Why Food Matters
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Narrated by:
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Jack de Golia
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By:
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Paul Freedman
About this listen
An award-winning historian makes the case for food’s cultural importance, stressing its crucial role throughout human history.
Why does food matter? Historically, food has not always been considered a serious subject on par with, for instance, a performance art like opera or a humanities discipline like philosophy. Necessity, ubiquity, and repetition contribute to the apparent banality of food, but these attributes don’t capture food’s emotional and cultural range, from the quotidian to the exquisite.
In this short passionate audiobook, Paul Freedman makes the case for food’s vital importance, stressing its crucial role in the evolution of human identity and human civilizations. Freedman presents a highly enjoyable and illuminating account of food’s unique role in our lives, a way of expressing community and celebration, but also divisive with regard to race, cultural difference, gender, and geography. This wide-ranging book will be a must-listen for food lovers and all those interested in how cultures and identities are formed and maintained.
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Acclaimed cookbook author Jessica B. Harris weaves an utterly engaging history of African American cuisine, taking the listener on a harrowing journey from Africa across the Atlantic to America, and tracking the trials that the people and the food have undergone along the way. From chitlins and ham hocks to fried chicken and vegan soul, Harris celebrates the delicious and restorative foods of the African American experience and details how each came to form an important part of African American culture, history, and identity.
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more of a history lesson than a culinary book
- By Scott Johnson on 09-02-15
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A Square Meal
- A Culinary History of the Great Depression
- By: Jane Ziegelman, Andrew Coe
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The decade-long Great Depression, a period of shifts in the country's political and social landscape, forever changed the way America eats. Before 1929, America's relationship with food was defined by abundance. But the collapse of the economy, in both urban and rural America, left a quarter of all Americans out of work and undernourished - shattering long-held assumptions about the limitlessness of the national larder.
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Not entirely accurate title
- By Robert on 06-07-17
By: Jane Ziegelman, and others
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Drive-Thru Dreams
- A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom
- By: Adam Chandler
- Narrated by: Adam Chandler
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Most any honest person can own up to harboring at least one fast-food guilty pleasure. In Drive-Thru Dreams, Adam Chandler explores the inseparable 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.
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Road Trip Audio!
- By Anonazon on 06-28-19
By: Adam Chandler
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Chop Suey
- A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States
- By: Andrew Coe
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1784, passengers on the ship Empress of China became the first Americans to land in China and the first to eat Chinese food. Today there are over 40,000 Chinese restaurants across the United States - by far the most plentiful among all our ethnic eateries. Now, in Chop Suey, Andrew Coe provides the authoritative history of the American infatuation with Chinese food, telling its fascinating story for the first time.
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Wanted to like this
- By Irene on 02-13-21
By: Andrew Coe
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Hippie Food
- How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat
- By: Jonathan Kauffman
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Food writer Jonathan Kauffman journeys back more than half a century - to the 1960s and 1970s - to tell the story of how a coterie of unusual men and women embraced an alternative lifestyle that would ultimately change how modern Americans eat. Impeccably researched, Hippie Food chronicles how the longhairs, revolutionaries, and back-to-the-landers rejected the square establishment of President Richard Nixon's America and turned to a more idealistic and wholesome communal way of life and food.
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If you grew up eating health food you'll love it
- By Susie Wyshak on 05-09-18
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Meathooked
- The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat
- By: Marta Zaraska
- Narrated by: Emily Durante
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the great science and health revelations of our time is the danger posed by meat-eating. Every day, it seems, we are warned about the harm producing and consuming meat can do to the environment and our bodies. Many of us have tried to limit how much meat we consume, and many of us have tried to give it up altogether. But it is not easy to resist the smoky, cured, barbecued, and fried delights that tempt us.
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A very interesting book on why we crave meat.
- By Amazon Customer on 05-23-16
By: Marta Zaraska
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The Taste of Empire
- How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World
- By: Lizzie Collingham
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Taste of Empire, acclaimed historian Lizzie Collingham tells the story of how the British Empire's quest for food shaped the modern world. Told through 20 meals over the course of 450 years, from the Far East to the New World, Collingham explains how Africans taught Americans how to grow rice, how the East India Company turned opium into tea, and how Americans became the best-fed people in the world.
