Food Culture

You probably don't realize that your supermarket is filled with foods that have a military origin: canned goods, packaged deli meats, TV dinners, cling wrap, energy bars…the list is almost endless. In fact, there's a watered-down combat ration lurking in practically every bag, box, can, bottle, jar, and carton Americans buy. Anastacia Marx de Salcedo shows how the Department of Defense Combat Feeding Directorate plans, funds, and spreads the food science that enables it to produce cheap, imperishable rations.

Nationally acclaimed storyteller J.J. Reneaux grew up Cajun for true, surrounded by the stories, music, food, and culture of rural communities in southeastern Texas and southern Louisiana. A traditional storyteller who collects by word-of-mouth, Reneaux has developed her repertoire over years of collecting: on front porches, school playgrounds, and her beloved fishing trips, as well as at nursing homes, airports, and at neighborhood fais-dodos.

Drink investigates the history of this Jekyll and Hyde of fluids, tracing mankind's love/hate relationship with alcohol from ancient Egypt to present day. Drink further documents the contribution of alcohol to the birth and growth of the United States, taking in the War of Independence, Pennsylvania Whiskey revolt, slave trade, and failed experiment of national Prohibition. Finally, it provides a history of the world's most famous drinks - and drinkers. Packed with trivia and colorful characters, Drink amounts to an intoxicating history of the world.

Grape, Olive, Pig reveals hidden gems and enduring delicacies from across this extraordinary country, contextualizing each meal with the stories behind the food in a cultural narrative. Whether you've visited Spain or have only dreamed of bellying up to its tapas bars, Grape, Olive, Pig will wake your imagination, rouse your hunger, and capture your heart.

This is the story of the greatest might-have-been in the history of fast food. In 1971, Burger Chef Systems commanded an empire of 1,200 restaurants, adding one every 48 hours. Less than 100 locations stood between them and slower-growing McDonald's Corporation. They were winning big. Fast forward to 1982: reduced to less than half of their peak size, Burger Chef disappears from the landscape, merged into a larger rival. How did the people responsible for more fast-food innovations than any other lose their way? Author and historian John P. McDonald guides you through the experiences that ...

In Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, Vandana Shiva explores the devastating effects of commercial agriculture and genetic engineering on the food we eat, the farmers who grow it, and the soil that sustains it. This prescient critique and call to action covers some of the most pressing topics of this ongoing dialogue, from the destruction of local food cultures and the privatization of plant life, to unsustainable industrial fish farming and safety concerns about corporately engineered foods.

Want to explore Portugal but not sure where to begin? This guide has everything you need to plan the best trip of your life, whether you’re heading to Portugal for a week or two. Portugal Travel Guide 2025 is packed with simple tips and amazing places you can’t miss. From walking through Lisbon’s colorful streets to relaxing on secret beaches or tasting delicious food in small local towns, this guide makes it super easy to plan your adventure. Here’s what you’ll find inside: Easy-to-follow itineraries for trips of 7, 14, or more days. Hidden spots most tourists never find, like ...

From the bestselling author and host of the wildly popular Undisclosed podcast, a warm, intimate memoir about food, body image, and growing up in a loving but sometimes oppressively concerned Pakistani immigrant family.

Food writer Jonathan Kauffman journeys back more than half a century - to the 1960s and 1970s - to tell the story of how a coterie of unusual men and women embraced an alternative lifestyle that would ultimately change how modern Americans eat. Impeccably researched, Hippie Food chronicles how the longhairs, revolutionaries, and back-to-the-landers rejected the square establishment of President Richard Nixon's America and turned to a more idealistic and wholesome communal way of life and food.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans have dieted at some point in their lives. But upwards of 90 percent of people who intentionally lose weight gain it back within five years. And as many as 66 percent of people who embark on weight-loss efforts end up gaining more weight than they lost. If dieting is so clearly ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it? The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness to health and moral virtue, promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, and demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others.

