Bloomsbury Studies in Food and Gastronomy – serie

Social media platforms have quickly become integral to most people’s lives, both privately and professionally. This is the first book to illuminate the trend of relying on social media in the food world. Engaging in social media is fun, but it is also rapidly becoming the platform for self-promotion and branding. This entertaining narrative offers an historical account of the major changes brought about by the Internet and also explores the polarities that underlie the challenges of adaptation, including exclusivity versus democracy, professionalism versus amateurism, and business versus pleasure. Loaded with insight into the current scene, it discusses controversies such as celebrity chefs’ tweeting wars, ethics and the accusations of plagiarizing of recipes, and etiquette concerning the practice of photographing a meal to blog about it. Food and Social Media will appeal to anyone with an interest in food and media as well as those who enjoy using any of the social media formats, including blogs, Yelp, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and more, to participate in a digital food community.

Social media platforms have quickly become integral to most people’s lives, both privately and professionally. This is the first book to illuminate the trend of relying on social media in the food world. Engaging in social media is fun, but it is also rapidly becoming the platform for self-promotion and branding. This entertaining narrative offers an historical account of the major changes brought about by the Internet and also explores the polarities that underlie the challenges of adaptation, including exclusivity versus democracy, professionalism versus amateurism, and business versus pleasure. Loaded with insight into the current scene, it discusses controversies such as celebrity chefs’ tweeting wars, ethics and the accusations of plagiarizing of recipes, and etiquette concerning the practice of photographing a meal to blog about it. Food and Social Media will appeal to anyone with an interest in food and media as well as those who enjoy using any of the social media formats, including blogs, Yelp, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and more, to participate in a digital food community.

In Vietnam during the long nineteenth century from the Tây Son rebellion to the 1920s, individuals negotiated changing interpretations of their culinary choices by their families, neighbors, and governments. What people ate reflected not just who they were, but also who they wanted to be. Appetites and Aspirations in Vietnam starts with the spread of Vietnamese imperial control from south to north, marking the earliest efforts to create a common Vietnamese culture, as well as resistance to that cultural and culinary imperialism. Once the French conquered the country, new opportunities for culinary experimentation became possible, although such experiences were embraced more by the colonized than the colonizers. This book discusses how colonialism changed the taste of Vietnamese fish sauce and rice liquor and shows that state intervention made those products into tangible icons of a unified Vietnamese cuisine, under attack by the French. Vietnamese villagers began to see the power they could bring to bear on the state by mobilizing around such controversies in everyday life. The rising new urban classes at the turn of the twentieth century also discovered new perspectives on food and drink, delighting in unfamiliar snacks or giving elaborate multicultural banquets as a form of conspicuous consumption. New tastes prompted people to reconsider their preferences and their position in the changing modern world. For students of Vietnamese history, food here provides a lens into how people of different class and ethnic backgrounds struggled to adapt first to Vietnamese and then French imperialism. Food historians will find a provocative case study arguing that food does not simply reveal identity but can also help scholars analyze people's changing ambitions.

Food and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century America revolves around the 1840 presidential election when, according to campaign slogans, candidates were what they ate. Skillfully deploying the rhetoric of republican simplicity—the belief that plain dress, food, and manners were signs of virtue in the young republic—William Henry Harrison defeated Martin Van Buren by aligning the incumbent with the European luxuries of pâté de foie gras and soupe à la reine while maintaining that he survived on “raw beef without salt.” The effectiveness of such claims reflected not only the continuing appeal of the frontier and the relatively primitive nature of American cooking, but also a rhetorical struggle to define how eating habits and culinary practices fit into ideas of the American character.From this crucial mid-century debate, the book’s argument reaches back to examine the formation of the myth of republican simplicity in revolutionary America and forward to the popularization of cosmopolitan sophistication during the Gilded Age. Drawing heavily on cookbooks, domestic manuals, travel writing, and the popular press, this historical framework structures a discussion of ways novelists use food to locate characters within their fictional worlds, evoking or contesting deeply held social beliefs about gender, class, and race. In addition to mid-century novelists like Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, and Warner, the book examines popular and canonical novels by writers as diverse as Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, Susanna Rowson, Catharine Sedgwick, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and Harriet Wilson. Some of these authors also wrote domestic manuals and cookbooks. In addition, McWilliams draws on a wide range of such work by William Alcott, Catharine Beecher, Eliza Leslie, Fannie Merrit Farmer, Maria Parloa, and others.

