If you look at Pinterest today, you’ll see plenty of recipes pins sponsored by Pillsbury, Campbell’s Soup or some other food company. Cookbooks (back then and pins now) are a way to introduce new ways to use their products. That much you know, it’s been going on forever. I remember the jello molds free at the grocery store that came free with a purchase and included a recipe book.

This book is a fantastic history book of not only America's love of food both processed and fresh but the real story about how the recipes affected sales and the American diet.

You also get the history of both bananas and pineapples which was intriguing and slightly nefarious.

I do a unit of Kitchen Chemistry with my high school kids, and this book will fit right into that. ( )

Why do we eat the foods we eat? Someone told us to eat them. Or--"sold us" to eat them.

Christian Ward's American Advertising Cookbooks tells the story of how corporations and big business influenced Americans to buy their products, creating an American cuisine that included Jello, Spam, and 7-Up in baby's milk.

I am fascinated by the history of food. So the idea of a book about how Big Business inspired American housewives to buy products caught my attention. The book includes a history of what we ate and why and photos from Ward's advertising cookbook collection. There were some pretty awful recipes. Like Ham Banana Rolls. Chiquita Banana says it's good, so it must be.

Seeing the advertisements and recipes is great fun. But the book is more than a trip down memory lane to laugh at the ill-advised foods we once ate. The essays on the history of food and cooking in America include some stories that may shock readers. Political intervention in foreign governments, environmental degradation, racism, manipulation to encourage buying things that are bad for us--This is the history of American capitalism in American kitchens.

Did you know that Daniel Dole went to Honolulu in 1841 with a missionary group, then with his son Sanford helped to depose Queen Liliuokalani--and then placed Sanford became President of the Republic of Hawaii? Then, the family built their pineapple plantations. And no, pineapples are not native to Hawaii.

You have perhaps heard about Banana Republics. Bananas were brought to South America to feed slaves. North Americans first ate them at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. People went ape over bananas. Banana plantations were planted all over Central American, forcing out native species. Over time, United Fruit became the banana monopoly, powerful enough to interfere in Bananaland politics.

The book is divided into Why Are We Eating This and Empire Building in the Free World? Chapter topics include:

Bananas & Pineapples: The food of paupers and kings
Chiquita Banana vs. the World: Banana republics, pineapple princes, and the Boston families who started it all
Class, race, and cultural signifiers: How cookbooks reinforce and change our way of thinking
Rationing & Fish Sticks- Food as both tool and weapon
Invasion of the Home Economists: The uneasy relationship between food science and marketing

Photo chapters cover all the major 'food groups': jello, pineapple, bananas, mystery meats, and sweets. Ward discusses the roots of American cooking and the first American cookbook, and how immigrants were taught to make American foods as part of their assimilation. Readers learn how the government got involved to clean up the food business and how Home Economics became a scientific part of education and entertaining with food became an art form.

American Advertising Cookbooks would be a great gift with wide appeal. It was Boomer nostalgia for me. My son and friends loved the idea of this book and can't wait to get a hold of it.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. ( )