Customer Reviews

Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This was a wonderful book on the history of markets and how we went from growing to buying our food. However, the author stops short of giving real answers to how we get back to our roots or why exactly we need to get back the knowledge. There should be about three more chapters, but the history was great.

In Kitchen Literacy, Ann Vileisis brings a deft touch to defining and connecting the forces that have removed food literacy from the consumer over the past 200 years. She addresses a wide set of influences, including urbanization, industrialization, war, the rise of supermarkets and mega-marts, the mutation of marketing, and the gradual replacement of personal knowledge of food with institutional knowledge from scientist, the govt., or other experts to name just a few. The books message is grounded with a large set of references and provides a clear picture of the rise of what she calls the "covenant of ignorance" that we have entered into.
This is a wonderful read if you, like me, want to understand the path that got us to the food systems we have today.

There is no aspect of our lives with which food does not intersect, and it rare to find a work that can weave those many divergent threads into a single cohesive and articulate piece; Ms. Vileisis masterfully does exactly that.

Her work is both vindicating and challenging; though readers will already be aware how much less current generations about food and the culinary arts than our predecessors, few realize how far back in our nation's history that knowledge started to erode or the full spectrum of instigative causes. The detailed research and moving insight applied to succeeding generations of Americans as they struggled with progress, change and the growing integration of technology and psychology in their food systems were fascinating to explore.

The author presents an admirably balanced view of history, condemning and belittling neither industry nor consumers as their roles in producing, procuring and preparing food shifted and adapted over time. Most appreciatively, Ms. Vileisis filled her work with incidents, trends and characters rarely addressed, bringing fresh content to the table and offering unique ideas to enrich the discussion of our nation's foodways - past, present and future.

An excellent overview of the history of what Americans have eaten over the past two centuries. From a farm wife's table to the supermarkets of today, Vilesis outlines the historical changes that have occurred in the way that people select and prepare food. The historical context flows naturally and allows the reader to follow along easily with the concepts brought forth. Well-selected images enhance the discussion.

This is a good introduction for anyone who is interested in really delving into foods that Americans eat on a regular basis. It prompts a thorough review of labels in pantries, and searches for the most truly natural foods out there. The explanations for "Natural" and "Organic" terminology educate the reader on what these terms really mean.

The first three-quarters of this book is detailed and makes a good body-based case for being aware of the foods that Americans eat today. It falls short, though, on the "Why we need to get it back" portion. While this theme is hinted at during most of the book, it provides a weak argument toward the end. There seemed to be a transition in focus in the last chapter, from being aware of the health issues that prepared and insecticide-sprayed foods have on our bodies, to the environmental issues that these industries cause. The Afterward brought it back, but it seemed too little, too late.

I selected this book due to the interest in health issues, then later learned about the author's history (environmental studies) and the publisher's focus on environmental problems. The title and introduction, as well as the first half of the book do not even hint at these themes, but the last part of the book has a definite shift in that direction.

The book gets four stars because it really is a very good resource for understanding the foods in supermarkets. It is a real motivator to start to look at where our foods really come from. The weak ending and focus shift prevent it from attaining all five stars.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." American philosopher George Santayana's quote would be a perfect epigraph for Ann Vileisis' careful and fascinating look at the history of food and eating in America. (The quote is part of Santayana's theory about how knowledge is acquired, making it especially relevant to Vileisis' examination of how we've lost the stories we once knew of our food.)

Here's how Vileisis opens the first chapter of Kitchen Literacy: "In the center of a wooden table on a pewter platter sat a baked leg of lamb. One earthenware bowl held a heap of steaming, fresh green peas, while another contained sliced cucumbers, likely drizzled with vinegar. The table was plain, but the savory smell of the roast meat made mouths water..." That sensory evocation of a meal prepared by Maine midwife Martha Ballard on August 15, 1790, hooked me right off.

Vileisis draws on Ballard's diaries to show her intimate knowledge of her food, a relationship was once common in America. From that meal, Vileisis takes readers on the journey America's food has taken as the country's population shifted from farms to cities (and grew, and grew, and grew), as transportation allowed food to be shipped ever-longer distances, and as technology changed farming and food processing. Along the way, American's relationship with our food grew distant as well.

Vileisis' background as a historian and her passion for food, cooking and the environment inform this intensely researched and readable story. I found sobering and surprising facts to chew on (sorry!) along the way, including how common wild foods were on tables from the ordinary to the rich in the 1800s, to the astonishingly early advent of the first canned foods ("initially developed as a way to feed Napoleon's soldiers on their interminable Russian campaigns, canning had come to the United States by the 1820s"), the history of synthetic food additives and the FDA--I had never imagined, for instance, that formaldehyde was once used as a commercial food preservative!

Kitchen Literacy shows over and over how losing contact with the stories of our food--what it is, where it comes from, who grew it and how it was grown--is a tragedy not just for each of us personally, but for the planet we share. As Vileisis says in closing, "Today... we have the chance to rediscover some of that knowledge and awareness, and with it, we might just find a better way to live on Earth and, finally, to eat well."

Hear, hear!

by Susan J. Tweit
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Ann Vileisis has compiled a thorough history of Eating in America. Her documentation is invaluable. She reviews the historical facts and summarizes them so that they make sense. How did we get from knowing so much about every item we put in our mouths to knowing -- and wishing to know -- almost nothing? She has assembled sources and resources that are not easliy available elsewhere. I thank this book for directing me to Martha Ballard's diary, of an 18th century midwife, now posted online at [...], and in book form A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 These days, I purchase only those books that I will refer to frequently. I shall use this book constantly in the research I am doing for "How to Raise Poultry," which follows How To Raise Chickens: Everything You Need To Know (How to Raise...).

This is not one of those depressing, pedantic rants that assume all progress is bad that are too typical of literature on the topic of food distribution. Instead, this book is actually a fun read. Facts are presented in an even, civilized tone with perspectives understanding of the losses and gains that are inherent in all change in human endeavor. Further, the language is sensual, even succulent, with a dry twist of irony and humor on every page. While some who have read extensively on this topic might wish for more depth and breadth, that is not the stated purpose of this book. The footnotes, which are extensive and fascinating, provide plenty for those who seek detail and direction to further investigation. As an enjoyable, thoughtful, and polite summary or introduction to the topic of food production and distribution, this work could well prove more influential in educating (or even "converting") the general public about a serious topic than the sour and dour stuff we have come to be wary of.