Food

We're all stress eating anyway, right?

Posted on December 11, 2025 in Hot Topic

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Eating more Asian America: a food studies reader, ed. by Robert Ji-Song Ku, Martin F. Manalansan IV, and Anita Mannur. New York University, 2025. 416p bibl index ISBN 9781479831326, $99.00; ISBN 9781479831333 pbk, $35.00; ISBN 9781479831364 ebook, $35.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE December 2025

The title of this volume is a deliberate play on the title of the editors’ previous collection, Eating Asian America (CH, Feb’14, 51-3317), indicating that this is a much-needed update. The text encompasses different voices and recent trends in Asian food culture in North America, such as the popularization of foods like ube and the rise of Asian American bakeries. Working in the field of Asian American studies, the contributors critically scrutinize the connections between Asian Americans and the production and consumption of food. Part 1 explores connections between place and food, such as the importance of Korean food for Korean adoptees. Part 2 relates food to political action, including activism. Part 3 covers food and the struggle to survive and self-represent, such as Vietnamese refugees coping with canned foods in detention. Part 4 examines food and “intimacies,” i.e., how food shapes notions of the self and builds relationships. Part 5 analyzes cultural texts like cookbooks and literature. The 21 essays, written by US-based authors from diverse academic fields, will resonate with readers seeking short histories of dishes like pho, on the one hand, and self-reflective meditations on food and identity on the other. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. —E. C. Rath, University of Kansas

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Folch, Christine. The book of yerba mate: a stimulating history. Princeton, 2024. 272p bibl index ISBN 9780691246390, $29.95; ISBN 9780691246437 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2025

This stimulating history of yerba mate is an exemplary contribution to food studies. The seemingly inevitable appearance of mate among the recent proliferation of healthful energy drinks obscures its long and unexpectedly entangled history and its role as an influential historical agent. As fascinating as the history is (especially as distinct from that of coffee and tea), what makes this book truly engaging is how Folch (Duke Univ.) uses the process of mate’s global commodification as a lens for understanding global political economy, the role of ritualistic ceremony, and knowledge transfer across cultures. Mate takes center stage in revealing often hidden links between science and empire and helping readers understand how an everyday drink can play an outsized role in defining various national identities, even as its use has changed over time. Clearly written for nonspecialists, the book illustrates how these broader issues have been centrally featured in recent culinary histories and explains mate’s role in them. The research is thorough, the story compelling, and the prose accessible and highly engaging. A clear narrative thread makes the book’s ambitious thematic, chronological, and geographic scope appear effortless, adventurous, and enlightening. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty. —F. Gibbs, University of New Mexico

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Stanton, Cathy. Food margins: lessons from an unlikely grocer. Massachusetts, 2024. 240p bibl index ISBN 9781625348067, $99.00; ISBN 9781625348050 pbk, $26.95; ISBN 9781685750763 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in March 2025

In Food Margins, Stanton (Tufts Univ.) tells the story of the North Quabbin Community Co-op in the small town of Orange, Massachusetts, from an insider’s perspective. The co-op attempts to support small-scale local farmers and their products, as well as items such as organic coffee, through a business that pays fair prices to Indigenous farmers. Stanton carried out research using the anthropological method of participant observation, having volunteered with the co-op for years and having served as a member and the chair of its board of directors. This excellent book addresses the challenges the co-op faces to keep from closing, exploring its participants, products, and role in building community. As Stanton narrates the co-op’s history, she addresses key topics in food studies, ranging from food policy and the role of capitalism to the history of grocery stores and supermarkets in the US and how racism is embedded in the food system. Also part of the story is Old Minute Tapioca, a company located in Orange, MA, and its connections to colonialism, plantations, and factory labor. This lively, accessible book offers multiple lessons about the contemporary food industry and how communities work to change it. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. —C. M. Kovic, University of Houston-Clear Lake

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Frerick, Austin. Barons: money, power, and the corruption of America’s food industry. Island Press, 2024. 248p bibl index ISBN 9781642832693, $29.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE November 2024

