Eating History: Thirty Points in the Making of American Cuisine

Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, by Andrew Smith, is not due until October, but with Michael Pollan‘s article in the New York Times Magazine, published on Sunday, on the way Americans now eat and how cooking is becoming a lost skill, we thought it would be a good time to preview the book’s video.

In the article, Pollan quote food industry expert, Harry Balzer, who says, “The next American cook is going to be the supermarket. Takeout from the supermarket, that’s the future. All we need now is the drive-through supermarket.” Andrew Smith’s book provides a kind of historical backdrop to how we got to this potential future. As Smith suggests in the video his book explores the ways in which “history is connected with the way we eat today,” and his book explores the various historical choices and moments that brought us to our industrialized, packaged, fast-food world of today.