Have you ever wondered why we eat the way we eat and cook the way we cook? The background to our everyday eating and cooking habits is actually quite a history. In Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s book, Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food, he takes us through eight evolutions of how food came about and how food has revolutionized to what it is today. No one knows completely how food has come about and how we ever came to cooking the way we do today. Food is a huge necessity in our lives for survival and we may not realize how elaborate and garnished the foods we cook and eat today are. It is also not yet understood to know why we cook what we cook and why we like to dress our meals in certain ways. Fernández-Armesto gives great insight on how all of our food habits have been established today.
“Food is more than a substance; food is supernatural”, (Fernández-Armesto, F., p. 117). This is shown by the eight evolutions that Fernández-Armesto discusses in his book which include, the invention of cooking, magic and rituals of food, domestication of animals, plant based agriculture, social differentiations, transformation of exchanges, ecological revolution, and food industries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The domestication of animals and the selective breeding of edible animal species is something Fernández-Armesto puts before his plant-based agriculture theory. He says, “At least one kind of animal husbandry was an earlier innovation than is generally admitted” (Fernández-Armesto, F., p. 119). This leads to his point of social differentiation of the competition of food from origins to modern times. The long-time period of trade and exchanges gave us today a transformation that revolutionized where our food came from and how we developed some of our eating habits. We then end up with the development of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how these effects have drawn us to our actions today. Today, it is very rare that we eat raw foods, meaning that no flavor, modification, and no fire is applied to the food we eat.
Furthermore, Fernández-Armesto believes that the first natural food that humans found was the oyster because it is completely raw and can be found all over the world. This is important because this is where the evolution of food began; how we began to eat. Fernández-Armestto says that cooking started with an oyster. He comes to this conclusion because the oyster is a product of minimal modified natural selection from sea to lips. “It is the nearest thing we have to “natural” food- the only dish that deserves to be called “au naturel” without irony” (Fernández-Armesto, F., p. 154). The oyster is considered natural when eaten right from the shell, as soon as lemon juice or any type of flavor is added, that is when cooking became invented. Even when we begin to rinse our foods with water we begin to modify them; this even includes the berries and fruit we eat. This is important because, perhaps, this is how flavors began to develop and how we came about seasoning our meats and other foods.
The next way Fernández-Armesto finds how we revolutionized our food today, is fire. A campfire even became a place of gathering and communion that people, even today, eat around. To put it another way, I agree with the evolution that Fernández-Armesto explains with the oyster and evolution of fire. These were the stepping stones that started our eating and cooking patterns. Cooking is a way for people and communities to come together. Cooking is a fascination for humans. Cooking and eating is a way of human life. This leads to when Fernández-Armesto gives his insight on cannibalism. Cannibalism is known to be the most environmentally friendly food ritual. There are few examples of cannibalism and the reason that humans came to this point in their lives. It is known that some cannibals ate the flesh out of dead bodies out of a sign of respect in order to not allow the body to rot. Cannibalism may be hard to understand, but Fernández-Armesto explains that this is just another part of the history of food.
In addition, I agree on most of Fernández-Armesto’s work and his eight evolutions of food. One thing that I agree with the most is that culture brings is that when the raw gets cooked, and that cooking is a late innovation. A huge part of culture is food and we all have our own specialties that we love to eat and cook because of our culture. The first raw food being an oyster is hard to predict, but the first raw eaten food was probably from the ocean because that resource has always been there. I could argue and think that the first raw food eaten could have been some kind of insect of some sort, but an oyster would be much more appealing and filling. I enjoy his thoughts on how as soon as we begin to clean food we begin to transform them and they are not raw anymore. Fernández-Armesto’s theory on the evolution of fire, I agree with. The theory that in almost all theories of fire, the fire was started when flint was struck stands true to me. This book did not hit me in an emotional way, but more of an informative way. With that being said, I really enjoyed what Fernández-Armesto has to say about the history of food and I found it very interesting.
This book has taught me a lot and has given me an even greater value of food. If you are interested in how food and cooking was revolutionized, then this is the book for you. Time, culture, and innovations have brought us to where we are today with food preparations and eating habits. The thoughts and knowledge that Fernández-Armesto has about this topic is incredible. His information he gives in the book will inspire your brain to think forward about this evolution. You will never think of eating the same again after reading this book! “It is possible to imagine an economy without money and reproduction without love, but not without food. Food, moreover, has a good claim to be considered the world’s most important subject. It is what matters the most to most people for most of time” (Fernández-Armesto, F., p. 54).
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Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2017
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Incredible Quality- Quick Shipment- Great Packaging
By Tuana Sari on January 20, 2020
I wanted to get this book for a very long time. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto tells the fascinating story of food as cultural as well as culinary history. The product quality was perfect!!! The shipment was quick and the book was nicely and strongly packaged. Definitely recommended!!!
By Tuana Sari on January 20, 2020
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