Eating junk food and fast food is a great all-American passion. American kids and grownups love their candy bars, Big Macs and supersized fries, Doritos, Twinkies, and Good Humor ice cream bars. The disastrous health effects from the enormous appetite for these processed fat- and sugar-loaded foods are well publicized now. This was particularly dramatically evidenced by Super Size Me (2004), filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's 30-day all-McDonald's diet in which his liver suffered the same poisoning as if he had been on an extended alcohol binge. Through increased globalization, American popular food culture is being increasingly emulated elsewhere in the world, such as China, with the potential for similar disastrous consequences. This A-to-Z reference is the first to focus on the junk food and fast food phenomena from a multitude of angles in addition to health and diet concerns. More than 250 essay entries objectively explore the scope of the topics to illuminate the American way through products, corporations and entrepreneurs, social history, popular culture, organizations, issues, politics, commercialism and consumerism, and much more. Interest in these topics is high. This informative and fascinating work, with entries on current controversies such as mad cow disease and factory farming, the food pyramid, movie tie-ins, and marketing to children, will be highly useful for reports, research, and browsing. It takes readers behind the scenes, examining the significance of such things as uniforms, training, packaging, and franchising. Readers of every age will also enjoy the nostalgia factor, learning about the background of iconic drive-ins, the story behind the mascots, facts about theirfavorite candy bar, and collectables. Each entry ends with suggested reading. Besides an introduction, a timeline, glossary, bibliography, resource guide, and photos enhance the text. Sample entries: A&W Root Beer; Advertising; Automobiles; Ben & Jerry's; Burger King; Carhops; Center for Science in the Public Interest; Christmas; Cola Wars; Employment; Fair Food; Fast Food Nation; Hershey, Milton; Hollywood; Injury; Krispy Kreme; Lobbying; Nabisco; Obesity; PepsiCo; Salt; Soda Fountain; Teen Hangouts; Vegetarianism; White Castle; Yum! Brands, Inc.

A sweeping reference work on food and drink in America, with fascinating entries on everything from the history of White Castle to the origin of the Bloody Mary, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink provides more than a thousand concise, authoritative, and exuberant entries, beautifully illustrated with hundreds of historical photographs and sixteen pages of color plates.
Based on the highly praised and deliciously browseable two-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, this entertaining and informative reference serves up everything you could ever want to know about American consumables and their impact on popular culture and the culinary world. Edited by Andrew Smith, a writer and lecturer on culinary history, the Companion offers delightful entries on fast food, celebrity chefs, fish, sandwiches, regional and ethnic cuisine, food science, and historical food traditions. Readers will find fascinating discussions of Applejack and Apple Pie, Barbecue and Baked Alaska, Dairy Queen and Delmonico's, Lemonade and Licorice, Mayonnaise and Marshmallow Fluff, Popcorn and Pretzels, Spinach and Spam, Vegetarianism and Velveeta. The volume also includes informative lists of food websites, museums, periodicals, organizations, and festivals.
Anyone hungering to know what our nation has been cooking and eating for the last three centuries will want to own The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Ideal for the food enthusiast and food scholar alike, it is equally appetizing for anyone fascinated by Americana, capturing our culture and history through what we love most--food!

Offering a panoramic view of the history and culture of food and drink in America with fascinating entries on everything from the smell of asparagus to the history of White Castle, and the origin of Bloody Marys to jambalaya, the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink provides a concise, authoritative, and exuberant look at this modern American obsession. Ideal for the food scholar and food enthusiast alike, it is equally appetizing for anyone fascinated by Americana, capturing our culture and history through what we love most-food! Building on the highly praised and deliciously browseable two-volume compendium the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, this new work serves up everything you could ever want to know about American consumables and their impact on popular culture and the culinary world. Within its pages for example, we learn that Lifesavers candy owes its success to the canny marketing idea of placing the original flavor, mint, next to cash registers at bars. Patrons who bought them to mask the smell of alcohol on their breath before heading home soon found they were just as tasty sober and the company began producing other flavors. Edited by Andrew Smith, a writer and lecturer on culinary history, the Companion serves up more than just trivia however, including hundreds of entries on fast food, celebrity chefs, fish, sandwiches, regional and ethnic cuisine, food science, and historical food traditions. It also dispels a few commonly held myths. Veganism, isn't simply the practice of a few "hippies," but is in fact wide-spread among elite athletic circles. Many of the top competitors in the Ironman and Ultramarathon events go even further, avoiding all animal products by following a strictly vegan diet. Anyone hungering to know what our nation has been cooking an eating for the last three centuries should own the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. BL Nearly 1,000 articles on American food and drink, from the curious to the commonplace BL Beautifully illustrated with hundreds of historical photographs and color images BL Includes informative lists of food websites, museums, organizations, and festivals

Drawing on research in plant science, systems ecology, environmental philosophy, and cultural anthropology, Andrew F. Smith shatters the distinction between vegetarianism and omnivorism. The book outlines the implications that these manufactured distinctions have for how we view food and ourselves as eaters.

