Food history: Difference between revisions

Food history is an interdisciplinary field that examines the history and the cultural, economic, environmental, and sociological impacts of food and human nutrition. It is considered distinct from the more traditional field of culinary history, which focuses on the origin and recreation of specific recipes.

Since the 19th century, anthropologists have pioneered. the study of the role of food in traditional societies through direct observation, as well as reconstructing behavior from artifacts recovered from historical sites. The topic remains a central part of current anthropology and archaeology research as typified by K.C. Chang at Harvard.^[1][2] The systematic study of food culture by professional historians is a more recent development, inspired in large part by the French Annales school typified by Fernand Braudel.^[3] However there have always been numerous popular historical accounts, as typified by Waverley Root.^[4]
The first journal in the field, Petits Propos Culinaires, was launched in 1979 and the first conference on the subject was the 1981 Oxford Food Symposium.^[5]

Historians and political scientists have explored many national and international political aspects of food history.^[6][7] For example, they have looked at food’s role as a colonial tool in Africa and Asia;^[8] “McDonaldization“;^[9] the food dimensions of Mexican, Chinese and Italian diasporas;^[10] class dimension in terms of the meals served in upper, middle, and working class cafés; the Green Revolution that averted starvation in the Third World;^[11] and intense debates over Genetically modified food, and efforts to stop their importation.^[12]

• Albala., Ken, ed. Routledge international handbook of food studies (2023)

• Albala., Ken, ed. Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia ( 4 volumes; Greenwood, 2011)

• Block, Stephen. “Food History”. The Kitchen Project.
• Collingham, Lizzie. Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (2013)
• Cumo, Christopher, ed. Foods That Changed History: How Foods Shaped Civilization from the Ancient World to the Present (Facts on File, 2015) online
• Flandrin, Jean-Louis, et al. eds. Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present (1999) based on French Annales approach. online

• Gremillion, Kristen J. Ancestral Appetites: Food in Prehistory (Cambridge UP, 2011) 188 pages; explores the processes of dietary adaptation in prehistory that contributed to the diversity of global foodways.
• Grew, Raymond. Food in Global History, Westview Press, 2000
• Heiser Charles B. Seed to civilisation. The story of food (Harvard UP, 1990)
• Johnson, Sylvia A. Tomatoes, Potatoes, Corn, and Beans: How the Foods of the Americas Changed Eating around the World (Atheneum Books, 1997). online
• Kiple, Kenneth F. and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, eds. The Cambridge World History of Food, (2 vol, 2000).
• Katz, Solomon ed. The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture (Scribner, 2003)
• Lacey, Richard. Hard to swallow: a brief history of food (1994) online free
• Le, Stephen (2018). 100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today. Picador. ISBN 978-1250117885.
• Mintz, Sidney. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Power, and the Past, (1997).
• Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (2nd ed 2007).
• Olver, Lynne. The Secret Ingredient. (2024) The Food Timeline. (Illustrated Edition)

• Parasecoli, Fabio & Peter Scholliers, eds. A Cultural History of Food, 6 volumes (Berg Publishers, 2012)
• Pilcher, Jeffrey M. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Food History (2017). Online review
• Pilcher, Jeffrey M. (2023). Food in World History (3rd ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1032351490.
• Ritchie, Carson I.A. Food in civilization: how history has been affected by human tastes (1981) online free
• Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, ed. World Food: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture and Social Influence from Hunter Gatherers to the Age of Globalization (Routledge, 2012)
• Vernon, James. Hunger: A Modern History (Harvard UP, 2007).

• Abbott, Elizabeth. Sugar: A Bittersweet History (2015) 464pp.
• Albala, Ken. Beans: A History (2007).
• Blake, Michael. Maize for the Gods: Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn (2015).
• Collingham, Lizzie. Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (2007)
• Elias, Megan. Lunch: A History (2014) 204pp
• Foster, Nelson and Linda S. Cordell. Chilies to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World (1992)
• Kindstedt, Paul. Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization (2012)

• Kurlansky, Mark. Salt: A World History (2003)

• Martin, Laura C. A History of Tea: The Life and Times of the World’s Favorite Beverage (2018)

• Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1986)
• Morris, Jonathan. Coffee: A Global History (2019)

• Pettigrew, Jane, and Bruce Richardson. A Social History of Tea: Tea’s Influence on Commerce, Culture & Community (2015).
• Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. Beef: A Global History (2013)
• Pilcher, Jeffrey M. Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (2017) online

• Reader, John. Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History (2008), 315pp a standard scholarly history
• Salaman, R.N. The history and social influence of the potato (1949)
• Schmid, Ton. The Untold Story of Milk, The History, Politics and Science of Nature’s Perfect Food (2009) ISBN 0-9670897-4-3.