Frerick (fellow, Yale Univ.) exposes the regulatory conditions that allowed seven barons to amass power and financial fortunes through the US food industry. Using textual analysis, Frerick scaffolds sources to trace the corrupt paths of the seven barons’ food areas: hogs, grain, coffee, dairy, berries, slaughterhouses, and grocers. For instance, in chapter 3, Frerick details how the “coffee baron” JAB Holding Company creates the veneer that its purchased coffee companies are financially independent by maintaining the multitude of original brand names. From environmental destruction to flagrant political manipulation, these food industry barons have built their fortunes while using appealing, fictitious advertising that positions them as local, family-friendly philanthropists. Frerick calls for restoring, expanding, and enforcing antitrust and competition policies; connecting schools to sustainable, local producers; and guaranteeing fair salaries and safe conditions for workers. This book could be used in the disciplines of social justice studies, political science, food studies, sociology, and urban planning. Instructors might use Achbar and Abbott’s The Corporation (2003) or Kenner’s Food, Inc. (2008) for documentaries or Linklater’s Fast Food Nation (2006) for a movie with interwoven sub-narratives to illustrate corruption in the American food industry. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals. —C. L. Lalonde, SUNY Brockport

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Miller, Katherine. At the table: the chef’s guide to advocacy. Island Press, 2023. 242p bibl index ISBN 9781642832372 pbk, $32.00; ISBN 9781642832389 ebook, $31.99.
Reviewed in CHOICE May 2024

Miller (independent scholar) provides a step-by-step boot camp for chefs to transform themselves into advocates for various social and political causes. Speaking directly to chefs and frequently using food-based phrasing, the author creates a “recipe” for success in sociopolitical action, describing specific examples of how chefs throughout the US have effected social change. For instance, Miller outlines how to engage politicians as an audience through sharing concise data points, amplifying emotional engagement, and building trust through relationships. She then provides an example of this process by describing how chefs in the Independent Restaurant Coalition managed to secure government funding for US restaurateurs to defray the impacts of the pandemic. Ultimately, Miller promotes open-source advocacy as a flexible approach that any chef can adapt to pursue any cause. This advocacy is especially significant and urgently needed in a post-pandemic, climate-compromised world. This book could be used in the disciplines of social justice studies, food studies, sociology, and political science. Instructors might use Michael Symons’s Meals Matter: A Radical Economics through Gastronomy (CH, Nov’20, 58-0794) to teach students more about the foundational relationship between food and politics. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels, especially two-year technical program students in culinary school.

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Joassart, Pascale. The $16 taco: contested geographies of food, ethnicity, and gentrification. Washington, 2021. 288p bibl index ISBN 9780295749273, $99.00; ISBN 9780295749280 pbk, $30.00; ISBN 9780295749297 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE June 2022

Joassart (San Diego State Univ.) explores food gentrification through consideration of ethnic versus cosmopolitan foodscape perspectives as they relate to a “food apartheid” in the US (p. 63). Through a mixed-methods study that embraces an in-depth, case-study approach, the author exposes and interrogates inequities immigrant communities experience in relation to fluctuating foodscapes and the sociocultural and economic impacts of food gentrification. For instance, the author describes the food apartheid by making visible the challenging working conditions (including food insecurity) faced by food service workers who are predominantly people of color, working class or working poor, women, and immigrants as compared with the mostly white, economically privileged consumers who populate and patronize San Diego’s ethnic foodscapes. Ultimately, Joassart calls for food sovereignty as a way to disrupt the displacement of immigrants and people of color that results from gentrification, the latter being due, ironically enough, to expanding cosmopolitan foodscapes that prize “diversity.” This book could be a useful text for courses in the disciplines of geography, sociology, food studies, and ethnic studies. Instructors might consider pairing it with Amy Trauger’s We Want Land to Live (CH, Feb’18, 55-2309) as an illustration of how food activism may be realized within local neighborhoods. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers. —C. L. Lalonde, Paul Smith’s College

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Azam-Ali, S. N. The ninth revolution: transforming food systems for good. World Scientific, 2021. 400p bibl index ISBN 9789811236440, $128.00; ISBN 9789811250101 pbk, $34.95; ISBN 9789811236464 ebook, $24.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE April 2022