What can motivate citizens in divided societies to engage in free, open, and reasoned dialogue? Attempts by philosophers to answer this question focus largely on elucidating what citizens owe to one another as free and equal citizens, as members of a shared social context, or as agents who are mutually dependent on one another for our well-being. In The Deliberative Impulse: Motivating Discourse in Divided Societies, Andrew F. Smith suggests that that a better answer can be offered in terms of what we owe to our convictions. Given the defining role they play in how we live our lives and regard ourselves, among the highest-order interests that we maintain is being in a position to do right by our convictions_to abide by conscience. By developing a clear understanding of how best to act on this interest, we see that we are well served by engaging in public deliberation. Particularly for citizens in societies that are fragmented along ethnic, cultural, ideological, and religious lines, our interest in abiding by conscience should give us clear moral, epistemic, and religious incentives to deliberatively engage with allies and adversaries alike. Scholars who focus on issues in political philosophy, ethics, and political theory will value this book for how it suggests we can overcome the motivational roadblocks to active political participation and robust deliberation.

New York City's first food biography showcases all the vibrancy, innovation, diversity, influence, and taste of this most-celebrated American metropolis. Its cuisine has developed as a lively potluck supper, where discrete culinary traditions have survived, thrived, and interacted. For almost 400 years New York's culinary influence has been felt in other cities and communities worldwide. New York's restaurants, such as Delmonico's, created and sustained haute cuisine in this country. Grocery stores and supermarkets that were launched here became models for national food distribution. More cookbooks have been published in New York than in all other American cities combined. Foreign and "fancy" foods, including hamburgers, pizza, hot dogs, Waldorf salad, and baked Alaska, were introduced to Americans through New York's colorful street vendors, cooks, and restaurateurs. As Smith shows here, the city's ever-changing culinary life continues to fascinate and satiate both natives and visitors alike.

A companion to Andrew F. Smith's critically acclaimed and popular Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, this volume recounts the individuals, ingredients, corporations, controversies, and myriad events responsible for America's diverse and complex beverage scene. Smith revisits the country's major historical moments -- colonization, the American Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, the temperance movement, Prohibition, and its repeal -- and he tracks the growth of the American beverage industry throughout the world. The result is an intoxicating encounter with an often overlooked aspect of American culture and global influence. Americans have invented, adopted, modified, and commercialized tens of thousands of beverages -- whether alcoholic or nonalcoholic, carbonated or caffeinated, warm or frozen, watery or thick, spicy or sweet. These include uncommon cocktails, varieties of coffee and milk, and such iconic creations as Welch's Grape Juice, Coca-Cola, root beer, and Kool-Aid.Involved in their creation and promotion were entrepreneurs and environmentalists, bartenders and bottlers, politicians and lobbyists, organized and unorganized criminals, teetotalers and drunks, German and Italian immigrants, savvy advertisers and gullible consumers, prohibitionists and medical professionals, and everyday Americans in love with their brew. Smith weaves a wild history full of surprising stories and explanations for such classic slogans as taxation with and without representation; the lips that touch wine will never touch mine; and rum, Romanism, and rebellion. He reintroduces readers to Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the colorful John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), and he rediscovers America's vast literary and cultural engagement with beverages and their relationship to politics, identity, and health.

A companion to Andrew F. Smith's critically acclaimed and popular "Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine," this volume recounts the individuals, ingredients, corporations, controversies, and myriad events responsible for America's diverse and complex beverage scene. Smith revisits the country's major historical moments -- colonization, the American Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, the temperance movement, Prohibition, and its repeal -- and he tracks the growth of the American beverage industry throughout the world. The result is an intoxicating encounter with an often overlooked aspect of American culture and global influence.

Americans have invented, adopted, modified, and commercialized tens of thousands of beverages -- whether alcoholic or nonalcoholic, carbonated or caffeinated, warm or frozen, watery or thick, spicy or sweet. These include uncommon cocktails, varieties of coffee and milk, and such iconic creations as Welch's Grape Juice, Coca-Cola, root beer, and Kool-Aid. Involved in their creation and promotion were entrepreneurs and environmentalists, bartenders and bottlers, politicians and lobbyists, organized and unorganized criminals, teetotalers and drunks, German and Italian immigrants, savvy advertisers and gullible consumers, prohibitionists and medical professionals, and everyday Americans in love with their brew.

Smith weaves a wild history full of surprising stories and explanations for such classic slogans as "taxation with and without representation;" "the lips that touch wine will never touch mine;" and "rum, Romanism, and rebellion." He reintroduces readers to Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the colorful John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), and he rediscovers America's vast literary and cultural engagement with beverages and their relationship to politics, identity, and health.

Savoring Gotham traces the rise of New York City's global culinary stardom in 570 accessible, yet well-researched A-Z entries. From the Native Americans who arrived in the area 5,000 years before New York was New York, and who planted the maize, squash, and beans that European and other settlers to the New World embraced centuries later, to Greek diners in the city that are arguably not diners at all, this is the first A-Z reference work to take a broad and historically-informed approach to NYC food and drink. Here readers will find entries on the foods and drinks and businesses that originated in the city, ethnic culinary influences, the unique character of each borough (and several neighborhoods within the boroughs), important educational, cultural, and publishing institutions related to food in the city, biographies of key culinary leaders (both living and deceased), and selections from the city's food manufacturers, food importers, and restaurants. There are also entries on New York's more unusual culinary realities, such as urban farming, dumpster diving, and the phenomenon of foraging for food in Central Park. Savoring Gotham is for anyone interested in learning the history of what is perhaps the world's greatest food mecca; not only the foodie history of upscale restaurants and celebrity chefs, but the bodegas, chop suey joints, automats, and Italian ice vendors that are a part of New York's culinary heritage. Around 100 images accompany the entries. All of the entries are signed by the authors. Garrett Oliver, the Brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery and one of New York's great ambassadors, wrote the Foreword; an index and a bibliography of the best writings on NYC food and drink complete the book.

Food expert and celebrated food historian Andrew F. Smith recounts--in delicious detail--the creation of contemporary American cuisine. The diet of the modern American wasn't always as corporate, conglomerated, and corn-rich as it is today, and the style of American cooking, along with the ingredients that compose it, has never been fixed. With a cast of characters including bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs, and relentless health nuts, Smith pins down the truly crackerjack history behind the way America eats.

Smith's story opens with early America, an agriculturally independent nation where most citizens grew and consumed their own food. Over the next two hundred years, however, Americans would cultivate an entirely different approach to crops and consumption. Advances in food processing, transportation, regulation, nutrition, and science introduced highly complex and mechanized methods of production. The proliferation of cookbooks, cooking shows, and professionally designed kitchens made meals more commercially, politically, and culturally potent. To better understand these trends, Smith delves deeply and humorously into their creation. Ultimately he shows how, by revisiting this history, we can reclaim the independent, locally sustainable roots of American food.

Drawing on research in plant science, systems ecology, environmental philosophy, and cultural anthropology, Andrew F. Smith shatters the distinction between vegetarianism and omnivorism. The book outlines the implications that these manufactured distinctions have for how we view food and ourselves as eaters.

What can motivate citizens in divided societies to engage in free, open, and reasoned dialogue? Attempts by philosophers to answer this question focus largely on elucidating what citizens owe to one another as free and equal citizens, as members of a shared social context, or as agents who are mutually dependent on one another for our well-being. In The Deliberative Impulse: Motivating Discourse in Divided Societies, Andrew F. Smith suggests that that a better answer can be offered in terms of what we owe to our convictions. Given the defining role they play in how we live our lives and regard ourselves, among the highest-order interests that we maintain is being in a position to do right by our convictions to abide by conscience. By developing a clear understanding of how best to act on this interest, we see that we are well served by engaging in public deliberation. Particularly for citizens in societies that are fragmented along ethnic, cultural, ideological, and religious lines, our interest in abiding by conscience should give us clear moral, epistemic, and religious incentives to deliberatively engage with allies and adversaries alike. Scholars who focus on issues in political philosophy, ethics, and political theory will value this book for how it suggests we can overcome the motivational roadblocks to active political participation and robust deliberation."

This book provides anesthetists, intensivists and other critical care staff with a comprehensive resource that offers ways of improving communication in everyday clinical practice, and provides practical communication tools that can be used in difficult or unfamiliar circumstances. It demonstrates how communication can be structured to improve patient care and safety with numerous practical examples and vignettes illustrating how the concepts discussed can be integrated into clinical practice, and presents ideas in a way that enhances clinical interactions with patients and colleagues and facilitate the teaching of trainees.
Edited by practicing anesthetists with particular expertise in teaching communication, and with contributions from expert clinicians based in North America, Europe and Australasia, this book will stimulate and complement the development of comprehensive resources for communication skills teaching in anesthesia and other related professional groups.

