15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good history, weak finish, March 20, 2008
This review is from: Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back (Hardcover)
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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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A "must-read" for modern-day consumers in the post-family farm era., November 3, 2007
This review is from: Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back (Hardcover)
Award-winning historian Ann Vileisis presents Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back lives up to its title as a journey through the history of the simple act of making dinner. From eighteenth-century gardens and historic cookbooks to the rise of calculated advertising campaigns and the modern supermarket. As the distance between the creation of food and the table at which it was eaten grew, modern preparers gradually lost their understanding food's origins in exchange for believing advertiser's claims and government assurances. Today, most foods travel fifteen hundred miles before they are eaten. In this modern era of pesticide-drenched fruits, and meat from feedlots of fifty thousand animals, foodborne pathogens and water pollution loom as threats. A movement toward locally grown or raised food and organic fare offers a counterbalance, but now more than ever we need to know the basics about where food comes from in order to ensure optimal health for ourselves and our environment. A "must-read" for modern-day consumers in the post-family farm era.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
4/5 of the book is excellent, November 23, 2008
This review is from: Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back (Hardcover)
Vieisis gives a very complete and thorough look at how the middle class has eaten in American history. I emphasize that this is about middle class America. Little comment is made about the poor (with the exception of some talk about bread), and this is an entirely American history. It is also very much a women's history, women being the cooks, growers, preparers, and ones making food decisions for families. It is not a feminist history, though.
Overall, this book was intriguing. It explored how women have viewed food, cooking for their families, and have gotten advice on growing, purchasing and preparing. The author begins by examining a single meal made by a woman in colonial Massachusetts. From there, the paths through immigration, mass production, wars, Westward expansion, women in the workplace, and an emphasis on variety and healthfulness are examined. I did learn quite a bit from this book-information ranging from how margarine was made to the formation of the Home Economics movement to how cake mixes were sold to women. It's almost amazing how the steps to covering up the steps to food preparation were taken-hiding how meat is butchered, how vegetables are transported, etc.
There were also some serious shortcomings in this book. The two most serious are that the author does little to consider how this change in food has effected the poor (whether for good or ill) and the author does not (IMO) do what she sets out to do in the subtitle of her book: explain why we need to know everything about our foods. I couldn't tell if she was promoting better consumer advocacy and information or if she wanted a back-to-nature approach to food or just constant vigilance on the part of the consumer. Most of the arguments she made seemed to be answered by watching Food Network, looking at labels, and not buying Easy Mac. I felt she needed to spend more time on current food issues. The history was a fascinating road, but it seems like she ignored the destination.
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