John L. Hess (1917–2005)

A history of food in America. It's an angry and carefully argued polemic that reveals what the food industry has done to degrade the American diet. First published in 1972 and still very important. The book's major weakness is the authors' anger; they see every issue, and every person they write about, as either good or evil. Their perspective leaves no room for nuance. But this book broke new ground -- to my knowledge, nothing like it had been published before. And it's better researched and better written than most food writing that appeared in the 40 years following its publication.… (altro)

Quite frankly, I'm a little conflicted on this book. On part may be, and I'll examine this later, that there's been some cultural shifts since this book was authored almost close to forty years ago. First, the good parts:

The authors very skilfully point out problems that continue to plague the American food supply even up to today. The decrease varieties of produce, the over-relaince on a few large distributors, a confusing array of professionals leading to confusing choices for one's health, lots of "health food" that just doesn't taste good, convenience foods that taste horrible and so on.

The strongest part of the book is the call into looking at traditional American cuisine from classic works and also from simply talking to those remaining outlying parts of the population who remember it. Very fascinating history of American foods.

The bad parts of the book is pretty well illustrated with a rather candid admissions. The authors talk about being in an area of France and being horrified at being served a certain wine where the bottle was in cold water and there was even some ice in the bucket. They returned it, disgusted. Then it turns out that's how they served that particular wine. They didn't seem to learn anything from this, as there seems to be an attitude that they know all the rules and that Americans be best listening to them, instead of the actual message was that people should trust their own palates.

The countless personal attacks seem to lower to the point of a personal vendetta. It's hard not to notice that some of their favorite targets were food writers for the same publications as they worked at. Like talking to a person who claims that the company they worked for would be so much better if it hadn't fired them.… (altro)

This book is incendiary. Occasionally it reads like a vendetta. It bashes pretty much everybody in the established food world of the time. Julia Child is lambasted as a dotty, inauthentic fraud. Craig Claiborn is actually evil (which I'm not convinced isn't true). Jacques Pepin is a corporate whore.

You know what? This book is well-researched, well-written and as fun to read as a supermarket tabloid. Karen Hess, John Hess's wife, worked on this book also. She is one of the more interesting food scholars around. Preachy? Yeah. Sometimes. But it is a page-turner.

Treat yourself. Read this one.… (altro)