Food expert and celebrated food historian Andrew F. Smith recounts--in delicious detail--the creation of contemporary American cuisine. The diet of the modern American wasn't always as corporate, conglomerated, and corn-rich as it is today, and the style of American cooking, along with the ingredients that compose it, has never been fixed. With a cast of characters including bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs, and relentless health nuts, Smith pins down the truly crackerjack history behind the way America eats.

Smith's story opens with early America, an agriculturally independent nation where most citizens grew and consumed their own food. Over the next two hundred years, however, Americans would cultivate an entirely different approach to crops and consumption. Advances in food processing, transportation, regulation, nutrition, and science introduced highly complex and mechanized methods of production. The proliferation of cookbooks, cooking shows, and professionally designed kitchens made meals more commercially, politically, and culturally potent. To better understand these trends, Smith delves deeply and humorously into their creation. Ultimately he shows how, by revisiting this history, we can reclaim the independent, locally sustainable roots of American food.

In a lively account of the American tuna industry over the past century, celebrated food writer and scholar Andrew F. Smith relates how tuna went from being sold primarily as a fertilizer to becoming the most commonly consumed fish in the country. In "American Tuna," the so-called "chicken of the sea" is both the subject and the backdrop for other facets of American history: U.S. foreign policy, immigration and environmental politics, and dietary trends.
Smith recounts how tuna became a popular low-cost high-protein food beginning in 1903, when the first can rolled off the assembly line. By 1918, skyrocketing sales made it one of America's most popular seafoods. In the decades that followed, the American tuna industry employed thousands, yet at at mid-century production started to fade. Concerns about toxic levels of methylmercury, by-catch issues, and over-harvesting all contributed to the demise of the industry today, when only three major canned tuna brands exist in the United States, all foreign owned. A remarkable cast of characters-- fishermen, advertisers, immigrants, epicures, and environmentalists, among many others--populate this fascinating chronicle of American tastes and the forces that influence them.

For topping French fries or cottage cheese, K rations or school lunches, ketchup has long been an American favorite. In Pure Ketchup, Andrew F. Smith chronicles American milestones in ketchup history, including colonial adaptations of popular British mushroom, anchovy, and walnut ketchups, the rise of tomato-based ketchup, the proliferation of commercial bottling after the Civil War, debates about preservatives, the resurgence of homemade and designer varieties, and a recent challenge from salsa. In addition to the history of ketchup, the book also includes historical recipes.

The first edition of the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book was published in 1876. Between 1876 and 1905, a total of thirty-two editions of the cookbook were published, and more than one million copies sold. The book began as a project of the Marysville, Ohio, First Congregational Church when the women of the church decided to publish a cookbook in order to raise money to build a parsonage. Their effort launched a cookbook that rapidly became one of the most popular publications of nineteenth-century America. This is the first reprint of the original 1876 edition.

The history, legends, and cookery of America's favorite snack food Whether in movie theaters or sports arenas, at fairs or theme parks, around campfires or family hearths, Americans consume more popcorn by volume than any other snack. To the world, popcorn seems as American as baseball and apple pie. Within American food lore, popcorn holds a special place, for it was purportedly shared by Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving. In Popped Culture, Andrew F. Smith tests such legends against archaeological, agricultural, culinary, and social findings. While debunking many myths, he discovers a flavorful story of the curious kernel's introduction and ever-increasing consumption in North America. Unlike other culinary fads of the nineteenth century, popcorn has never lost favor with the American public. Smith gauges the reasons for its unflagging popularity: the invention of wire over the fire poppers, commercial promotion by shrewd producers, the fascination of children with the kernel's magical pop, and affordability. To explain popcorn's twentieth-century success, he examines its fortuitous association with new technology--radio, movies, television, microwaves--and recounts the brand-name triumphs of American manufacturers and packagers. His familiarity with the history of the snack allows him to form expectations about popcorn's future in the United States and abroad. Smith concludes his account with more than 160 surprising historical recipes for popcorn cookery, including the intriguing use of the snack in custard, hash, ice cream, omelets, and soup.

From the Americas to Australasia, from northern Europe to southern Africa, the tomato tickles the world's taste buds. In the United States alone, more than twelve million tons of tomatoes are devoured annually. This peculiar fruit has variously been considered poisonous, curative, and aphrodisiacal. Herbalists have associated it with the "golden apple" of classic Greek texts, while Mayans and other Mesoamerican peoples used it in their cookery.