The text begins with a comprehensive theory of cuisine in the introduction and moves to the parallel culinary histories of Italy, Mexico, and China: the independent domestication of crops in each, the social, political, and technological developments that gave rise to each cuisine, and cooking in both professional and home settings. It also compares the internal logic of the cooking style and techniques in a way that will resonate with students. The meat of the text compares and contrasts the three cuisines in chapters on grains and starches; vegetables; fruits and nuts; meat, poultry, and dairy products; fish and shellfish; fats and flavorings, and beverages. Readers are taken on a fascinating journey of discovery, where the background story of mis-transmission, adaptation, and evolution of cooking as it spreads around the globe with trade and immigration is revealed. It answers the big questions, such as, why did the wok prevail in China, while the sautée pan and comal were used in Italy and Mexico, respectively? Why is bread baked in the Mediterranean but more often steamed in the Far East? How are certain ingredients used in completely different ways by different cultures and why? Why is corn transformed into tortillas and tamales in one place and into polenta in another? Why do we find tomato salsa in the Americas, long-cooked sauces in Italy, and tomatoes mixed with scrambled eggs in China? Albala also challenges the notion of authenticity, providing ample evidence that cuisines are constantly evolving, adapting over time according to ingredients and cooking technologies. More than 150 of Albala’s recipes complete the instruction, inspiring readers to learn how to cook in a fundamental way.

Beer and food pairing can be as much an art form as wine and food pairing. With the explosion in craft beers and interest in seasonal cuisine, A Year in Food and Beer perfectly fills a niche. It instructs readers how to identify flavors in specific American and European-style beers and how to complement those with gourmet foods and cooking techniques by season. Home cooks, beer drinkers, and curious foodies will be fortified learning about beer and breweries and sampling the 40 enticing recipes and more than 100 beer-pairing suggestions.

Renaissance Italy’s art, literature, and culture continue to fascinate. The domestic life has been examined more in recent years, and this book reveals the preparation, eating, and the sociability of dining in Renaissance Italy. It takes readers behind the scenes to the Renaissance kitchen and dining room, where everyday meals as well as lavish banquets were prepared and consumed. Katherine McIver considers the design, equipment, and location of the kitchen and food prep and storage rooms in both middle-class homes and grand country estates. The diner’s room, the orchestration of dining, and the theatrical experience of dining are detailed as well, all in the context of the renowned food and architectural scholars of the day.

Food blogs are everywhere today but for generations, information and opinions about food were found in the food sections of newspapers in communities large and small. Until the early 1970s, these sections were housed in the women’s pages of newspapers—where women could hold an authoritative voice. The food editors—often a mix of trained journalist and home economist—reported on everything from nutrition news to features on the new chef in town. They wrote recipes and solicited ideas from readers. The sections reflected the trends of the time and the cooks of the community. The editors were local celebrities, judging cooking contests and getting calls at home about how to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey. They were consumer advocates and reporters for food safety and nutrition. They helped make James Beard and Julia Child household names as the editors wrote about their television appearances and reviewed their cookbooks.These food editors laid the foundation for the food community that Nora Ephron described in her classic 1968 essay, “The Food Establishment,” and eventually led to the food communities of today. Included in the chapters are profiles of such food editors as Jane Nickerson, Jeanne Voltz, and Ruth Ellen Church, who were unheralded pioneers in the field, as well as Cecily Brownstone, Poppy Cannon, and Clementine Paddleford, who are well known today; an analysis of their work demonstrates changes in the country’s culinary history. The book concludes with a look at how the women’s pages folded at the same time that home economics saw its field transformed and with thoughts about the foundation that these women laid for the food journalism of today.

