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untitled A Moveable Feast: Ten Millennia of Food Globalization Kenneth Kiple Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007 368 pp. Index. $27.00 (cloth) If you want to know what people cooked and ate or what the world's great culinary traditions are, then you will probably be better off with other recent surveys, such as Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's Food: A History (2002) or Jeffrey Pilcher's very brief Food in World History (2005). --Rachel Laudan, Guanajuato, Mexico GASTRONOMICA Anyone interested in the history of food owes a great debt to Kenneth Kiple. The massive two-volume anthology The Cambridge World History of Food that he co-edited with his wife Kriemheld C. Ornelas in 2000, assembled a vast number of authoritative articles on foodstuffs and nutrition. Now comes this spin-off, a much shorter work that combines the pith of the earlier volumes with a selection of recent scholarship. Most of this book is dedicated to three periods: the transition from foraging to farming, the Columbian Exchange, and the twentieth century. In the first period, Kiple concentrates on the raw materials of food. He gives brief accounts of animals and birds from dogs to ducks, cattle to camels. Moving on to plants, he whips through those of the Fertile Crescent (wheat, barley, etc.) and East Asia (rice, yams, taro, bananas in Southeast Asia, rice, millet and soybeans in China), concluding with evidence that human health deteriorated during this transition. After a once-over-lightly of the contribution of the world's great religions (Islam, Christianity, Buddhism), Kiple describes the food plants and animals of the New World, the foods of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires in the Americas, sugar and the new beverages, and the global exchange of foodstuffs. Another quick romp through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America, and the reader is immersed in a discussion of Chinese, Italian, African, Hispanic, German, and English contributions to American food; the rise of restaurants and other places to eat away from home; the importance of vitamins and minerals; and the familiar health problems of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity that are the result of the new plenty in the developed (and increasingly in the developing) world. Kiple accepts the widely held opinion that globalization homogenizes diets, even though his own examples suggest that, in fact, the world's diets are diversifying. He ends on a slightly more upbeat note than he did in the Cambridge World History of Food, suggesting that for all the ills related to the modern diet, people in developed countries are healthier and live longer than their predecessors, a fortunate state that needs to be extended to the rest of the world. Is this, then, a volume, you should rush out and buy? If your chief interest is in the nutritional effects of changing diets, and if you do not have access to the Cambridge World History of Food, you might well find it worthwhile. Appetite and Body Weight: Integrative Systems and the Development of Anti-Obesity Drugs Edited by Tim C. Kirkham and Steven J. Cooper Burlington, ma: Academic Press, 2006 x + 371 pp. Illustrations. $115.00 (cloth) Obesity reigns as one of the primary killers in the twentyfirst century. In 2004 the Center for Disease Control estimated that two out of three people in the Western world will be above the normal weight range. Despite the saturation of information in the newspapers, on the tube, and on the Internet, we as a society are still overeating, not exercising enough, and becoming obese. It is clear that our innate drive to eat cannot be subdued by willpower. Hunger is as basic as thirst, and these two far surpass the drive to procreate. In Appetite and Body Weight Tim Kirkham and Steven Cooper have put together a fantastic series of chapters that provide up-to-date information concerning the control of body weight and appetite. However, this book is not intended for light summer reading, or even heavy winter reading, for that matter. This volume belongs in the backpack of every graduate student and active researcher studying the neuroscience of hunger and body weight control. If unfamiliar with this field, even the most dedicated of readers may find themselves in a morass of abbreviations for brain regions and neuropeptides that is the alphabet soup of neuroscience. For example, if you read the phrase "arc" and think of Noah and his animals climbing aboard two by two before you think of the hypothalamus, this book may prove a frustrating read. Kirkham and Cooper have assembled thirteen chapters by leaders in the field, preceded by their own introductory chapter. The book progresses through three "P" themes: the physiological, the psychological, and the pharmacological. The first five chapters summarize what is known in the physiological realm, ranging from specific brain regions involved with appetite regulation to hormones coming from fat and the gut that regulate those brain structures. The next five chapters explore the psychology of eating: learned behaviors, palatability, and a great discussion of WI NTE R 2008 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Gastronomica University of California Press

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Laudan, Rachel
Gastronomica , Volume 8 (1) – Jan 1, 2008
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Publisher
University of California Press
Copyright
Copyright © by the University of California Press
Subject
Books in Review
ISSN
1529-3262
eISSN
1533-8622
DOI
10.1525/gfc.2008.8.1.114a
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Abstract