In this first concerted study of the tomato in America, Andrew F. Smith separates myth from historical fact, beginning with the Salem, New Jersey, man who, in 1820, allegedly attracted spectators from hundreds of miles to watch him eat a tomato on the courthouse steps (the legend says they expected to see him die a painful death). Later, hucksters such as Dr. John Cook Bennett and the Amazing Archibald Miles peddled the tomato's purported medicinal benefits. The competition was so fierce that the Tomato Pill War broke out in 1838.

The Tomato in America traces the early cultivation of the tomato and its spread from cities along the coast and inland waterways to rural areas more conservative in their willingness to try new foods. Smith explores the fruit's infiltration of American cooking practices, the early manufacture of preserved tomatoes and ketchup (soon hailed as "the national condiment of the United States"), and the "great tomato mania" of the 1820s and 1830s. The book also includes tomato recipes from the pre -- Civil War period, covering everything from sauces, soups, and main dishes to desserts and sweets.

Now available for the first time in paperback, The Tomato in America provides a piquant and entertaining look at a versatileand storied figure in culinary history.

Sugar is one of the most beloved substances consumed by humans, and also one of the most reviled. It has come to dominate our diets - whether in candy, desserts, soft drinks or even bread and pasta sauces - for better and for worse. This fascinating history of this addictive ingredient reveals its incredible value as a global commodity and explores its darker legacies of slavery and widespread obesity.Sugar's past is chock-full of determined adventurers: relentless sugar barons and plantation owners who worked alongside plant breeders, food processors, distributors and politicians to build a business based on our cravings. Exploring both the sugar cane and sugar beet industries, Andrew F. Smith tells story after story of those who have made fortunes and those who have met their demise because of sugar's simple but profound hold on our palates. Delightful and surprisingly action-packed, this book offers a layered and definitive tale of sugar and the many people who have been caught in its spell, from barons to slaves, and from chefs to the countless among us born with that insatiable devil - the sweet tooth.

A. W. Livingston (1821-98) was a Reynoldsburg, Ohio, tomato seedsman who was the best known developer of tomato varieties in the United States in the nineteenth century. First published in 1893, Livingston and the Tomato contains both descriptions and drawings of the tomato varieties he developed. Livingston discusses his methods and results and how to respond to tomato diseases and pests. In addition, the book features over sixty tomato recipes, including ones for slicing, frying, escalloping, baking, and broiling tomatoes; as well as for tomato toast, custard, soup, pie, preserves, figs, jam, butter, salad, sauce, and omelets.

“Talking turkey� about the bird you thought you knew Fondly remembered as the centerpiece of family Thanksgiving reunions, the turkey is a cultural symbol as well as a multi-billion dollar industry. As a bird, dinner, commodity, and as a national icon, the turkey has become as American as the bald eagle (with which it actually competed for supremacy on national insignias). Food historian Andrew F. Smith’s sweeping and multifaceted history of Meleagris gallopavo separates fact from fiction, serving as both a solid historical reference and a fascinating general read. With his characteristic wit and insatiable curiosity, Smith presents the turkey in ten courses, beginning with the bird itself (actually several different species of turkey) flying through the wild. The Turkey subsequently includes discussions of practically every aspect of the iconic bird, including the wild turkey in early America, how it came to be called “turkey,� domestication, turkey mating habits, expansion into Europe, stuffing, conditions in modern industrial turkey factories, its surprising commercial history of boom and bust, and its eventual ascension to holiday mainstay.   As one of the easiest of foods to cook, the turkey’s culinary possibilities have been widely explored if little noted.  The second half of the book collects an amazing array of over one hundred historical and modern turkey recipes from across America and Europe.  From sandwiches to salmagundi, you’ll find detailed instructions on nearly every variation on the turkey. Historians will enjoy a look back at the varied appetites of their ancestors and seasoned cooks will have an opportunity to reintroduce a familiar food in forgotten ways.

About one-third of all food grown for human consumption is lost or discarded every year, despite financial, environmental and ethical reasons to not waste food. We grow enough food to adequately feed everyone in the world, yet hundreds of millions of people suffer from hunger, malnutrition or food insecurity. Together it accounts for about 8 per cent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. So, if wasting food is such a patently bad idea, why do we discard so much? In Why Waste Food?, Andrew F. Smith investigates one of today's most pressing topics, examining the causes of avoidable food waste across the supply chain, and highlighting the ways in which we can all do something to tackle this global concern.