A Book Report on Tom Standage's an Edible History of Humanity

The emergence of agriculture was a major stepping stone in human history. During this birth of agriculture, also known as the Neolithic revolution, humans began inhabiting permanent settlements, grow their own crops, and domesticate both plants and animals for food (Weisdorf, 2005). Considering humans have been hunter-gatherers for the majority of their approximately 7 million years of existence, the emergence of agriculture in the Old World only occurring 10,000-5,000 years ago, marks a significant transformation in food sustenance techniques (Weisdorf, 2005). However, this turning point in history is associated with both positive and negative implications. There is much controversy over whether or not the introduction of

It is a known fact that every human being communicates through language, but perhaps a little known fact that we communicate even through the food we eat. We communicate through food all the meanings that we assign and attribute to our culture, and consequently to our identity as well. Food is not only nourishment for our bodies, but a symbol of where we come from. In order to understand the basic function of food as a necessity not only for our survival, we must look to politics, power, identity, and culture.

Thinking about the importance and significance of food respective to our health, ethnic culture and society can cause cavernous, profound, and even questionable thoughts such as: “Is food taken for granted?”, “Is specialty foods just a fad or a change in lifestyle?”, and even “Is food becoming the enemy.” Mark Bittman, an established food journalist, wrote an article called “Why take food seriously?” In this article, Bittman enlightens the reader with a brief history lesson of America’s appreciation of food over the past decades. This history lesson leads to where the social standing of food is today and how it is affecting not only the people of America, but also the rest of the world.

Neither life nor culture can be sustained without food. On a very basic level, food is fundamentally essential for life, not simply to exist, but also to thrive. A means by which carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, nutrients, and calories are introduced into the body, food is a mechanism of survival. However, on a more abstract level, food is also fundamentally essential for culture by establishing its perimeters and dimensions and in shaping its authenticity and character. Food becomes the

He probes them to learn the what, where, and how of dinner – knowing what is going into the body, knowing where that food came from, and knowing how that food was made. By first knowing what is being consumed, people can make better informed decisions about their purchases. Nutrition, or lack thereof, is a key component in the battle against obesity. Food giants are hoping to hide the often unnecessary filler present in their products by use of dodgy claims and socially engineered advertisements. In general, most consumers probably couldn’t say where their food came from. This usually boils down to the fact that shoppers typically don’t think about it. Breaking this reliance on mass-grown foods is the second part of Pollan’s proposition. The third and equally important element is how the food is produced. More specifically, Pollan is concerned whether or not the food has been produced in a sustainable manner. Preserving the biodiversity of food, maintaining fertile land for future generations, and ensuring consumers receive food that does not compromise health are all factors of sustainability. Without informed consumers, what, where, and how will continue to be unanswered questions. Whether it is for nutritional or ethical choices, a particular food’s history is something that needs to once again become common

Throughout early history, civilizations often sought to receive resources from afar to sustain their societies and keep themselves thriving, and to this end trade relations and eventually trade routes began to emerge. This aided civilizations in their discovery of foreign items that they may use to better their societies. These items traded ranged from complex technology to something as simple as nutmeg. The main trade routes that were utilized in East and South Asia were the silk road and the Indian Ocean Trade Network. In the 7th- 12th centuries, both the silk road and Indian ocean trade route had affected east and south Asia by the introduction of religions such as Buddhism changing government forms and altering the belief systems of society and changing how individuals live their daily lives, however differences were present in the impact that these routes had on daily lives, such as the Indian Ocean Trade Route giving rise to an entire new culture in Africa known as the Swahili and leading to the innovation of the sailing boat known as the Dhow, and the silk road led to the transmission of religion and resources throughout Eurasia and it led to utilization of caravans and animals as a means of trade.

One does not necessarily expect books about food also to be about bigger ideas like oppression, spirituality, and freedom, yet Pollan defies expectations. Pollan begins with an exploration of the food-production system from which the vast majority of American meals are derived. This industrial food chain is mainly based on corn, whether it is eaten directly, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose and ethanol. Pollan discusses how the humble corn plant came to dominate the American diet through a combination of biological, cultural, and political factors. The role of petroleum in the cultivation and transportation the American food supply is also discussed. A fast-food meal is used to illustrate the end result of the

This essay is going to describe how the society has an influence on food choice. Food is very important to the human body since it has the right nutrients for a balanced diet in order to enable good health and growth. However people depend on food, as people need food throughout, for the body to constantly work. However this essay is going to explore how food choice has influenced the internal and external factors that may actually have a little to do with the food itself, and in order to give a clear concept this essay will therefore explore the social factors of what one has to eat.

