She specializes in American history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the history of food and nutrition. She received her Ph.D. in 2008 from Yale University, where she won the Edwin Small Prize for an outstanding dissertation in American history. Her first book, Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) explores the origins of modern eating. Modern Food, Moral Food was a finalist for the 2014 James Beard Award for Reference and Scholarship. Her next book, Small Appetites: A History of Children’s Food, examines the history of children’s eating during the last two hundred years.