An undertaking without parallel or precedent, this monumental volume encapsulates much of what is known of the history of food and nutrition. It constitutes a vast and essential chapter in the history of human health and culture. Ranging from the eating habits of our prehistoric ancestors to food-related policy issues we face today, this work covers the full spectrum of foods that have been hunted, gathered, cultivated, and domesticated; their nutritional make-up and uses; and their impact on cultures and demography. It offers a geographical perspective on the history and culture of food and drink and takes up subjects from food fads, prejudices, and taboos to questions of food toxins, additives, labelling, and entitlements. It culminates in a dictionary that identifies and sketches out brief histories of plant foods mentioned in the text - over 1,000 in all - and additionally supplies thousands of common names and synonyms for those foods.

An undertaking without parallel or precedent, this monumental volume encapsulates much of what is known of the history of food and nutrition. It constitutes a vast and essential chapter in the history of human health and culture. Ranging from the eating habits of our prehistoric ancestors to food-related policy issues we face today, this work covers the full spectrum of foods that have been hunted, gathered, cultivated, and domesticated; their nutritional make-up and uses; and their impact on cultures and demography. It offers a geographical perspective on the history and culture of food and drink and takes up subjects from food fads, prejudices, and taboos to questions of food toxins, additives, labelling, and entitlements. It culminates in a dictionary that identifies and sketches out brief histories of plant foods mentioned in the text - over 1,000 in all - and additionally supplies thousands of common names and synonyms for those foods.

This is an engrossing study of black disease immunities and susceptibilities and their heretofore unrealized impact on both slavery and racism. Its pages interweave the nutritional, biological, and medical sciences with demography. The book begins with an examination of the preslavery era in Africa and then pursues its subject into the slave societies of the West Indies and the United States. This truly interdisciplinary approach permits the blending of two distinctive concepts of racial differences, that of the hard sciences based on gene frequencies and that of the social sciences stressing environmental factors. The authors demonstrate how the presence of malignant malaria and yellow fever in West Africa encouraged the development of resistance to these diseases, and conversely how the scarcity of certain nutrients may have shaped many susceptibilities. They examine the transmission of disease through the slave trade, revealing how the West African disease environment accompanied blacks to the Americas and affected both the aboriginal population and the European colonizers.

This is an engrossing study of black disease immunities and susceptibilities and their heretofore unrealized impact on both slavery and racism. Its pages interweave the nutritional, biological, and medical sciences with demography. The book begins with an examination of the preslavery era in Africa and then pursues its subject into the slave societies of the West Indies and the United States. This truly interdisciplinary approach permits the blending of two distinctive concepts of racial differences, that of the hard sciences based on gene frequencies and that of the social sciences stressing environmental factors. The authors investigate black health and white medical practice in the United States during the antebellum period, and establish a link between black-related diseases and white racism. A final section traces major black disease susceptibilities from the Civil War to the present, arguing that the different nutritional and medical needs of blacks are still largely unappreciated or ignored.

This study focuses on the black biological experience in slavery, in the Caribbean. It begins with a consideration of the rapidly changing disease environment after the arrival of the Spaniards; it also looks at the slave ancestors in their West African homeland and examines the ways in which the nutritional and disease environments of that area had shaped its inhabitants. In a particularly innovative chapter, he considers the epidemiological and pathological consequences of the middle passage for newly enslaved blacks. The balance of the book is devoted to the health of the black slave in the West Indies. Using the general health and level of nutrition of the island whites as a control, Kiple pays especially close attention to the role that nutrition played in the development of diseases. The study closes with a look at the continuing demographic difficulties of the black West Indian from the abolition of slavery.

In the last twenty-five years alone, the range of fruits and vegetables, even grains, that is available at most local markets has changed dramatically. Over the last 10,000 years, that change is almost unimaginable. This groundbreaking new work, from the editor of the highly regarded Cambridge World History of Food, examines the exploding global palate. It begins with the transition from foraging to farming that got underway some 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, then examines subsequent transitions in Egypt, Africa south of the Sahara, China, southeast Asia, the Indus Valley Oceanic, Europe, and the Americas. It ends with chapters on genetically modified foods, the fast food industry, the nutritional ailments people have suffered from, famine, the obesity epidemic, and a look at the future on the food front. Food, at its most basic, fuels the human body. At its most refined, food has been elevated to a position of fine art. The path food has taken through history is a fairly straightforward one; the space which it occupies today could not be more fraught. This sweeping narrative covers both ends of the spectrum, reminding us to be grateful for and delighted in a grain of wheat, as well as making us aware of the many questions that remain unanswered about what lies ahead. Did you know. . .
- That beans were likely an agricultural mistake?
- That cheese making was originated in Iran over 6000 years ago?
- That pepper was once worth its weight in gold?
- That sugar is the world's best-selling food, surpassing even wheat?
- That Winston Churchill asserted, in 1942, that tea was more important to his troops than ammunition?
- That chili con carne is one of the earliest examples of food globalization?
- That, by 1880, virtually every major city in America had a Chinese restaurant?
- That white bread was once considered too nutritious?
Kenneth Kiple reveals these facts and more within A Movable Feast.

