The history and culture of Japanese food

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Paul Halstead and John C. Barrett

"Food and drink, along with the material culture involved in their consumption, can signify a variety of social distinctions, identities and values. Thus, in Early Minoan Knossos, tableware was used to emphasize the difference between the host and the guests, and at Mycenaean Pylos the status of banqueters was declared as much by the places assigned to them as by the quality of the vessels from which they ate and drank. The ten contributions to this volume highlight the extraordinary opportunity for multi-disciplinary research in this area."--Jacket.

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S. Margot Finn

For the past four decades, increasing numbers of Americans have started paying greater attention to the food they eat, buying organic vegetables, drinking fine wines, and seeking out exotic cuisines. Yet they are often equally passionate about the items they refuse to eat: processed foods, generic brands, high-carb meals. While they may care deeply about issues like nutrition and sustainable agriculture, these discriminating diners also seek to differentiate themselves from the unrefined eater, the common person who lives on junk food. Discriminating Taste argues that the rise of gourmet, ethnic, diet, and organic foods must be understood in tandem with the ever-widening income inequality gap. Offering an illuminating historical perspective on our current food trends, S. Margot Finn draws numerous parallels with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, an era infamous for its class divisions, when gourmet dinners, international cuisines, slimming diets, and pure foods first became fads. Examining a diverse set of cultural touchstones ranging from Ratatouille to The Biggest Loser, Finn identifies the key ways that “good food” has become conflated with high status. She also considers how these taste hierarchies serve as a distraction, leading middle-class professionals to focus on small acts of glamorous and virtuous consumption while ignoring their class’s larger economic stagnation. A provocative look at the ideology of contemporary food culture, Discriminating Taste teaches us to question the maxim that you are what you eat.--Publisher website.

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Sarah Ridley

Everyone has memories of the food they ate they had when they were growing up. This book gives young children access to people's memories alongside photographs to help them build up a picture of the past. From family meals to wartime rationing, young children can explore what has changed and what remains the same.

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Bob Ashley ... [et al

"Food and Cultural Studies re-examines the interdisciplinary history of food studies, from the semiotics of Barthes and the anthropology of Levi-Strauss to Elias's historical analysis and Bourdieu's work on the relationship between food, consumption and cultural identity. The authors then go on to explore subjects as divserse as food and nation, the gendering of eating in, the phenomenon of TV chefs, food-related moral panics and the ethics of vegetarianism."--Jacket.