During World War II, millions of Soviet soldiers in German captivity died of hunger and starvation. Their fate was not the unexpected consequence of a war that took longer than anticipated. It was the calculated strategy of a small group of economic planners around Herbert Backe, the second Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture. The mass murder of Soviet soldiers and civilians by Nazi food policy has not yet received much attention, but this book is about to change that.Food played a central political role for the Nazi regime and served as the foundation of a racial ideology that justified the murder of millions of Jews, prisoners of war, and Slavs. This book is the first to vividly and comprehensively address the topic of food during the Third Reich. It examines the economics of food production and consumption in Nazi Germany, as well as its use as a justification for war and as a tool for genocide. Offering another perspective on the Nazi regime’s desire for domination, Gesine Gerhard sheds light on an often-overlooked part of their scheme and brings into focus the very important role food played in the course of the Second World War.

Artisanal foods are making a comeback as more and more people seek to stock their pantries, and their bellies, with handcrafted or locally grown and made foods. Specialty markets and sections at grocery stores are catering to this new desire for the special, the unique, the carefully made foods. Small Batch: Pickles, Cheese, Chocolate, Spirits and the Return of Artisanal Foods colorfully details the landscape of the newest wave of the artisanal food revolution by looking at four foods that whet our appetites for specialty. Considering the history and the cultural issues surrounding the resurgence of craft food, including the evolving definition of terroir, the importance of narrative in valuing artisanal food, and the way that these present food trends connect with—and upend—their rich history, Small Batch seeks to define and update the term "artisanal" and give insight into the influences, challenges, and identity of food artisans today.Suzanne Cope sumptuously surveys the collective history of the production of cheese, pickles, chocolate, and alcoholic spirits, and brings this narrative to the present by incorporating interviews with over fifty modern artisans. Cope details the influences, challenges, and evolving identity of these modern craft industries—and places them in context within the recent resurgence and growth of the artisanal segment of the market. Readers interested in craft foods, and what it means to be an artisan, will find here a fascinating history and updating of both.

Accepting the challenge of rethinking connections of food, space and identity within everyday spaces of “public” eating in Malaysia and Singapore, the authors enter street stalls, hawker centers, markets, cafes, restaurants, “food streets,” and “ethnic” neighborhoods to offer a broader picture of the meaning of eating in public places. The book creates a strong sense of the ways different people live, eat, work, and relax together, and traces negotiations and accommodations in these dynamics. The motif of rojak (Malay, meaning “mixture”), together with Ien Ang’s evocative “together-in-difference,” enables the analysis to move beyond the immediacy of street eating with its moments of exchange and remembering. Ultimately, the book traces the political tensions of “different” people living together, and the search for home and identity in a world on the move. Each of the chapters designates a different space for exploring these cultures of “mixedness” and their contradictions—whether these involve “old” and “new” forms of sociality, struggles over meanings of place, or frissons of pleasure and risk in eating “differently.” Simply put, Eating Together is about understanding complex forms of multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore through the mind, tongue, nose, and eyes.

The Gilded Age is renowned for a variety of reasons, including its culture of conspicuous consumption among the newly rich. In the domain of food, conspicuous consumption manifested itself in appetites for expensive dishes and lavish dinner parties. These received ample publicity at the time, resulting later on in well-developed historical depictions of upper-class eating habits.This book delves into the eating habits of people of lesser means. Concerning the African American community, the working class, the impoverished, immigrants, and others our historical representations have been relatively superficial. The author changes that by turning to the late nineteenth century’s infant science of nutrition for a look at eating and drinking through the lens of the earliest food consumption studies conducted in the United States. These were undertaken by scientists, mostly chemists, who left their laboratories to observe food consumption in kitchens, dining rooms, and various institutional settings. Their insistence on careful measurement resulted in a substantial body of detailed reports on the eating habits of ordinary people. This work sheds new light on what most Americans were cooking and eating during the Gilded Age.