• Asfora, Wanessa, and Gregorio Saldarriaga. “Recent Trends in Food History Research in Ibero-America: 2014-2016.” Food and History 13.1-3 (2015): 285-290. online

• Aymard, Maurice. “Toward the History of Nutrition: Some Methodological Rremarks” in Robert Forster, and Orest Ranum, eds. Food and Drink in History: Selections from the Annales, économies, sociétiés, civilizations (Johns Hopkins UP, 1979) pp.1–16.
• Claflin, Kyri and Peter Scholliers, eds. Writing Food History, a Global Perspective (Berg, 2012)
• Counihan, Carole M. The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning, and Power (Routledge, 1999).
• Freedman, Paul, et al. eds. Food in Time and Place: The American Historical Association Companion to Food History (2014) 17 scholarly reviews of worldwide historiography.

• Iacovetta, Franca, Valerie J. Korinek, and Marlene Epp. Edible histories, cultural politics: Towards a Canadian food history (University of Toronto Press, 2012).

• Otter, Chris. “The British Nutrition Transition and its Histories”, History Compass 10/11 (2012): pp. 812–825, [DOI]: 10.1111/hic3.12001
• Peters Kernan, Sarah. “Recent Trends in Food History Research in the United States: 2017-19.” Food & History (Jan 2021), Vol. 18 Issue 1/2, pp 233–240.

• Pilcher, Jeffrey M. “The embodied imagination in recent writings on food history.” American Historical Review 121#3 (2016): 861–887.

• Pilcher, Jeffrey M., ed. Food History: Critical and Primary Sources (2015) 4 vol; reprints 76 primary and secondary sources.
• Scholliers, Peter. ” Twenty-five Years of Studying un Phénomène Social Total: Food History Writing on Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Food, Culture & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (2007) 10#3 pp 449–471 https://doi.org/10.2752/155280107X239881
• Woolgar, Christopher M. “Food and the middle ages.” Journal of Medieval History 36.1 (2010): 1–19.

• Achaya, Kongandra Thammu. A historical dictionary of Indian food (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1998).
• Chang, K. C., ed. Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives (Yale University Press, 1977).

• Cheung, Sidney, and David Y.H. Wu. The globalisation of Chinese food (Routledge, 2014).
• Chung, Hae Kyung, et al. “Understanding Korean food culture from Korean paintings.” Journal of Ethnic Foods 3#1 (2016): 42–50.
• Cwiertka, Katarzyna Joanna. Modern Japanese cuisine: Food, power and national identity (Reaktion Books, 2006).
• Kim, Soon Hee, et al. “Korean diet: characteristics and historical background.” Journal of Ethnic Foods 3.1 (2016): 26–31.
• Kushner, Barak. Slurp! a Social and Culinary History of Ramen: Japan’s Favorite Noodle Soup (2014) a scholarly cultural history over 1000 years
• Simoons, Frederick J. Food in China: a cultural and historical inquiry (2014).

• Duffett, Rachel, and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, eds. Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe (2011) online

• Gentilcore, David. Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine and Society, 1450–1800 (Bloomsbury, 2016)
• Goldman, Wendy Z. and Donald Filtzer, eds. Food Provisioning in the Soviet Union during World War II (2015)

• Livi-Bacci, Massimo. Population and Nutrition: An Essay on European Demographic History (Cambridge University Press, 1991) ISBN 978-0-521-36871-1.

• Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín, and Dorothy Cashman. Irish Food History: A Companion (Technological University Dublin, 2024) online, 820 pages; 28 scholarly articles; includes a few famine studies.

