Early September marks a time when summer is slowly coming to an end and a new school year begins. As the days grow shorter, the temperatures get cooler, and many of us get back into the academic way of life, here is a list of 12 newly-released food policy books to add to your fall reading list.
We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time
Author: Jose Andrés
Published: September 2019
Summary: “Based on Andrés’s insider’s take as well as on meetings, messages, and conversations he had while in Puerto Rico, We Fed an Island movingly describes how a network of community kitchens activated real change and tells an extraordinary story of hope in the face of disasters both natural and man-made, offering suggestions for how to address a crisis like this in the future. Beyond that, a portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the Chef Relief Network of World Central Kitchen for efforts in Puerto Rico and beyond.”
Length: 288 pages
Anthony Bourdain Remembered
Author: CNN
Published: May 2019
Summary: “Anthony Bourdain Remembered brings together memories and anecdotes from fans reminiscing about Bourdain’s unique achievements and his enduring effect on their lives as well as comments from chefs, journalists, filmmakers, musicians, and writers inspired by Bourdain including Barack Obama, Eric Ripert, Jill Filipovic, Ken Burns, Questlove, and José Andrés, among many others. These remembrances give us a glimpse of Bourdain’s widespread impact through his political and social commitments; his dedication to travel and eating well (and widely); and his love of the written word, along with his deep compassion, open-mindedness, and interest in lives different from his own.”
Length: 208 pages
Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom
Author: Adam Chandler
Published: June 2019
Summary: Drive-Thru Dreams explores the link between fast food and American life for the past century. The dark underbelly of the industry’s largest players has long been scrutinized and gutted, characterized as impersonal, greedy, corporate, and worse. But, in unexpected ways, fast food is also deeply personal and emblematic of a larger than life image of America. Chandler reveals the complexities of this industry through heartfelt anecdotes and fascinating trivia as well as interviews with fans, executives, and workers. He traces the industry from its roots in Wichita, where White Castle became the first fast food chain in 1921 and successfully branded the hamburger as the official all-American meal, to a teenager’s 2017 plea for a year’s supply of Wendy’s chicken nuggets, which united the internet to generate the most viral tweet of all time. Drive-Thru Dreams by Adam Chandler tells an intimate and contemporary story of America―its humble beginning, its innovations and failures, its international charisma, and its regional identities―through its beloved roadside fare.
Length: 288 pages
Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health
Authors: Elizabeth Hoover and Devon A. Mihesuah
Published: June 2019
Summary: “Centuries of colonization and other factors have disrupted indigenous communities’ ability to control their own food systems. This volume explores the meaning and importance of food sovereignty for Native peoples in the United States, and asks whether and how it might be achieved and sustained. Unprecedented in its focus and scope, this collection addresses nearly every aspect of indigenous food sovereignty, from revitalizing ancestral gardens and traditional ways of hunting, gathering, and seed saving to the difficult realities of racism, treaty abrogation, tribal sociopolitical factionalism, and the entrenched beliefs that processed foods are superior to traditional tribal fare. The contributors include scholar-activists in the fields of ethnobotany, history, anthropology, nutrition, insect ecology, biology, marine environmentalism, and federal Indian law, as well as indigenous seed savers and keepers, cooks, farmers, spearfishers, and community activists. After identifying the challenges involved in revitalizing and maintaining traditional food systems, these writers offer advice and encouragement to those concerned about tribal health, environmental destruction, loss of species habitat, and governmental food control.”
Length: 386 pages
The Farm Bill: A Citizen’s Guide
Authors: Dan Imhoff and Christina Badaracco
Published: January 2019
Summary: “The Farm Bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation the American president signs. Negotiated every five to seven years, it has tremendous implications for food production, nutrition assistance, habitat conservation, international trade, and much more. Yet at nearly 1,000 pages, it is difficult to understand for policymakers, let alone citizens. In this primer, Dan Imhoff and Christina Badaracco translate all the ‘legalease’ and political jargon into an accessible, graphics-rich 200 pages.”
Length: 200 pages
Food 5.0: How We Feed the Future
Author: Robert Saik
Published: August 2019
Summary: “Food has become the new religion. While denominations such as paleo, vegan, and organic debate which is ‘the way,’ we’re ignoring a truth that affects us all: to support a population nearing 10 billion by 2050, agriculture must become infinitely sustainable. To feed the world, we have to grow 10,000 years’ worth of food in the next thirty years, which means farmers worldwide must increase food production by 60 to 70 percent. This book is about the small percentage of those ‘farmers of consequence’ being called upon to grow the vast majority of the world’s staple food supply. While mighty in their ability, they need support from a general public that increasingly has no idea how they operate. In Food 5.0, Robert Saik takes you on a journey from the ‘muscle era’ of farming to a future where the convergence of new technologies like sensors, robotics, and machine learning make infinite sustainability achievable. With the veil lifted on modern agriculture practices, you’ll be inspired to contribute to a culture where farmers can adopt the science and tools they need to carry out their mission of feeding the planet.”
Length: 248 pages
Food or War
Author: Julian Cribb
Published: October 2019
Summary: “Ours is the Age of Food. Food is a central obsession in all cultures, nations, the media, and society. Our future supply of food is filled with risk, and history tells us that lack of food leads to war. But it also presents us with spectacular opportunities for fresh human creativity and technological prowess. Julian Cribb describes a new food system capable of meeting our global needs on this hot and overcrowded planet. This book is for anyone concerned about the health, safety, affordability, diversity, and sustainability of their food – and the peace of our planet. It is not just timely – its message is of the greatest urgency. Audiences include consumers, ‘foodies,’ policymakers, researchers, cooks, chefs and farmers. Indeed, anyone who cares about their food, where it comes from and what it means for them, their children and grandchildren.”