Contemporary Los Angeles can increasingly be considered a part of Latin America. Only 200 miles from the border with Mexico, it has the largest, most diverse population of Latinos in the United States—and reportedly the second largest population of Mexicans outside of Mexico City. It also has one of the most diverse representations of Latino gastronomy in the United States, featuring the cuisine of nearly every region of Mexico, countries such as Peru, Argentina, Guatemala and El Salvador, as well as an incredible variety of Asian-Latin fusion cuisine. Despite the expansion of Latino cuisine's popularity in Los Angeles and the celebrity of many Latino chefs, there is a stark divide between what is available at restaurants and food trucks and what is available to many low-income, urban Latinos who live in food deserts. In these areas, access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate foods is a daily challenge. Food-related diseases, particularly diabetes and obesity, plague these communities. In the face of this crisis, grassroots organizations, policy-makers and local residents are working to improve access and affordability through a growing embrace of traditional cuisine, an emergent interest in the farm-to-table movement, and the work of local organizations. Angelinos are creating alternatives to the industrial food system that offer hope for Latino food culture and health in Los Angeles and beyond.This book provides an overview of contemporary L.A.’s Latino food culture, introducing some of the most important chefs in the Latino food scene, and discussing the history and impact of Latino street food on culinary variety in Los Angeles. Along with food culture, the book also discusses alternative sources of healthy food for low-income communities: farmers markets, community and school gardens, urban farms, and new neighborhood markets that work to address the inequalities in access and affordability for Latino residents. By making the connection between Latino food culture and the Latino communities’ food related health issues, this study approaches the issue from a unique perspective.

What do we mean when we call any group a cult? Definingthat term is a slippery proposition – the word cult is provocative and arguably pejorative. Does it necessarily refer to a religious group? A group with a charismatic leader? Or something darker and more sinister? Because beliefs and practices surrounding food often inspire religious and political fervor, as well as function to unite people into insular groups, it is inevitable that "food cults" would emerge. Studying the extreme beliefs and practices of such food cults allows us to see the ways in which food serves as a nexus for religious beliefs, sexuality, death anxiety, preoccupation with the body, asceticism, and hedonism, to name a few. In contrast to religious and political cults, food cults have the added dimension of mediating cultural trends in nutrition and diet through their membership. Should we then consider raw foodists, many of whom believe that cooked food is poison, a type of food cult? What about paleo diet adherents or those who follow a restricted calorie diet for longevity? Food Cults explores these questions by looking at domestic and international, contemporary and historic food communities characterized by extreme nutritional beliefs or viewed as "fringe" movements by mainstream culture. While there are a variety of accounts of such food communities across disciplines, this collection pulls together these works and explains why we gravitate toward such groups and the social and psychological functions they serve. This volume describes how contemporary and historic food communities come together and foment fanaticism, judgment, charisma, dogma, passion, longevity, condemnation and exaltation.

American Home Cooking provides an answer to the question of why, in the face of all the modern technology we have for saving time, Americans still spend time in their kitchens cooking.Americans eat four to five meals per week in a restaurant and buy millions of dollars’ worth of convenience foods. Cooking, especially from scratch, is clearly on its way out. However, if this is true, why do we spend so much money on kitchen appliances both large and small? Why are so many cooking shows and cookbooks published each year if so few people actually cook?In American Home Cooking, Timothy Miller argues that there are historical reasons behind the reality of American cooking. There are some factors that, over the past two hundred years, have kept us close to our kitchens, while there are other factors that have worked to push us away from our kitchens. At one end of the cooking and eating continuum is preparing meals from scratch: all ingredients are raw and unprocessed and, in extreme cases, grown at the home. On the other end of the spectrum is dining out at a restaurant, where no cooking is done but the family is still fed. All dining experiences exist along this continuum, and Miller considers how American dining has moved along the continuum. He looks at a number of different groups and trends that have affected the state of the American kitchen, stretching back to the early 1800s. These include food and appliance companies, the restaurant industry, the home economics movement of the early 20th century, and reform movements such as the counterculture of the 1960s and the religious reform movements of the 1800s. And yet the kitchen is still, most often, the center of the home and the place where most people expect to cook and eat – even if they don’t.

