Why Food Matters

We who read this journal know food is important. There is in fact nothing more basic than food. Food is the first of the essentials of life, our biggest industry, our greatest export, our most frequently indulged pleasure, and also the object of considerable concern and dread. What we eat and how we eat it may also be the single most important cause of disease and death. On the positive side, food is central to our personal and cultural identities. In Kitchens, his elegant study of the culture of restaurant work, Gary Alan Fine writes: "Food reveals our souls. Like Marcel Proust reminiscing about a madeleine or Calvin Trillin astonished at a plate of ribs, we are entangled in our meals. The connection between identity and consumption gives food a central role in the creation of community, and we use our diet to convey images of public identity" (1996:1). Food reveals who we are, where we came from, and what we want to be. As the old saying goes, we are what we eat, and we also are what we do not eat. Food also has tremendous historical importance. Anthropologist Sidney Mintz argues that the domestication of plants and nonhuman animals for food in the Neolithic era (10,000 years ago) was "probably the single greatest technical achievement in the human record, more important than the internal combustion engine or nuclear energy. It was, from the beginning and long before these other triumphs, a remarkable way to capture and control energy" (Mintz quoted from Hirschoff and Kotler 1989:115-116). We also know that the European exploration and settlement of the Americas had a lot to do with food. As Henry Hobhouse writes in Seeds of Change, "The starting point for the European expansion out of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic continental shelf had nothing to do with, say, religion or the rise of capitalism—but it had a great deal to do with pepper. The Americas were discovered as a byproduct in the search for pepper" (Hobhouse 1985:xi). And out of that search for pepper came the foods of the Columbian Exchange—com, potatoes, beans, tomatoes, chocolate, and so on—that revolutionized the diet, economy, social structure, and politics of the entire world (Viola and Margolis 1991). I think we all know this. And yet not long ago, at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association, I spoke at a session whose title—"Why American Studies Scholars Should Study Food"—implied a certain defensiveness about the subject at hand. Looking at the ASA program I did not see any panels devoted to justifying the study of gender, race, movies, or music. I think those battles were won long ago, or at least I hope so. But when it comes to telling others about our interests, we food scholars may still evoke a sense of surprise. It is not really a matter of outright disrespect, but rather, bemused wonder. In part, some people are surprised when academics do anything that touches on daily life. Thus I have received a similar reaction when I tell people that I have taught courses about the automobile (perhaps the single most important technology organizing the American landscape, economy, and social life) and television (one of the most powerful cultural influences). And there are, of course, those conservatives who regret any academic deviation from the canon of political history, classic literature, and dominant Anglo-American values (see Levine 1996). But it is more than that with food. I sense people are not just amazed or amused, they are also threatened. They fear I might spoil their dinner. Now that I have developed a reputation as the one and only "food person" at my university, I have noticed that at every reception I attend, people almost dare me to analyze the hors d'oeuvres, to tell them how bad those chicken fingers and pigs-in-blankets really are. I guess thinking seriously about food in our times is a little dangerous. Considering how complex and chemicalized our hypercapitalistic global food system is, it is so much easier to enjoy dinner in peaceful oblivion. I suspect that all "food people" face similar responses at their respective institutions. But what about my own research discipline, history? It is safe to say that food has been largely invisible in academic history. True, there are many amateur antiquarians and enthusiasts who have written histories of particular foods, dishes, cooks, or traditions. While such accounts perform invaluable service in preserving information and traditions, these histories rarely pay much attention to the things that interest professional historians: power, social relations, and context. But you could look through ten years' worth of programs of the annual meetings of the Organization of American Historians or the American Studies Association and not find more than a handful of sessions (out of thousands) devoted to food. The great French naturalist Jean Henry Fabre (18231915) wrote, "History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby