Using dietary information and other pertinent facts, the author assesses the nutritional status of Americans during each historical period. Special emphasis is given to American dietary patterns from the landfall of Columbus to the colonial period, the revolutionary period, the New Republic, and the 20th century. Four categories of American food are identified and analyzed: mainstream cuisine, regional cooking, "regional phenomena" (including ethnic foods), and "Pop" foods. The overview concludes with the finding that, despite delightful differences, there are striking similarities in food habits across time and cultures. By providing increased insights and understanding of contemporary American eating patterns, this book will be a substantive addition to existing texts.

"Reading Richard Pillsbury's remarkable No Foreign Food, like the Grand Opening of a new restaurant in one's neighborhood, is an exciting & pleasurable event. He engagingly chronicles the amazing diversity of America's food ways that are so central to our history & culture, but he also tells us why our eating habits are much more than mere gastronomic experiences." Karl Raitz University of Kentucky "The only serious up-to-date treatment of American food habits that I know-a subject unaccountably neglected by most students of the American scene. In Pillsbury's skillful hands, American food habits become more than just a set of cranky likes & dislikes, but instead a mirror to America's larger culture.... It's an excellent book, & I don't use that word lightly. Because it is such a good book, & because it covers so much unknown territory, it is an indispensable book for any serious student of the American scene." Pierce Lewis Pennsylvania State University

Proust's famous madeleine captures the power of food to evoke some of our deepest memories. Why does food hold such power? What does the growing commodification and globalization of food mean for our capacity to store the past in our meals - in the smell of olive oil or the taste of a fresh-cut fig?This book offers a theoretical account of the interrelationship of culture, food and memory. Sutton challenges and expands anthropology's current focus on issues of embodiment, memory and material culture, especially in relation to transnational migration and the flow of culture across borders and boundaries. The Greek island of Kalymnos in the eastern Aegean, where Islanders claim to remember meals long past -- both humble and spectacular - provides the main setting for these issues, as well as comparative materials drawn from England and the United States. Despite the growing interest in anthropological accounts of food and in the cultural construction of memory, the intersection of food with memory has not been accorded sustained examination. Cultural practices of feasting and fasting, global flows of food as both gifts and commodities, the rise of processed food and the relationship of orally transmitted recipes to the vast market in speciality cookbooks tie traditional anthropological mainstays such as ritual, exchange and death to more current concerns with structure and history, cognition and the 'anthropology of the senses'. Arguing for the crucial role of a simultaneous consideration of food and memory, this book significantly advances our understanding of cultural processes and reformulates current theoretical preoccupations.

What and how we eat are two of the most persistent choices we face in everyday life. Whatever we decide on though, and however mundane our decisions may seem, they will be inscribed with information both about ourselves and about our positions in the world around us. Yet, food has only recently become a significant and coherent area of inquiry for cultural studies and the social sciences. Food and Cultural Studies re-examines the interdisciplinary history of food studies from a cultural studies framework, from the semiotics of Barthes and the anthropology of Levi-Strauss to Elias' historical analysis and Bourdieu's work on the relationship between food, consumption and cultural identity. The authors then go on to explore subjects as diverse as food and nation, the gendering of eating in, the phenomenon of TV chefs, the ethics of vegetarianism and food, risk and moral panics.

The Prehistory of Food sets subsistence in its social context by focusing on food as a cultural artefact. It brings together contributors with a scientific and biological expertise as well as those interested in the patterns of consumption and social change, and includes a wide range of case studies.

"Albala 's engaging tour through the host of Renaissance dietary theories reminds us that our preoccupations with food and susceptibility to cranky advice about nutrition are nothing new. This is superior scholarship delivered with a light touch."--Rachel Laudan, author of "The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii's Culinary Heritage

"This stimulating work is an important contribution to social and especially medical-dietetic history. Albala is the first to explore in detail the role of dietetic literature in the development of the European nation state. His book is a pleasure to read."--Melitta Weiss Adamson, editor of "Food in the Middle Ages

This is a broad-based, comprehensive general study of food in antiquity. The book deals with food as food or nutrition, the discussion revolving around the concrete issues of food availability and the nutritional status of the population. It also treats the nonfood uses of food, focusing on the role of food in forming and marking the social hierarchy. Food defines the group, whether social, religious, philosophical or political.

Combining feminist anthropology and theory with culinary history, Catherine Manton examines the place of food in women's history, with a particular emphasis on the life and changing roles of the American woman and her self-image.