Belgian food and drink, often overshadowed by the those of powerhouse neighbors France and Germany, receive much deserved attention in this thorough overview, the most comprehensive available in English. Belgian waffles, chocolate, and beer are renowned, but Food Culture in Belgium opens up the entire food culture spectrum and reveals Belgian food habits today and yesterday. Students and food mavens learn about the question of Belgianness in discussions of the foodways of distinct regions of Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels. Packed with daily life insight, consumption statistics, and trends ga

For a long time, everything revolved around bread. Providing more than half of people's daily calories, bread was the life-source of Europe for centuries. In the middle of 19th century, a third of household expenditure was spent on bread. Why, then, does it only account for 0.8% of expenditure and just 12% of daily calories today? In this book, Peter Scholliers delves into the history of bread to map out its defining moments and people. From the price revolution of the 1890s that led to affordable and pure white bread, to the taste revolution of the 1990s that ushered in healthy brown bread, he studies consumers, bakers and governments to explain how and why this food that once powered an entire continent has fallen by the wayside, and what this means for the modern age. From prices and consumption to legislation and technology, Scholliers shows how the history of bread has been shaped by subtle cultural shifts as well as top-down decisions from ruling bodies. From the small home baker to booming factories, he follows changes in agriculture, transport, production and policy since the 19th century to explain why bread, once the centre of everything, is not so today.

"Food and drink have provided fascinating insights into cultural patterns in consumer societies. There is an intimate relationship between food and identity but processes of identity formation through food are far from clear. This book adds a new perspective to the existing body of scholarship by addressing pivotal questions: is food central or marginal to identity construction? Does food equally matter for all group(ing)s? Why would, in peoples experience, food become especially important at one moment, or, on the contrary, lose its significance?The origin of food habits is also interrogated. Contributors investigate how, when, why and by whom cooking, eating and drinking were used as a means of distinction. Leading historians and sociologists look at concepts of authenticity, adjustment, invention and import, as well as food signs and codes, and why they have been accepted or rejected. They examine a wide range of periods and topics: the elderly, alcohol and identity in Early Modern Europe; food riots and national identity; noble families, eating and drinking in eighteenth-century Spain; consumption and the working class in the nineteenth century; commensality; the meaning of Champagne in Belle-Epoque France; the narrative of food in Norway; wine and bread in French Algeria; food and identity in post-war Germany.This intriguing book brings together new, comparative insights and research that allow a better understanding of processes of integration and segregation, the role of food in the construction of identity, and the relationship between old and new food habits."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

"Europeans are eating out in unprecedented numbers - in cafs, pubs, brasseries and restaurants. Globalization brought about changes in patterns of leisure and consumption, as well as a democratization of restaurant culture. But what if we open up this concept of 'eating out' to include any eating that takes place outside the home? What cultural shifts can we see through time? What differences can we discover about pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial societies?Eating Out in Europe addresses such questions as it examines changes in eating patterns through time. 'Eating out' is broadly conceived to cover everything from nibbling a pizza at work to dining in an exquisite restaurant, from suffering an institutional lunch at the school cafeteria to enjoying the natural world with a picnic. The meaning of eating out clearly varies enormously depending on the setting, circumstances and significance of the meal. The contributors describe and interpret the huge changes that occurred in eating habits throughout Europe by analyzing such factors as urbanization, technological innovation, demographic growth, employment patterns and identity formation. Case studies include the evolution of the pub, the rise of the fast food industry in Britain, picnicking in 19th-century France, snack culture in the Netherlands, industrial canteens in Germany, the rise of restaurants in Norway and countryside traditions in Hungary, among others. Fully comprehensive and illustrated, the contributors draw on examples throughout Europe from the late eighteenth century to the present day."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

"This book presents an international and historical approach to dietary health and contrasts current concerns with how such issues as diabetes, cancer, vitamins, sugar and fat, and food allergies were perceived in the 19th and 20th centuries. What we eat and what we shouldn't eat has become a topic of increased scrutiny in the current century. The link between dietary innovation and health/disease is not a new one, however, as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed numerous dietary innovations. From new fads in foodstuffs, through developments in manufacturing and production processes, to the inclusion of additives and evolving agricultural practices changing diet: the changes often promised better health only to become associated with the opposite. With contributors including Peter Scholliers, Francesco Buscemi, Clare Gordon, and Kirsten Gardner this collection comprises the best scholarship on how we have perceived diet to affect health. The chapters consider: - the politics and economics of dietary change - the historical actors involved in innovation and the response to it - the extent that our dietary health itself a cultural construct, or even a product of history? This is a fascinating and varied study of how our diets have been shaped and influenced by perceptions of health and will be of great value to students of history, food history, politics and sociology"--