Customer Reviews

No Foreign Food: The American Diet In Time And Place (Geographies of the Imagination)

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Given the academic qualifications of the author, I was expecting a more scholarly treatment of the subject. What I found is a superficial treatment using personal observations with shallow interpretation. Worse, however, were the inaccuracies I spotted. The author confuses yams and sweet potatoes--attributing their origins to South America, South East Asia and perhaps Africa. So called "yams" in this country are sweet potatoes of New World origin. The term "yam" was coined by a clever marketing ploy to elevate the lowly sweet potato in people's minds. A true yam is botanically different and does not grow in this country. Another inaccuracy was the failure to distinguish tortillas from cornbread. Tortillas are made from lye-treated corn which changes the nutrient content in a way to prevent pellagra that was seen in other societies where corn was a major staple food, such as the American South. This is an important distinction. After noting these shortcomings I don't trust anything else in the book that I cannot verify through other sources. The best part of the book is the extensive bibliography at the end.

This book presents a concise and clear overview of food habits and customs in the United States. Pillsbury examines regional food differences and traces them back to immigrant or even Native American customs. One of the more interesting aspects of the book is the documentation of how our ideals of what food was like for past generations differ from what they really ate. For instance, Pillsbury stresses the importance of corn meal-based baked goods in the traditional American diet instead of white yeast breads. He also points out how much greater variety of food we have available today, how much safer the food is in terms of contamination, and even how much safer cooking conditions are. The development of restaurants, supermarkets, and cookbooks are described in separate chapters. Contributions of various groups of immigrants are also highlighted, although the author makes no mention of South Asian immigrants, who are certainly beginning to have a noticeable presence in the Northeast. Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in food, food history, US history, or ethnic studies.

The text is slightly slow at times, but for the cultural geographer, anthropologer, or cook, it is incredibly insightful. It is repiticious, but that theme refelcts american foodways.