America seems presently fascinated by prison culture and the inner workings of what happens behind clinked doors. With TV shows creating binge-watchers of us all, and celebrities piquing public interest as they end up behind bars, Americans seem to enjoy a good gawk at prison life. Each year, more than 1.3 million visitors still trek out to Alcatraz Island, one of the most famous prisons in the world. And why shouldn’t they be curious about prison? We as a nation currently incarcerate more people per capita than any other country, and our prisons are notoriously rough, violent, and overcrowded. At the same time, we love our food, take pictures of it, post it socially, and discuss our foodie favorites. Rarely do we consider the food experiences of those for whom sustenance is more difficult to obtain, particularly those incarcerated, where choice and access is severely limited. Prison food is often everything to prisoners. It is the only marker of time throughout the day. Food becomes commerce in the microeconomies behind prison walls. It is often the only source of pleasure in a monotonous routine. It creates sites of community when prisoners ban together to create recipes, but also becomes a site of discord when issues surrounding fairness and equity arise in the chow hall. Prison Food in America offers a high-level snapshot of the fare offered behind bars, its general guidelines and regulations, fascinating stories about prisoners and food, and the remarkable and varied ways food plays a role in the fabric of prison culture.

K’Oben traces the Maya kitchen and its associated hardware, ingredients, and cooking styles from the earliest times for which we have archaeological evidence through today’s culinary tourism in the area. It focuses not only on what was eaten and how it was cooked, but the people involved: who grew or sourced the foods, who cooked them, who ate them. Additionally, the authors examine how Maya foodways and the people involved fit into the social system, particularly in how food is incorporated into culture, economy, and society.The authors provide a detailed literature review of hard-to-find sources including: out of print centuries old cookbooks, archaeological field notes, ethnographies and ethnohistories out of circulation and not available in English, thesis documents only available in Spanish and in university archives as well as current field research on the Maya. The more recent Maya foodways can be studied from cookbooks, ethnographies and ethnohistorical documentation. Between the two of us, we have assembled a small but representative collection of cookbooks, some self-published and rare, that were available in Merida and elsewhere in Mexico during the late 20th century. Some are quite old, and all reflect local traditional foodways. Geographically, the book concentrates on Yucatan, Tabasco and Chiapas in Mexico, but will include Pre-Classic and Classic evidence from Guatemala and El Salvador, whose foodways are influenced by Maya traditions.

As Long as we Both Shall Eat is a culinary history of wedding feasts. Examining the various food customs associated with weddings in America and around the world, Claire Stewart not only provides a rich account of the foods most loved and frequently served at wedding celebrations, she also offers a glimpse into the customs and celebrations themselves, as they are experienced in the West and in various other cultures. Shesheds light on the historical and contemporary significance of wedding food, and explores patterns of the varieties of conspicuous consumption linked to American wedding feasts in particular. There are stories of celebrity excess, and the book is peppered with accounts of lavish strange-but-true wedding tales. The antics of wealthy socialites and celebrities is a topic rich for exploration, and the telling of their exploits can be used to track the fads and changes in conventional and contemporary wedding feasts and celebrations. From cocktail hours to wedding cakes, showers to brunches, the food we enjoy to celebrate the joining of life partners helps bring us together, no matter our differences. Readers are treated to a tasty trip down the aisle in this entertaining and lively account of nuptial noshing.

Embedded in the quest for ways to preserve and promote heritage of any kind and, in particular, food heritage, is an appreciation or a sense of an impending loss of a particular way of life – knowledge, skills set, traditions -- deemed vital to the survival of a culture or community. Foodways places the production, procurement, preparation and sharing or consumption of food at an intersection among culture, tradition, and history. Thus, foodways is an important material and symbolic marker of identity, race and ethnicity, gender, class, ideology and social relations. Urban Foodways and Communication seeks to enrich our understanding of unique foodways in urban settings around the world as forms of intangible cultural heritage. Each ethnographic case study focuses its analysis on how the featured foodways manifests itself symbolically through and in communication. The book helps advance our knowledge of urban food heritages in order to contribute to their appreciation, preservation, and promotion.