• Roll, Eric. The Combined Food Board. A study in wartime international planning (1956), on World War II
• Rosen, William. The Third Horseman: Climate change and the great famine of the 14th century (Penguin, 2014).
• Scarpellini, Emanuela. Food and Foodways in Italy from 1861 to the Present (2014)

• Addyman, Mary et al. eds. Food, Drink, and the Written Word in Britain, 1820–1945 (Taylor & Francis, 2017).
• Barnett, Margaret. British Food Policy During the First World War (Routledge, 2014).
• Beveridge, W. H. British Food Control (1928), in World War I
• Brears, P. Cooking and Dining in Medieval England (2008)
• Burnett, John. Plenty and want: a social history of diet in England from 1815 to the present day (2nd ed. 1979). A standard scholarly history.
• Collins, E. J. T. “Dietary change and cereal consumption in Britain in the nineteenth century.” Agricultural History Review (1975) 23#2, 97–115.
• Gautier, Alban. “Cooking and cuisine in late Anglo-Saxon England.” Anglo-Saxon England 41 (2012): 373–406.
• Gazeley, I. and Newell, A. “Urban working-class food consumption and nutrition in Britain in 1904” Economic History Review. (2014). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ehr.12065/pdf.
• Harris, Bernard, Roderick Floud, and Sok Chul Hong. “How many calories? Food availability in England and Wales in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries“. Research in economic history. (2015). 111–191.
• Hartley, Dorothy. Food In England: A complete guide to the food that makes us who we are (Hachette UK, 2014).
• Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (2nd ed U of Illinois Press, 1996)
• Meredith, D. and Oxley, D. “Food and fodder: feeding England, 1700-1900.” Past and Present (2014). (2014). 222:163-214.
• Oddy, Derek. From Plain Fare to Fusion Food: British Diet from the 1890s to the 1990s (Boydell Press, 2003).
• Oddy, D. ” Food, drink and nutrition” in F.M.L. Thompson, ed., The Cambridge social history of Britain, 1750–1950. Volume 2. People and their environment (1990). pp. 2:251-278.
• Otter, Chris. “The British Nutrition Transition and its Histories”, History Compass 10#11 (2012): pp. 812–825, [DOI]: 10.1111/hic3.12001
• Panayi, Panikos. Spicing Up Britain: The Multicultural History of British Food (2010)
• Spencer, Colin. British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History (2007).
• Woolgar. C. N. The Culture of Food in England, 1200–1500 (2016). 260 pp.,

• Bentley, Amy. Eating for victory : food rationing and the politics of domesticity (U of Illinois Press, 1998) online

• Elias, Megan J. Food in the United States, 1890–1945 (Greenwood, 2009)

• Goodhart, Robert S., & L. B. Pett. “The War-Time Nutrition Programs for Workers in the United States and Canada,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 23, 2 (April 1945): 161–179.

• Hudson, John C., and Christopher R. Laingen. American Farms, American Food: A Geography of Agriculture and Food Production in the United States (Lexington Books, 2016)

• Iacovetta, Franca et al eds. Edible histories, cultural politics: towards a Canadian food history (U of Toronto Press, 2012) online

• Mosby, Ian. Food will Win the War: The politics, Culture, and Science of Food on Canada’s Home Front (UBC Press, 2014), World War II online

• Levenstein, Harvey. Paradox of plenty, a social history of eating in modern America (Oxford UP, 1993).

• Pendergrast, Mark. For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It (2013)

• Root, Waverley, and Richard De Rochemont. Eating in America: A history (Morrow, 1976).

• Shapiro, Laura. Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, Viking Adult 2004, ISBN 0-670-87154-0
• Smith, Andrew F. ed. The Oxford companion to American food and drink (2007)

• Strikwerda, Eric. ” ‘Canada Needs All Our Food-Power:’ Industrial Nutrition in Canada, 1941–1948.” Labour 83 (2019): 9-41. online

• Veit, Helen Zoe, ed. Food in the Civil War Era: The North (Michigan State University Press, 2014)
• Veit, Helen Zoe. Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2013)
• Veeman, Terrence, and Michele Veeman. “Agriculture and Food” The encyclopedia of Canada (2015) online

• Wallach, Jennifer Jensen. How America Eats: A social history of U.S. food and culture (2014) 256256pp
• Williams, Elizabeth M. New Orleans: A Food Biography (AltaMira Press, 2012).

• Petits Propos Culinaires, first journal in the field
• Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment
• Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
• Food & History: multilingual scientific journal about the history and culture of food published by the (IEHCA)