Azam-Ali (Univ. of Nottingham) combines an overall history of agriculture with a proposal for radical changes in the current global agri-food system, so as to increase the world food supply and provide a greater public good. This text is written by an agri-food expert who has published prolifically on the topic, providing a wealth of knowledge to the discussion of food systems and agriculture, but mainly in the form of journal articles. Some of his prior output has been included in this logically organized volume, which is divided into eight lengthy chapters, each filled with subheadings and organizational features that break the reading into digestible portions. The prose is written in an easy-to-follow style with vocabulary that most college-level readers will be able to understand. Endnotes are heavy throughout the work, lending credibility to the concepts discussed. This volume is suitable for libraries with a food studies or agriculture collection. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty. —M. H. Albro, Clemson University

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Dunn, Rob R. Delicious: the evolution of flavor and how it made us human, by Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez. Princeton, 2021. 304p bibl index ISBN 9780691199474, $27.95; ISBN 9780691218342 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2022

This volume is coauthored by an applied ecologist and a medical anthropologist who have worked with numerous experts in various fields to collect the information and theories supporting their case. They draw from anthropology, ecology, food science, chemistry, biology, and other fields to create a compelling perspective on how flavor has driven diets and food choices in the past and continues to do so now. Dunn (applied ecology, North Carolina State Univ.) and Sanchez (a medical anthropologist and independent scholar) explain how they arrived at this approach in a prologue (“Eco-Evolutionary Gastronomy”) and proceed to an in-depth discussion of the “taste system,” developing this into a deeper exploration of how evolutionary history shaped the current human experience of flavor. Succeeding chapters focus individually on various spices, fermentation, and food processing techniques. Meanwhile, the authors contrive to lead readers from early human history to the present day. Images are sparingly used in the book; its real attraction is an insightful narrative spiced with witty asides and relatable notes. Reading the book requires no prior preparation, but readers with knowledge in any of the relevant fields will find their appreciation of the text enhanced. The volume is suitable for acquisition by any library with an anthropology, ecology, or food studies collection. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. —M. H. Albro, Clemson University

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The Cambridge companion to literature and food, ed. by J. Michelle Coghlan. Cambridge, 2020. 285p bibl index ISBN 9781108427364, $89.99; ISBN 9781108446105 pbk, $25.99; ISBN 781316997796 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2021

This companion is situated within the field of food studies, more specifically literary food studies. The 16 essays Coghlan (American literature, Univ. of Manchester, UK) has brought together are by scholars in the fields of English literature, media studies, American studies, and American history. The text progresses chronologically, starting with the medieval feast and concluding with gender performance and blogging food. It opens with a 13-page timeline of “major works and events,” which showcases significant literary works and their long-standing engagement with the world of food. Topics covered include feasts, cooking as art, shifts in and cultivation of taste (including national senses of taste), gastronomy, the Cold War kitchen, the American farm, cookbooks, children’s literature, postcolonial studies, farmworker movements, and intersections with race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. The concluding 17-page section of suggested readings is organized by theme and follows the progression of the essays. Coghlan’s careful attention to organization and structure as well as to the contributions themselves is evident throughout. The book is clearly written and full of engaging facts and literary connections. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. —M. K. Bloodsworth-Lugo, Washington State University

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Food fights: how history matters to contemporary food debates, ed. by Charles C. Ludington and Matthew Morse Booker. North Carolina, 2019. 304p index ISBN 1469652889, $90.00; ISBN 9781469652894 pbk, $32.95; ISBN 9781469652900 ebook, $25.99.
Reviewed in CHOICE November 2020

Food as a focus of academic study long ago moved from old-school home economics departments onto center stage, with journals, conferences, and entire majors based on what people eat and why. For such a basic, essential human function, debates and arguments abound as new studies and reports constantly contradict each other on nutritional pros and cons, and archaeologists make further discoveries as to what was for dinner millennia ago. A conference on food studies at North Carolina State University, organized by the editors, generated this collection of essays focusing on various, somewhat controversial, issues, all revolving around historical aspects of food production and consumption. Areas examined include the industrialization of agriculture, gendered issues around cooking and feeding children, class distinctions based on types of foods, farm subsidies, food safety regulations, nutritional guidelines, and slow versus fast food. Each chapter is written by university faculty, and all chapters are well researched and footnoted. However, the general tone of this work is not overly academic, making it more accessible to anyone interested in the topics discussed. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels. —S. Hurst, Miami University

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