Beyond being just fuel for the body, food carries symbolic importance used to define individuals, situations, and places, making it an ideal communication tool. In musical theater, food can be used as a shortcut to tell the audience more about a setting, character, or situation. Because everyone relates to eating, food can also be used to evoke empathy, amusement, or shock from the audience. In some cases, food is central to show’s plot. This book looks at popular musical theater shows to examine which foods are used, how they are used, why they are important, and how the food or usage relates to the broader world. Included are recipes for many of the foods that are significant in the shows discussed.

Pot in Pans: A History of Eating Weed is a comprehensive history of cannabis as a unique culinary ingredient, from ancient India and Persia to today’s explosive new market. Cannabis, the hottest new global food trend, has been providing humans with nutrition, medicine, and solace – against all odds – since the earliest cavepeople discovered its powers. In colorful detail, the book explores the debate over the cannabis plant’s taxonomy and nomenclature, then follows as it co-evolves with humans throughout history, beloved by the masses, reviled by the elite, and shrouded in conflict and secrecy. The story is held together by the thread of the Islamic confection majoun, created to manipulate a band of twelfth-century fedayeen, a legend that later inspired Western intellectuals and literati to discover and enjoy hashish and majoun. It’s the story of how a U.S. drug czar got cannabis prohibited around the world and how some cultures worked around that. It’s the story of how a recipe for majoun made its way into the hands of Alice B. Toklas, an ex-pat in Paris, and then into the pages of a cookbook published in New York and London, leading to a major mix-up in a major motion picture that morphed majouninto the pot brownie and turned the pot brownie into a Western icon forevermore. From the rowdy band of artists, rebels, and intellectuals who partook of majoun’s charms and to an activist who made the pot brownie a symbol of compassion, it’s the story of how cannabis cookery and hash eating survived through decades of global prohibition and the birth of a skies-the-limit cannabis-infused food industry. Along the way, Robyn Griggs Lawrence explores the medicinal qualities of cannabis and its resurgence as a both a recreational drug and a respite from various illnesses and ailments. With recipes and stories throughout, this work is sure to entertain and inform readers about the history of cannabis as an edible ingredient in a variety of foods.

Among the first creatures to help humans attain the goal of having enough to eat was the pig, which provided not simply enough, but general abundance. Domesticated early and easily, herds grew at astonishing rates (only rabbits are more prolific). Then, as people spread around the globe, pigs and traditions went with them, with pigs making themselves at home wherever explorers or settlers carried them. Today, pork is the most commonly consumed meat in the world—and no one else in the world produces more pork than the American Midwest. Pigs and pork feature prominently in many cuisines and are restricted by others. In the U.S. during the early1900s, pork began to lose its preeminence to beef, but today, we are witnessing a resurgence of interest in pork, with talented chefs creating delicacies out of every part of the pig. Still, while people enjoy “pigging out,” few know much about hog history, and fewer still know of the creatures’ impact on the world, and specifically the Midwest. From brats in Wisconsin to tenderloin in Iowa, barbecue in Kansas City to porketta in the Iron Range to goetta in Cincinnati, the Midwest is almost defined by pork. Here, tracking the history of pig as pork, Cynthia Clampitt offers a fun, interesting, and tasty look at pigs as culture, calling, and cuisine.

Increasingly, people are shifting to vegetarian, plant-based, or vegan diets. This shift is having profound effects on our social interactions, and this is the focus of this book. Becoming a vegetarian or vegan involves more than just changing your diet. It can change how you socially and emotionally connect with family, friends and the broader community, shape your outlook on life, and open up new worlds and contacts. It can also lead to uncomfortable situations, if dietary choices involving a rejection of meat are read by others as an ethical and moral judgement on mainstream dietary choices. This book adopts an innovative narrative approach, and draws on stories across the globe to consider how the food choices we make in our everyday lives can lead to complex, and sometimes life changing, social consequences. The narratives cover a range of topics, including the moral reasons behind some individuals’ decision to change their diets, the religious or ecological considerations, and the potential health and social ramifications. To date, the social consequences of selecting a plant-based diet have been sorely overlooked in favour of texts that have documented the benefits of such diets, and usually focus on health, animal welfare and/or environmental issues, with the aim of persuading readers to give up meat, and change to a ‘healthy’ and/or ‘sustainable’ diet. Cultural studies texts considering vegetarianism or veganism have typically targeted academic audiences with analyses of how identity is constructed through food and dietary choices. In contrast, this book offers a unique window onto how our social lives are implicated in our food choices, and is critical in understanding the importance of diet as embedded in complex social processes.

Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier replaces the traditional French hierarchy of sauces with a modern version based on the sauces’ physical properties. While itis not a traditional cookbook, it does include many recipes. Cooks need not slavishly follow them, however, as the recipes illustrate their underlying functions, helping cooks to successfully create their own sauces based on their newfound understanding of sauces’ intrinsic properties. Gary Allen explores what makes a sauce the type of sauce it is, how it works, why it is specific to a particular cuisine, and how cooks can make it their own through an understanding of how the ingredients work together to create a sauce that enriches a dish and tantalizes the taste buds.

In this book, contributors examine the many meanings of the term 'nomad' through the study of food habits. Food and beverage products have become just as nomadic as other objects, such as telephones and computers, whereas in the past only food and money were able to move about with their carriers. Food industries have seized control of this trend to make it the characteristic feature of consumption outside the home - always faster and more convenient, the just-in-time meal: 'what I want, when I want, where I want', snacks, finger food, and street food. The terms reveal the contemporary modernity and spread of food practices, but they are only modified versions of older and more uncommon forms of behavior. Mobility, in the sense of multiple forms of moving about using public or individual, and possibly intermodal, means of transport, on spatial scales and temporal rhythms which are frequent and recurring but variable, responding to professional or leisure needs, can serve as a basic premise in order to gain insight into the concept of food nomadism.

In this book, contributors examine the many meanings of the term 'nomad' through the study of food habits. Food and beverage products have become just as nomadic as other objects, such as telephones and computers, whereas in the past only food and money were able to move about with their carriers. Food industries have seized control of this trend to make it the characteristic feature of consumption outside the home - always faster and more convenient, the just-in-time meal: 'what I want, when I want, where I want', snacks, finger food, and street food. The terms reveal the contemporary modernity and spread of food practices, but they are only modified versions of older and more uncommon forms of behavior. Mobility, in the sense of multiple forms of moving about using public or individual, and possibly intermodal, means of transport, on spatial scales and temporal rhythms which are frequent and recurring but variable, responding to professional or leisure needs, can serve as a basic premise in order to gain insight into the concept of food nomadism.

Increasingly, people are shifting to vegetarian, plant-based, or vegan diets. This shift is having profound effects on our social interactions, and this is the focus of this book. Becoming a vegetarian or vegan involves more than just changing your diet. It can change how you socially and emotionally connect with family, friends and the broader community, shape your outlook on life, and open up new worlds and contacts. It can also lead to uncomfortable situations, if dietary choices involving a rejection of meat are read by others as an ethical and moral judgement on mainstream dietary choices. This book adopts an innovative narrative approach, and draws on stories across the globe to consider how the food choices we make in our everyday lives can lead to complex, and sometimes life changing, social consequences. The narratives cover a range of topics, including the moral reasons behind some individuals’ decision to change their diets, the religious or ecological considerations, and the potential health and social ramifications. To date, the social consequences of selecting a plant-based diet have been sorely overlooked in favour of texts that have documented the benefits of such diets, and usually focus on health, animal welfare and/or environmental issues, with the aim of persuading readers to give up meat, and change to a ‘healthy’ and/or ‘sustainable’ diet. Cultural studies texts considering vegetarianism or veganism have typically targeted academic audiences with analyses of how identity is constructed through food and dietary choices. In contrast, this book offers a unique window onto how our social lives are implicated in our food choices, and is critical in understanding the importance of diet as embedded in complex social processes.