A Moveable Feast: Ten Millennia of Food Globalization Kenneth Kiple Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007 368 pp. Index. $27.00 (cloth) If you want to know what people cooked and ate or what the world's great culinary traditions are, then you will probably be better off with other recent surveys, such as Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's Food: A History (2002) or Jeffrey Pilcher's very brief Food in World History (2005). --Rachel Laudan, Guanajuato, Mexico GASTRONOMICA Anyone interested in the history of food owes a great debt to Kenneth Kiple. The massive two-volume anthology The Cambridge World History of Food that he co-edited with his wife Kriemheld C. Ornelas in 2000, assembled a vast number of authoritative articles on foodstuffs and nutrition. Now comes this spin-off, a much shorter work that combines the pith of the earlier volumes with a selection of recent scholarship. Most of this book is dedicated to three periods: the transition from foraging to farming, the Columbian Exchange, and the twentieth century. In the first period, Kiple concentrates on the raw materials of food. He gives brief accounts of animals and birds from dogs to ducks, cattle to camels. Moving on to plants, he whips through those of the Fertile Crescent (wheat, barley, etc.) and East Asia (rice, yams, taro, bananas in Southeast Asia, rice, millet and soybeans in China), concluding with evidence that human health deteriorated during this transition. After a once-over-lightly of the contribution of the world's great religions (Islam, Christianity, Buddhism), Kiple describes the food plants and animals of the New World, the foods of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires in the Americas, sugar and the new beverages, and the global exchange of foodstuffs. Another quick romp through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America, and the reader is immersed in a discussion of Chinese, Italian, African, Hispanic, German, and English contributions to American food; the rise of restaurants and other places to eat away from home; the importance of vitamins and minerals; and the familiar health problems of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity that are the result of the new plenty in the developed (and increasingly in the developing) world. Kiple accepts the widely held opinion that globalization homogenizes diets, even though his own examples suggest that, in fact, the world's diets are diversifying. He ends on a slightly more upbeat note than he did in the Cambridge World History of Food, suggesting that for all the ills related to the modern diet, people in developed countries are healthier and live longer than their predecessors, a fortunate state that needs to be extended to the rest of the world. Is this, then, a volume, you should rush out and buy? If your chief interest is in the nutritional effects of changing diets, and if you do not have access to the Cambridge World History of Food, you might well find it worthwhile. Appetite and Body Weight: Integrative Systems and the Development of Anti-Obesity Drugs Edited by Tim C. Kirkham and Steven J. Cooper Burlington, ma: Academic Press, 2006 x + 371 pp. Illustrations. $115.00 (cloth) Obesity reigns as one of the primary killers in the twentyfirst century. In 2004 the Center for Disease Control estimated that two out of three people in the Western world will be above the normal weight range. Despite the saturation of information in the newspapers, on the tube, and on the Internet, we as a society are still overeating, not exercising enough, and becoming obese. It is clear that our innate drive to eat cannot be subdued by willpower. Hunger is as basic as thirst, and these two far surpass the drive to procreate. In Appetite and Body Weight Tim Kirkham and Steven Cooper have put together a fantastic series of chapters that provide up-to-date information concerning the control of body weight and appetite. However, this book is not intended for light summer reading, or even heavy winter reading, for that matter. This volume belongs in the backpack of every graduate student and active researcher studying the neuroscience of hunger and body weight control. If unfamiliar with this field, even the most dedicated of readers may find themselves in a morass of abbreviations for brain regions and neuropeptides that is the alphabet soup of neuroscience. For example, if you read the phrase "arc" and think of Noah and his animals climbing aboard two by two before you think of the hypothalamus, this book may prove a frustrating read. Kirkham and Cooper have assembled thirteen chapters by leaders in the field, preceded by their own introductory chapter. The book progresses through three "P" themes: the physiological, the psychological, and the pharmacological. The first five chapters summarize what is known in the physiological realm, ranging from specific brain regions involved with appetite regulation to hormones coming from fat and the gut that regulate those brain structures. The next five chapters explore the psychology of eating: learned behaviors, palatability, and a great discussion of WI NTE R 2008

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Gastronomica – University of California Press

Published: Jan 1, 2008

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