Jennifer Jensen Wallach is associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. She is the author, most recently, of Richard Wright: From Black Boy to World Citizen.

There is no question that our food system is fragile and deeply flawed, but few things will frustrate a food scholar as much as the creep into contemporary discussion of 'the way things used to be,' a nostalgic journey to family farms, dinners round the table, consumption in moderation, and 'mom’s apple pie,' made with apples so local and ripe that they fell from the tree and rolled to the kitchen door to be picked up by a sturdy farmwife in an unostentatious but immaculate kitchen. [How America Eats shows] that the food and eating of our past was not as Rockwellian as all that and, where it was, it was only for an elite few. . . . Wallach offers a general people’s history of food in the U.S., sweeping from the Jamestown settlement in 1607 through to present-day food politics. . . . Wallach dispels myths, reminding the reader, with ample evidence, that nostalgic images of Native Americans and European pilgrims happily dining together around an early Thanksgiving table are pure fiction. A pre-Civil War meal of Southern fried chicken and country ham had as its backdrop blood, disease and sweat; and these foods owe their enduring presence in the modern American diet to hegemony, theft and strife in relation to race, class and gender. . . . Wallach shows how what Americans eat today is drawn from this collective history, arguing in particular that 'American cuisine,' and the culture which surrounds it, originated with the Africans, brought over by slave traders, who combined the foods of their homeland with Native American and European traditions.

• IntroductionChapter 1: The Cuisine of ContactChapter 2: Food and the FoundingChapter 3: Foodways in an Era of Expansion and ImmigrationChapter 4: Technology and TasteChapter 5: Gender and the American AppetiteChapter 6: The Pious or Patriotic StomachChapter 7: Food Habits and Racial ThinkingChapter 8: The Politics of FoodA Note on Sources

Jennifer Jensen Wallach is associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. She is the author, most recently, of Richard Wright: From Black Boy to World Citizen.

There is no question that our food system is fragile and deeply flawed, but few things will frustrate a food scholar as much as the creep into contemporary discussion of 'the way things used to be,' a nostalgic journey to family farms, dinners round the table, consumption in moderation, and 'mom’s apple pie,' made with apples so local and ripe that they fell from the tree and rolled to the kitchen door to be picked up by a sturdy farmwife in an unostentatious but immaculate kitchen. [How America Eats shows] that the food and eating of our past was not as Rockwellian as all that and, where it was, it was only for an elite few. . . . Wallach offers a general people’s history of food in the U.S., sweeping from the Jamestown settlement in 1607 through to present-day food politics. . . . Wallach dispels myths, reminding the reader, with ample evidence, that nostalgic images of Native Americans and European pilgrims happily dining together around an early Thanksgiving table are pure fiction. A pre-Civil War meal of Southern fried chicken and country ham had as its backdrop blood, disease and sweat; and these foods owe their enduring presence in the modern American diet to hegemony, theft and strife in relation to race, class and gender. . . . Wallach shows how what Americans eat today is drawn from this collective history, arguing in particular that 'American cuisine,' and the culture which surrounds it, originated with the Africans, brought over by slave traders, who combined the foods of their homeland with Native American and European traditions.

• IntroductionChapter 1: The Cuisine of ContactChapter 2: Food and the FoundingChapter 3: Foodways in an Era of Expansion and ImmigrationChapter 4: Technology and TasteChapter 5: Gender and the American AppetiteChapter 6: The Pious or Patriotic StomachChapter 7: Food Habits and Racial ThinkingChapter 8: The Politics of FoodA Note on Sources

Jennifer Jensen Wallach is associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. She is the author, most recently, of Richard Wright: From Black Boy to World Citizen.

There is no question that our food system is fragile and deeply flawed, but few things will frustrate a food scholar as much as the creep into contemporary discussion of 'the way things used to be,' a nostalgic journey to family farms, dinners round the table, consumption in moderation, and 'mom’s apple pie,' made with apples so local and ripe that they fell from the tree and rolled to the kitchen door to be picked up by a sturdy farmwife in an unostentatious but immaculate kitchen. [How America Eats shows] that the food and eating of our past was not as Rockwellian as all that and, where it was, it was only for an elite few. . . . Wallach offers a general people’s history of food in the U.S., sweeping from the Jamestown settlement in 1607 through to present-day food politics. . . . Wallach dispels myths, reminding the reader, with ample evidence, that nostalgic images of Native Americans and European pilgrims happily dining together around an early Thanksgiving table are pure fiction. A pre-Civil War meal of Southern fried chicken and country ham had as its backdrop blood, disease and sweat; and these foods owe their enduring presence in the modern American diet to hegemony, theft and strife in relation to race, class and gender. . . . Wallach shows how what Americans eat today is drawn from this collective history, arguing in particular that 'American cuisine,' and the culture which surrounds it, originated with the Africans, brought over by slave traders, who combined the foods of their homeland with Native American and European traditions.

• IntroductionChapter 1: The Cuisine of ContactChapter 2: Food and the FoundingChapter 3: Foodways in an Era of Expansion and ImmigrationChapter 4: Technology and TasteChapter 5: Gender and the American AppetiteChapter 6: The Pious or Patriotic StomachChapter 7: Food Habits and Racial ThinkingChapter 8: The Politics of FoodA Note on Sources