Summary
Ask children where food comes from, and they'll probably answer: "the supermarket." Ask most adults, and their replies may not be much different. Where our foods are raised and what happens to them between farm and supermarket shelf have become mysteries. How did we become so disconnected from the sources of our breads, beef, cheeses, cereal, apples, and countless other foods that nourish us every day?
Ann Vileisis's answer is a sensory-rich journey through the history of making dinner. Kitchen Literacy takes us from an eighteenth-century garden to today's sleek supermarket aisles, and eventually to farmer's markets that are now enjoying a resurgence. Vileisis chronicles profound changes in how American cooks have considered their foods over two centuries and delivers a powerful statement: what we don't know could hurt us.
As the distance between farm and table grew, we went from knowing particular places and specific stories behind our foods' origins to instead relying on advertisers' claims. The woman who raised, plucked, and cooked her own chicken knew its entire life history while today most of us have no idea whether hormones were fed to our poultry. Industrialized eating is undeniably convenient, but it has also created health and environmental problems, including food-borne pathogens, toxic pesticides, and pollution from factory farms.
Though the hidden costs of modern meals can be high, Vileisis shows that greater understanding can lead consumers to healthier and more sustainable choices. Revealing how knowledge of our food has been lost and how it might now be regained, Kitchen Literacy promises to make us think differently about what we eat.
Author Notes
Ann Vileisis is a writer and historian. She is the author of Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History of America's Wetlands (Island Press, 1997), which won prestigious awards from the American Historical Association and the American Society for Environmental History. An avid gardener and cook, she lives on the Oregon coast.
Publisher's Weekly Review
The rise of commercial farming and processed foods has given shoppers a tremendous variety to choose from, but this convenience has also fostered a "covenant of ignorance" among consumers and manufacturers, historian Vileisis (Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History of America?s Wetlands) posits in this meticulous chronicle of the culinary disconnect. Persuasively arguing that manufacturers have prevented shoppers from knowing "unsavory details" about their foods and shielded producers from inquiry and public scrutiny, Vileisis highlights key events in this evolution. The booming populations of major cities, a reliance on servants or others to prepare meals and the ease and speed of rail transport were early contributors, she asserts, with the Industrial Revolution and two World Wars forever changing the way Americans bought and consumed food. Though the chapters covering developments since the 1970s feel rushed, Vileisis?s well-researched treatise will give those interested in local and organic foods, food processing and American culinary culture plenty to chew on. (Oct.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Booklist Review
Today's Americans know virtually nothing about where their food comes from, contends Vileisis, and she fears that such ignorance disrupts vital historical connections between producers and consumers to the detriment of both. She documents how this state of affairs arose in the past few decades as America shifted from an agrarian to an urban society. For proof of this, Vileisis cites a 1790 journal produced by a Maine housewife who chronicled the everyday chores of raising crops, tending animals, and preparing meals. Save for a few rare exotic fruits and pricey spices, virtually every comestible came from the family's or neighbors' own fields. This farm wife even personally dispatched chickens and other fowl for the family dinner. Vileisis wants Americans to take more care about their food, urging them to more profoundly informed engagement in nonindustrially produced food, ecological awareness, and health concerns. Extensive bibliographic notes.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2007 Booklist
Choice Review
Vileisis (independent scholar) advances a compelling argument: people in the developed world are increasingly disconnected from their food supply, starting with urbanization centuries ago. Filling in this knowledge gap through "kitchen literacy"--a knowledge of and connection with the food we eat, from production, through preparation and consumption--she suggests, would improve both individual health and the food system as a whole. The argument is clear, well researched, and tracked over time, starting from the diary of an 18th-century American housewife. The book's weakness is its tendency toward the nostalgic. Food historians like Rachel Laudan and Ken Albala emphasize that the past was not all hearth-baked bread and freshly churned butter; it was also frequent hunger and famine and a tainted and adulterated food supply. Extensive endnotes serve the scholar, while the uninterrupted flow, illustrations, and accessible language make the book a pleasure for the general reader. Vileisis's historical perspective is especially useful, making Kitchen Literacy a good complement to other books demystifyng the food system for "foodies" and scholars alike: Marion Nestle's What to Eat (2006) and Peter Singer and Jim Masons's The Way We Eat (CH, Feb'07, 44-3235). Summing Up: Recommended. All collections. J. M. Deutsch CUNY Kingsborough Community College
Library Journal Review