Length: 350 pages
Food Stamps and the Working Poor
Authors: Peter Mueser, David Ribar, and Erdal Tekin
Published: June 2019
Summary: “The authors show that many households that are eligible for food stamps do not receive them, and that eligible individuals’ enrollment is influenced by the states’ administrative requirements. Highlighted are the procedures for certifying applicants and recertifying recipients, and policies for treatment of able-bodied adults without dependents.”
Length: 138 pages
Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat
Author: Robert N. Spengler III
Published: July 2019
Summary: “The foods we eat have a deep and often surprising past. From almonds and apples to tea and rice, many foods that we consume today have histories that can be traced out of prehistoric Central Asia along the tracks of the Silk Road to kitchens in Europe, America, China, and elsewhere in East Asia. The exchange of goods, ideas, cultural practices, and genes along these ancient routes extends back five thousand years, and organized trade along the Silk Road dates to at least Han Dynasty China in the second century BC. Balancing a broad array of archaeological, botanical, and historical evidence, Fruit from the Sands presents the fascinating story of the origins and spread of agriculture across Inner Asia and into Europe and East Asia. Through the preserved remains of plants found in archaeological sites, Robert N. Spengler III identifies the regions where our most familiar crops were domesticated and follows their routes as people carried them around the world. With vivid examples, Fruit from the Sands explores how the foods we eat have shaped the course of human history and transformed cuisines all over the globe.”
Length: 392 pages
The American Culinary Revolution and its End
Author: Kevin Alexander
Published: July 2019
Summary: “Over the past decade, Kevin Alexander saw American dining turned on its head. Starting in 2006, the food world underwent a transformation as the established gatekeepers of American culinary creativity in New York City and the Bay Area were forced to contend with Portland, Oregon. Its new, no-holds-barred, casual fine-dining style became a template for other cities, and a culinary revolution swept across America. Traditional ramen shops opened in Oklahoma City. Craft cocktail speakeasies appeared in Boise. Poke bowls sprung up in Omaha. Entire neighborhoods, like Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and cities like Austin, were suddenly unrecognizable to long-term residents, their names becoming shorthand for the so-called hipster movement. At the same time, new media companies such as Eater and Serious Eats launched to chronicle and cater to this developing scene, transforming nascent star chefs into proper celebrities. Emerging culinary television hosts like Anthony Bourdain inspired a generation to use food as the lens for different cultures. It seemed, for a moment, like a glorious belle epoque of eating and drinking in America. And then it was over. To tell this story, Alexander journeys through the travails and triumphs of a number of key chefs, bartenders, and activists, as well as restaurants and neighborhoods whose fortunes were made during this veritable gold rush–including Gabriel Rucker, an originator of the 2006 Portland restaurant scene; Tom Colicchio of Gramercy Tavern and Top Chef fame; as well as hugely influential figures, such as André Prince Jeffries of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in Nashville; and Carolina barbecue pitmaster Rodney Scott.”
Length: 384 pages
Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food
Author: Benjamin Adles Wurgaft
Published: September 2019
Summary: “In 2013, a Dutch scientist unveiled the world’s first laboratory-created hamburger. Since then, the idea of producing meat, not from live animals but from carefully cultured tissues, has spread like wildfire through the media. Meanwhile, cultured meat researchers race against population growth and climate change in an effort to make sustainable protein. Meat Planet explores the quest to generate meat in the lab—a substance sometimes called ‘cultured meat’—and asks what it means to imagine that this is the future of food. Neither an advocate nor a critic of cultured meat, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft spent five years researching the phenomenon. In Meat Planet, he reveals how debates about lab-grown meat reach beyond debates about food, examining the links between appetite, growth, and capitalism. Could satiating the growing appetite for meat actually lead to our undoing? Are we simply using one technology to undo the damage caused by another? Like all problems in our food system, the meat problem is not merely a problem of production. It is intrinsically social and political, and it demands that we examine questions of justice and desirable modes of living in a shared and finite world.”
Length: 264 pages
The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools
Author: Jennifer E. Gaddis
Published: Forthcoming November 2019
Summary: “There’s a problem with school lunch in America. Big Food companies have largely replaced the nation’s school cooks by supplying cafeterias with cheap, precooked hamburger patties and chicken nuggets chock-full of industrial fillers. Yet it’s no secret that meals cooked from scratch with nutritious, locally sourced ingredients are better for children, workers, and the environment. So why not empower ‘“lunch ladies’ to do more than just unbox and reheat factory-made food? And why not organize together to make healthy, ethically sourced, free school lunches a reality for all children? The Labor of Lunch aims to spark a progressive movement that will transform food in American schools, and with it the lives of thousands of low-paid cafeteria workers and the millions of children they feed. By providing a feminist history of the US National School Lunch Program, Jennifer E. Gaddis recasts the humble school lunch as an important and often overlooked form of public care. Through vivid narration and moral heft, The Labor of Lunch offers a stirring call to action and a blueprint for school lunch reforms capable of delivering a healthier, more equitable, caring, and sustainable future.”
Length: 312 pages
