Subject Guide: Food

And now this month's library collection subject guide about food:

"Man does not live by what he eats, but by what he digests." - Alexandre Dumas

With the fall harvests and the upcoming holidays, it is that time of year when people find themselves thinking about food perhaps more than usual. As the books in this list demonstrate, the food choices people make have profound consequences for their health and the health of the environment. They suggest that many of society's challenges today could benefit from a better understanding of our food habits - how we select food, grow it, distribute it, eat it, as well as how we assign meaning to it. People do seem to be becoming more conscious of where their food comes from, and it is a consciousness that can require them to make some difficult decisions. These works present some views on those decisions while showing that it is still possible, and perhaps even vital, to enjoy our food and to celebrate with food while consuming it responsibly.


Michael Pollan. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Pollan undertakes a personal journey to explore what he calls "our national eating disorder" and to discover why Americans consume what we do in the twenty-first century. He traces the stories of three food chains - industrial farming, organic farming both large and small, and personal hunting and gathering - from their sources through to a final meal. Along the way, he shows how our eating choices have profound political, economic, and moral implications. We are shaped by what we eat, but what we choose to eat also shapes the world and will determine the health of the environment that sustains us and all life on earth.


Ann Vileisis. Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get it Back. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008.

How did American food habits get to where they are today? There have been significant changes over the past two centuries in how Americans have shopped, cooked, and thought about their food and diet. From actively participating in the growing of food, over time we have come to know less and less about where our foods come from and what went into making them. Where we once trusted our neighbors as a source of food knowledge, we now trust labels on boxes and cans. Ann Vileisis tracks these developments in people's thinking about food as their experience of eating changed, arguing that what we know about food has played a central role in how we perceive ourselves in the broader context of the natural world.

Fritz Allhoff and Dave Monroe, eds. Food & Philosophy: Eat, Think, and be Merry. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.

As Epicurus showed us, the discussion of food can also be a window to important philosophical concerns. These essays from philosophers, chefs, food critics, and humorists covers a wide range of issues including aesthetics, the relationship between food and sensuality, the use of genetically modified organisms, eating disorders, fast food, indigenous food ways, and the ethical implications of our food choices. Sometimes scholarly, somtimes humorous, all of the authors share a love of food, and this thoughtful collection holds out hope for the possibility of celebrating food while learning to eat in a way that allows the planet to thrive.

Nelson Foster and Linda S. Cordell, eds. Chilies to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992.

From corn to potatoes to chocolate, a significant amount of the food consumed regularly worldwide today was unknown outside the Americas when the Europeans arrived. This collection examines the biological and cultural history of a number of crops indigenous to the Americas, from their domestication by the native population to their status today. Some of them have gone global, while others, like oca and arracacha have languished in obscurity. Forgotten, perhaps, but not irrelevant as these essays argue for the significance of biodiversity to a healthy food supply.


Colin Spencer. The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995.

What do Leonardo da Vinci, Hitler, Gandhi, and Percy Shelley have in common? They were all vegetarians, of course, and they are just a small part of this comprehensive social and cultural history that shows that vegetarianism has never been simply a diet without meat. Beginning with such acts as the refusal to partake of a sacrificial ox, vegetarianism has been linked to social dissent and the criticism of dominant norms. Whether it is a choice based on philosophy, conscience, or superstition, it is a choice bound up in a complex web of philosophical, religious, and social values. Vegetarian or meat eater, what people do eat is a symbol of what they believe.


Gary Paul Nabhan. Why Some Like it Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004.

Ethnobiologist Gary Paul Nabhan has studied nutritional ecology for the past three decades. In this work, he travels the world to explore the complex interactions between cuisine, culture, and human evolution. He argues that traditional cuisines have evolved to fit the inhabitants of a particular place. Food sensitivities, instead of being a form of genetic malady, are adaptations different ethnic groups evolved in response to different dietary choices over millennia in particular landscapes. The later separation of ethnic populations from their traditional diets has led to epidemic rises in diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and allergies, among other maladies, and roughly 3 to 4 billion people now suffer some form of nutritionally related diseases. This genetic diversity means there are no simple, single dietary solutions, but rather a need to understand our personal food histories and to preserve our cultural and culinary diversity.

Nina L. Etkin. Edible Medicines: An Ethnopharmacology of Food. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006.

Aztecs applied chile pepper for toothache, sore throat, and asthma. The tonic properties of coffee have been recorded in Islamic pharmacopoeia since the eleventh century. Nina Etkin investigates the role of food in health maintenance across cultures and through time, revealing the pharmacologic potential of foods in the specific cultural contexts in which they are used. Incorporating co-evolution and a biocultural perspective, she shows that food choice has been more closely linked to health than is widely thought, blurring the distinction between food and medicine in the context of real-life circumstances.

John Irving, et al., eds. Terra Madre: 1,600 Food Communities. Bra, Italy: Slow Food Editore, 2006.

Produced for the 2006 Terra Madre cofnerence, this book describes in detail 1,600 food communities in 150 countries - communities embodying a new idea of agriculture based on taste quality, sustainability, and social justice. Working for fertile soil, clean water, and the free circulation of information, these groups seek to protect biodiversity, the dignity of the rural world, and traditional knowledge.