Vileisis, author of the award-winning Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History of America's Wetlands, lights her own torch in the flames of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and directs her attention to the forces that shaped the way Americans act today. Scarcely 200 years ago, a cook had intimate knowledge of every ingredient in his or her kitchen. In the intervening decades, seemingly independent parties-the government, the farm industry, major university health departments, advertisers, and manufacturers-worked to create a consumer who would be brand loyal, and familiar logos replaced generations of knowledge about food, agriculture, and farming. It is not that we have never read this before, but Vileisis gathers it all in one place, weaving a clear, easy-to-read tapestry whose meaning is plain by the end of the book: you are what you eat, so think about what you've been eating. Her extensive notes bring together decades of evidence regarding the unhealthy merger of something we need-food-with something we're told to want-products. This important and eye-opening book uncovers the machinery behind the modern food industry and is an essential purchase for most academic and public libraries.-Rosemarie Lewis, Broward Cty. P.L., Fort Lauderdale, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
The rise of commercial farming and processed foods has given shoppers a tremendous variety to choose from, but this convenience has also fostered a "covenant of ignorance" among consumers and manufacturers, historian Vileisis (Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History of America?s Wetlands) posits in this meticulous chronicle of the culinary disconnect. Persuasively arguing that manufacturers have prevented shoppers from knowing "unsavory details" about their foods and shielded producers from inquiry and public scrutiny, Vileisis highlights key events in this evolution. The booming populations of major cities, a reliance on servants or others to prepare meals and the ease and speed of rail transport were early contributors, she asserts, with the Industrial Revolution and two World Wars forever changing the way Americans bought and consumed food. Though the chapters covering developments since the 1970s feel rushed, Vileisis?s well-researched treatise will give those interested in local and organic foods, food processing and American culinary culture plenty to chew on. (Oct.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Booklist Review
Today's Americans know virtually nothing about where their food comes from, contends Vileisis, and she fears that such ignorance disrupts vital historical connections between producers and consumers to the detriment of both. She documents how this state of affairs arose in the past few decades as America shifted from an agrarian to an urban society. For proof of this, Vileisis cites a 1790 journal produced by a Maine housewife who chronicled the everyday chores of raising crops, tending animals, and preparing meals. Save for a few rare exotic fruits and pricey spices, virtually every comestible came from the family's or neighbors' own fields. This farm wife even personally dispatched chickens and other fowl for the family dinner. Vileisis wants Americans to take more care about their food, urging them to more profoundly informed engagement in nonindustrially produced food, ecological awareness, and health concerns. Extensive bibliographic notes.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2007 Booklist
Choice Review
Vileisis (independent scholar) advances a compelling argument: people in the developed world are increasingly disconnected from their food supply, starting with urbanization centuries ago. Filling in this knowledge gap through "kitchen literacy"--a knowledge of and connection with the food we eat, from production, through preparation and consumption--she suggests, would improve both individual health and the food system as a whole. The argument is clear, well researched, and tracked over time, starting from the diary of an 18th-century American housewife. The book's weakness is its tendency toward the nostalgic. Food historians like Rachel Laudan and Ken Albala emphasize that the past was not all hearth-baked bread and freshly churned butter; it was also frequent hunger and famine and a tainted and adulterated food supply. Extensive endnotes serve the scholar, while the uninterrupted flow, illustrations, and accessible language make the book a pleasure for the general reader. Vileisis's historical perspective is especially useful, making Kitchen Literacy a good complement to other books demystifyng the food system for "foodies" and scholars alike: Marion Nestle's What to Eat (2006) and Peter Singer and Jim Masons's The Way We Eat (CH, Feb'07, 44-3235). Summing Up: Recommended. All collections. J. M. Deutsch CUNY Kingsborough Community College
Library Journal Review
Vileisis, author of the award-winning Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History of America's Wetlands, lights her own torch in the flames of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and directs her attention to the forces that shaped the way Americans act today. Scarcely 200 years ago, a cook had intimate knowledge of every ingredient in his or her kitchen. In the intervening decades, seemingly independent parties-the government, the farm industry, major university health departments, advertisers, and manufacturers-worked to create a consumer who would be brand loyal, and familiar logos replaced generations of knowledge about food, agriculture, and farming. It is not that we have never read this before, but Vileisis gathers it all in one place, weaving a clear, easy-to-read tapestry whose meaning is plain by the end of the book: you are what you eat, so think about what you've been eating. Her extensive notes bring together decades of evidence regarding the unhealthy merger of something we need-food-with something we're told to want-products. This important and eye-opening book uncovers the machinery behind the modern food industry and is an essential purchase for most academic and public libraries.-Rosemarie Lewis, Broward Cty. P.L., Fort Lauderdale, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
![Cover image for Kitchen literacy [electronic resource] : how we lost knowledge of where food comes from and why we need to get it back / Ann Vileisis.](/client/assets/5.1326/ctx//client/images/no_image.png "Cover image for Kitchen literacy [electronic resource] : how we lost knowledge of where food comes from and why we need to get it back / Ann Vileisis.")