Few things are as important as the food we eat. Conversations in Food Studies demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary research through the cross-pollination of disciplinary, epistemological, and methodological perspectives. Widely diverse essays, ranging from the meaning of milk, to the bring-your-own-wine movement, to urban household waste, are the product of collaborating teams of interdisciplinary authors. Readers are invited to engage and reflect on the theories and practi...

**A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe jaw-dropping exposé on how America's fast food industry has shaped the landscape of America.**This fascinating study reveals how the fast food industry has altered the landscape of America, widened the gap between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and transformed food production throughout the world. Eric Schlosser inspires readers to look beneath the surface of our food system, consider its impact on society and, most o...

From the best-selling author of Why We Get Fat, a groundbreaking, eye-opening exposé that makes the convincing case that sugar is the tobacco of the new millennium: backed by powerful lobbies, entrenched in our lives, and making us very sick.Among Americans, diabetes is more prevalent today than ever; obesity is at epidemic proportions; nearly 10% of children are thought to have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. And sugar is at the root of these, and other...

FINALIST 2014 – Heritage Toronto AwardIt began as a food bank. It turned into a movement.In 1998, when Nick Saul became executive director of The Stop, the little urban food bank was like thousands of other cramped, dreary, makeshift spaces, a last-hope refuge where desperate people could stave off hunger for one more day with a hamper full of canned salt, sugar and fat. The produce was wilted and the packaged foods were food-industry castoffs—mislabelled p...

A leading economist, “who may very well turn out to be this decade’s Thomas Friedman” (Wall Street Journal), illuminates the state of American food todayTyler Cowen, one of the most influential economists of the last decade, wants you to know that just about everything you’ve heard about how to get good food is wrong. Drawing on a provocative range of examples from around the globe, Cowen reveals why airplane food is bad, but airport food is improving; why...

When author and homesteader Nicole Faires decided to retrofit an old school bus and tour America’s small farms with her husband and two small children, she expected to learn a lot, be inspired, and have some fun. But what she found disturbed her. Mismanaged small farms; clueless urbanites setting up shop to get back to the land”; a mindless devotion to organic farming; and, ultimately, the discovery of just how dependent we are on corporations for our food.She began to understand ...

Stop Being Manipulated by the Animal Foods IndustryStop the meat industry from eating into your wallet. Few Americans are aware of the realities of the economic system that supports our country's supply of animal foods. Yet these forces affect us in ways we can hardly imagine. Though we only fork over a few dollars per pound of meat products at the grocery store, we end up paying much more than that in tax dollar-fueled government subsidies—$38 b...

Food: The Key Concepts presents an exciting, coherent and interdisciplinary introduction to food studies for the beginning reader. Food Studies is an increasingly complex field, drawing on disciplines as diverse as Sociology, Anthropology and Cultural Studies at one end and Economics, Politics and Agricultural Science at the other.In order to clarify the issues, Food: The Key Concepts distills food choices down to three competing considerations: consumer identity; matters of conven...

Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry offers a definitive guide to the many rich dimensions of the bean and the beverage around the world. Leading experts from business and academia consider coffee’s history, global spread, cultivation, preparation, marketing, and the environmental and social issues surrounding it today. They discuss, for example, the impact of globalization; the many definitions of organic, direct trade, and fair trade; the health of fe...

Food recalls have become so ubiquitous we hardly even notice them. The massive peanut salmonella contamination of 2008–2009 alone killed nine and sickened an estimated 22,500 people; only a few weeks later, contaminated frozen cookie dough sent 35 people to the hospital. These tragic, inexcusable events to which no one is immune are but a symptom of a broader food system malaise.In Making Supper Safe, Ben Hewitt exposes the vulnerabilities inherent to the US food industry,...

A fascinating exploration of our past, present, and future relationship with foodFor the first time in human history, there is food in abundance throughout the world. More people than ever before are now freed of the struggle for daily survival, yet few of us are aware of how food lands on our plates. Behind every meal you eat, there is a story. Hamburgers in Paradise explains how.In this wise and passionate book, Louise Fresco takes readers on an en...

A powerful and important work of investigative journalism that explores the runaway growth of the American meatpacking industry and its dangerous consequences"A worthy update to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and a chilling indicator of how little has changed since that 1906 muckraking classic." — Mother Jones"I tore through this book. . . . Books like these are important: They track the journey of our thinking about ...