In the last twenty-five years alone, the range of fruits and vegetables, even grains, that is available at most local markets has changed dramatically. Over the last 10,000 years, that change is almost unimaginable. This groundbreaking new work, from the editor of the highly regarded Cambridge World History of Food, examines the exploding global palate. It begins with the transition from foraging to farming that got underway some 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, then examines subsequent transitions in Egypt, Africa south of the Sahara, China, southeast Asia, the Indus Valley Oceanic, Europe, and the Americas. It ends with chapters on genetically modified foods, the fast food industry, the nutritional ailments people have suffered from, famine, the obesity epidemic, and a look at the future on the food front. Food, at its most basic, fuels the human body. At its most refined, food has been elevated to a position of fine art. The path food has taken through history is a fairly straightforward one; the space which it occupies today could not be more fraught. This sweeping narrative covers both ends of the spectrum, reminding us to be grateful for and delighted in a grain of wheat, as well as making us aware of the many questions that remain unanswered about what lies ahead. Did you know. . .
- That beans were likely an agricultural mistake?
- That cheese making was originated in Iran over 6000 years ago?
- That pepper was once worth its weight in gold?
- That sugar is the world's best-selling food, surpassing even wheat?
- That Winston Churchill asserted, in 1942, that tea was more important to his troops than ammunition?
- That chili con carne is one of the earliest examples of food globalization?
- That, by 1880, virtually every major city in America had a Chinese restaurant?
- That white bread was once considered too nutritious?
Kenneth Kiple reveals these facts and more within A Movable Feast.

The Cambridge World History of Human Disease (CWHHD) was first published by Cambridge in 1993. The basis of this Dictionary is Part VIII, the last section of the work, that comprises a history and description of the world's major diseases of yesterday and today in chapters organized alphabetically from "Acquired Immune Deficient Syndrome (AIDS)" to "Yellow Fever." The last section of CWHHD has been fully revised and the essays have been condensed into shorter entries, with up-to-date information on AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, Ebola, and Tuberculosis. The Dictionary also includes three chapters from other parts of the CWHHD on "Heart-Related Diseases," "Cancer," and Genetic Disease." Including contributions from over 100 medical and social scientists worldwide, the Dictionary is a truly interdisciplinary history of medicine and human disease. Kenneth Kiple is a distinguished professor of history at Bowling Green State University. His research and teaching interests include Latin America and the history of medicine, disease, and nutrition. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Institutes of Health. He is the editor of The Cambridge History of World Disease (Cambridge, 1993) and with Kriemhild Coneé Ornelas, the award-winning Cambridge World History of Food (Cambridge, 2000).

The Cambridge World History of Human Disease (CWHHD) was first published by Cambridge in 1993. The basis of this Dictionary is Part VIII, the last section of the work, that comprises a history and description of the world's major diseases of yesterday and today in chapters organized alphabetically from "Acquired Immune Deficient Syndrome (AIDS)" to "Yellow Fever." The last section of CWHHD has been fully revised and the essays have been condensed into shorter entries, with up-to-date information on AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, Ebola, and Tuberculosis. The Dictionary also includes three chapters from other parts of the CWHHD on "Heart-Related Diseases," "Cancer," and Genetic Disease." Including contributions from over 100 medical and social scientists worldwide, the Dictionary is a truly interdisciplinary history of medicine and human disease. Kenneth Kiple is a distinguished professor of history at Bowling Green State University. His research and teaching interests include Latin America and the history of medicine, disease, and nutrition. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Institutes of Health. He is the editor of The Cambridge History of World Disease (Cambridge, 1993) and with Kriemhild Coneé Ornelas, the award-winning Cambridge World History of Food (Cambridge, 2000).

'Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal.' So wrote Charles Darwin in 1836. Though there has been considerable discussion concerning their precise demographic impact, reflected in the articles here, there is no doubt that the arrival of new diseases with the Europeans (such as typhus and smallpox) had a catastrophic effect on the indigenous population of the Americas, and later of the Pacific. In the Americas, malaria and yellow fever also came with the slaves from Africa, themselves imported to work the depopulated land. These diseases placed Europeans at risk too, and with some resistance to both disease pools, Africans could have a better chance of survival. Also covered here is the controversy over the origins of syphilis, while the final essays look at agricultural consequences of the European expansion, in terms of nutrition both in North America and in Europe.