Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past - Hardcover

Mintz, Sidney W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807046280 ISBN 13: 9780807046289

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 1996

Synopsis

Mintz (anthropology, Johns Hopkins U.) writes provocatively and engagingly about eating as it defines our nature as living creatures our choices hold enormous significance for us. He shows how eating is influenced by a variety of external forces, including moral judgments and the demands of war. The eight essays include some that have been published before, and some new ones. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

About this title

About the Author

Sidney W. Mintz is the William L. Strauss, Jr. Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.

Reviews

In this collection of scholarly essays, some of which have been published previously, Mintz (Sweetness and Power) examines aspects of the intricate relationship between food and human culture. In several interesting articles, he discusses the symbolic power of food as shown by the case of Africans, who though forcibly transplanted to the Caribbean in colonial times, succeeded in creating a cuisine for themselves and their masters, even under the oppressive conditions of slavery. Mintz traces the complex rivalry between honey and sugar as the primary sweeteners and how the ascendancy of sugar was tied to economic development in Europe. In one controversial piece, Mintz argues that there is no such thing as an American cuisine. According to the author, although patterns of immigration peculiar to the U.S. have resulted in regional diets, a national cuisine that is cooked, eaten and talked about has not evolved (yet).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

With these seven succinct and well-argued essays, a noted Johns Hopkins anthropologist could conceivably have the power to change attitudes about our dietary habits. At the very least, Mintz's thought-provoking prose offers a new way to look at U.S. consumption. Each scholarly essay presents a research-supported conclusion bound to amaze if not to startle. Among the revelations: Coca-Cola became a global beverage of choice because of World War II, the question about sugar's inclusion in diets seems to center on moral not just nutritional issues, and no national cuisine exists in any country (the cooking history of a nation is merely a composite of regional cuisines). For those for whom the subject of food represents mind over matter. Barbara Jacobs

Mintz has drawn on his academic training as an anthropologist, his father's interest in food, and his mother's interest in politics to produce this relatively short yet scholarly analysis of "what modern life has meant, in relation to food." His central thesis is that food is an essential fulcrum in the leverage of power. He examines history, eating rituals, cuisine, and cultural behavior, convincingly extracting supporting evidence. Eight eclectic chapters resembling meditations consider slavery, power, sugar and sweets, and the concept of cuisine in general and an American cuisine in particular. Because Mintz wrote each chapter at different times, there is a somewhat patchwork quality to the book, but that is more a matter of style than content; readers curious about food history and anthropology, world hunger, and our own eating habits will find valuable information here.?Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., Ky.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807046280
• ISBN 13: 9780807046289
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 149