Climate models show that global crop production will decline every decade for the rest of this century due to drought, heat, and flooding. Water supplies are in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the world’s population is expected to grow another 30 percent by midcentury. So how, really, will we feed nine billion people sustainably in the coming decades? Amanda Little, a professor at Vanderbilt University and an award-winning journalist, spent three years traveling through a dozen countries and as many US states in search of answers to this question.

This isn’t just a Puglia Travel Guide. It’s a better way to travel!Instead of just checking off tourist sites, immerse yourself in local rhythms, sacred traditions, seasonal festivals, and everyday rituals that define life in Italy’s most authentic region. With this book, you’ll experience Puglia through moments, not just monuments. With over 100 festivals woven into the seasons, this guide ensures that no matter when you travel, you’ll find yourself in the heart of a celebration. Planning your Italian dream vacation? Discover Puglia, Italy’s sun-drenched heel where azure waters...

A new American cuisine is forming. Animals never before considered or long since forgotten are emerging as delicacies. Parts that used to be for scrap are centerpieces. Ash and hay are fashionable ingredients, and you pay handsomely to breathe flavored air. Going out to a nice dinner now often precipitates a confrontation with a fundamental question: Is that food?

At her famous Kite's Nest Farm in Worcestershire, England, the cows (as well as sheep, hens, and pigs) all roam free. They make their own choices about rearing, grazing, and housing. Left to be themselves, the cows exhibit temperaments and interests as diverse as our own. "Fat Hat" prefers men to women; "Chippy Minton" refuses to sleep with muddy legs and always reports to the barn for grooming before bed; "Jake" has a thing for sniffing the carbon monoxide fumes of the Land Rover exhaust pipe; and "Gemima" greets all humans with an angry shake of the head and is fiercely independent.

"Paul Wright's tribute to the robust pleasures of village life brings out the generosity and humanity of the inhabitants of Lake Como” Desmond O’Grady, Italian Insider Review:- What is it like for a foreigner to live and work in a village in Northern Italy, and become part of the community? How tough is it to leave your home country and settle in a new one? What do you have to do to be accepted by the people who live in a village by Lake Como, which has existed for over five hundred years? Award-winning artist and stage designer Paul Wright and his partner found out the hard way, ...

It’s so easy to say that the 1980s were awesome. But were they really? Here’s a case-by-case study on whether or not the decade of the 1980s was an awesome one or an awful one. Or maybe it was a healthy dose of both? Let’s get nostalgic and dive back into the colorful and blissfully ignorant 1980s.

In October 1993, a tiny start-up called the Food Network debuted to little notice. Twenty years later, it is in 100 million homes, approaches a billion dollars a year in revenue, and features a galaxy of stars whose faces and names are as familiar to us as our own family's. But what we don't know about them, and the people behind them, could fill a book.

25 Years in Italy is an informative, insightful and entertaining account of life in contemporary Italy. It sheds light on daily life, culture, food and language of this fascinating country as observed from the inside by the author over a quarter of a century of uninterrupted stay. Through 20 information-packed chapters we get answers to questions like, why did George Clooney come to live by Lake Como? Why is Grana Padano the most popular cheese when there are 820 types to choose from? Why do Italians lace their language with English/American terms? What do they watch on TV? Why did Leonardo...

A must-have anthology of the leading Black women and femmes shaping today’s food and hospitality landscape—from farm to table and beyond—chronicling their passions and motivations, lessons learned and hard-won wisdom, personal recipes, and more.

In 1949, a young Chinese housewife arrived in Taiwan and transformed herself from a novice to a natural in the kitchen. She launched a career as a cookbook author and television cooking instructor. Years later, in America, flipping through her mother's copies of Fu Pei-mei's Chinese cookbooks, historian Michelle T. King discovered more than the recipes to meals of her childhood. She found, in Fu's story and in her food, a portal to another time, when a generation of middle-class female home cooks navigated the postwar transformations taking place across the world.