World War II that could be circumvented by buying prepared substitutions, more women remaining in the workforce after the war, and the growing influence of food producers in advertising and home economics classes, all provided an impetus for changing eating habits across the country.
Unfortunately, she does not continue on to discuss the factors that are keeping "factory foods" and fast food restaurants so much a part of most people's diets at the beginning of the 21st century. Vileisis does not address the growing problem of obesity at all, and her penultimate chapter, Kitchen Countertrends, has suggestions likely to be acted on by only a tiny minority of the population. CSAs, organic foods, and farmers markets have all been around for years, but their impact remains small; though she says it is a "small but respectable" number, Vileisis herself notes that only 2.5% of all food sales in the US are organic.
So it is that the book misses the mark in the end. I heartily concur with all the "Countertrends" she mentions and have been gardening, going to farmers markets, and eating many organic foods for years. However, the "covenant of ignorance" that Vileisis deplores will not be overcome by a few more "true believers" consuming less and producing more. Given the kind of research and depth she brought to the early chapters, Vileisis failure to cover the current obesity epidemic and suggest solutions that even people with moderate incomes and limited incomes can realistically adopt is a significant gap for an otherwise fine book.
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