Food has had a major social and political influence on the world due to the trading of crops and ideas which have been seen in chapters five and seven of Standage’s novel. You can see this trade when middle-eastern botanists shared different stories of origins during the spread of cinnamon to make others not know how to harvest cinnamon, as well as the trading of potatoes from England and Ireland down to other parts of Europe. Botanists were very important for trade in Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and Asia because they let people acquire spices from all across the world and they made their home civilizations richer because of it. In chapter 7, Columbus brought back maize and sugar from the New World over to Spain which then spread to England and all across the world “So rapid was the spread of maize around the world that its origins became obscured almost immediately” (Kindle Locations 1592-1593). The trading of maize became so important because it can grow almost anywhere, and it served as a very nutritious, popular, ad plentiful

My earliest memory of food is lentils and rice cooked in a pressure cooker. Lentils were cooked at least three days a week. Other days we had different vegetable curries, curd and more rice. This was what I took to school as my lunch every day. As I grew older and started caring more about my social life and people around me, I started noticing what my classmates brought for lunch from their homes. I started understanding how food reflected different cultures and communities. One day, in our

Life today in 2014 is vastly different to the period 1500-1800 as described by Blainey (2000). Survival no longer hinges on hunting and gathering food. In fact many people today give little or no thought to food production. Instead, we drive to a supermarket and buy whatever we want to eat. We have access to many restaurants and fast food outlets, so we not only have ample food at our fingertips, we don’t even have to prepare it if we choose not to. Advancements in production and using machines in place of humans (Henslin, Possamai and Possamai-Inesedy 2011, p. 139) mean food is now farmed and produced on a much larger scale (Macionis and

In conclusion, Tom Standage’s, An Edible History of Humanity, is an educational retelling of humanity's history. The book was written to give readers a new perspective on the way we view our own past. From farming in China to today's use of sugar cane and corn to make ethanol, food is fundamentally the reason humanity has developed into what is

Potato skins are a relatively new dish of food that has very little history to their making. They are commonly served as an appetizer at restaurants, but can also be made at home for snacks or dinner plates. Because they do not have a deep history or cultural value throughout the United States, it might be best to look back throughout the years to see ways in which the simple potato, the primary ingredient required to make potato skins, has been transformed and used leading up to the creation of the potato skins.

The history of victuals evolved with the humanity history through Paleolithic Era, Mesolithic Era, Neolithic Era, and the initiation of civilization times, to the modern and contemporary times. The agricultural revolution began during Neolithic Era, as humans started to grow plants and domesticate livestock systematically (Cohen 1977; Tudge 1998; Bellwood 2004). The industrialization of comestibles developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, and marked a change in the global food history. It has significantly improved the efficiency of food production by agricultural machinery technologies and increased the availability of various kinds of industrial foods and/or food related products by modern industrial technologies. However, concurrently the

During the first week of class, four readings were assigned. One of the readings, “Food and Eating: Some Persisting Questions,” by Sidney Mintz, discusses the paradoxes of food. Although food seems like a straightforward concept, it is actually extremely complicated. According to Mintz, there are five paradoxes, including: the importance of food to one’s survival, yet we take it for granted, how people stick to their foodways, but are willing to change, whether the government should allow people to freely choose food or if they should protect the people through regulations, the difference in food meanings according to gender, and the morality of eating certain foods. All of these paradoxes give people questions to think about, making this an extremely philosophical look at food studies. It also mentions that food must be viewed through the cultural context that it is in, which became important in “The Old and New World Exchange”, by Mintz, and “Maize as a Culinary Mystery”, by Stanley Brandes. These discuss the diffusion of foods after 1492 in different ways. The Mintz reading gives an overview of all of the foods spread from the Americas to the Old World, and vice-a-versa, but does not go terribly in depth on the social changes and effects of specific foods. Brandes focuses on the cultural impact of specifically maize on the European diet, noticing that most Western Europeans shunned it. He studies the cultural implications of this, concluding that maize was not accepted