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Overall really interesting and informative
- By Amazon Customer on 01-01-21
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The Tastemakers
- Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue (Plus Baconomics, Superfoods, and Other Secrets from the World of Food Trends)
- By: David Sax
- Narrated by: David Sax
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this eye-opening, witty work of reportage, David Sax uncovers the world of food trends: Where they come from, how they grow, and where they end up. Traveling from the South Carolina rice plot of America’s premier grain guru to Chicago’s gluttonous Baconfest, Sax reveals a world of influence, money, and activism that helps decide what goes on your plate.
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Informative - Engaging - Entertaining!
- By Rena on 09-01-14
By: David Sax
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Ireland - Culture Smart!
- The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
- By: John Scotney
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 3 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The island of Ireland is famous for its timeless beauty, the variety of its landscape, its quiet towns and lively cities, the poetic and literary genius of so many of its citizens, its music and folklore, and its colorful and bloody history. Businesspeople and visitors who don't know Ireland will find this book an invaluable introduction to the people, the country, and the economic opportunities it offers, while if you think you know Ireland and the Irish, you will find plenty here to broaden and deepen that knowledge, and plenty that will surprise you.
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Good baseline for a trip to Ireland.
- By Vincent Collins on 07-24-17
By: John Scotney
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The Potlikker Papers
- A Food History of the Modern South
- By: John T. Edge
- Narrated by: John T. Edge
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The Potlikker Papers tells the story of food and politics in the South over the last half century. Beginning with the pivotal role of cooks in the civil rights movement, noted authority John T. Edge narrates the South's journey from racist backwater to a hotbed of American immigration. In so doing, he traces how the food of the poorest Southerners has become the signature trend of modern American haute cuisine. This is a people's history of the modern South told through the lens of food.
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Best book of the year!
- By PD on 06-12-17
By: John T. Edge
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Rice, Noodle, Fish
- Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents, Book 1)
- By: Matt Goulding
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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An innovative new take on the travel guide, Rice, Noodle, Fish decodes Japan's extraordinary food culture through a mix of in-depth narrative and insider advice. In this 5,000-mile journey through the noodle shops, tempura temples, and teahouses of Japan, Matt Goulding, cocreator of the enormously popular Eat This, Not That! book series, navigates the intersection between food, history, and culture, creating one of the most ambitious and complete books ever written about Japanese culinary culture from the Western perspective.
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Starts strong tapers off
- By Craig Bryan on 01-02-21
By: Matt Goulding
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Milk!
- A 10,000-Year Food Fracas
- By: Mark Kurlansky
- Narrated by: Brian Sutherland
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the best-selling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic and culinary story of milk and all things dairy - with recipes throughout. According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way.
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Horrible narration nearly kills Kurlansky
- By Scarlatti's Muse on 05-15-18
By: Mark Kurlansky
What listeners say about Why Food Matters
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- YH Chen
- 02-21-23
Unsatisfying
Like a small buffet that tries to cover the main food groups, the book touches on some interesting issues but doesn’t really bring them together in a coherent way.
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- Mrs Wanda LIPSKI
- 08-29-22
Interesting...but
the narration drove me up the wall. i can accept differences between UK and US pronunciation but when so much of the book used French (being the language of gastronomy) I was completely lost even when he related restaurants I have actually eaten in!!! Worth and Aubible plus listen but thank heavens i hadn't spent a credit on this interesting book.
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- Reading in the 02
- 11-28-21
Sweeping and important book on Food, politics and sustainability
The book packs so much in a succinct way. It covers several centuries, genres, history and the future. It make great analogies from popular film culture, to Dante and the current situation with COVID, climate change, GMO’s and alternative meats.
It is a fascinating and important book that is very enjoyable.
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2 people found this helpful
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- CJ
- 04-20-22
Academic discourse on food meets everyday history
It’s clear that Freedman is trained as a scholar, the first chapter certainly reads like an academic defense of a position that the listener might have already bought into (that food and its impact on people and culture is worth thoughtful research and questioning). If I were Freedman’s editor, I might have asked him who is the intended audience here. (Which is why I just can’t give it 5/5 on its “story.” The true narrative nature of this history happens later!). There were moments in the opening where it oddly reminded me of reading “In Defense of Poesy,” but the rest of the book makes up for some initial “Ivory Tower” leanings.
The main chapters of the book cover areas like social class, religion, taste, gender, race, and the environmental impact of ever-evolving agricultural techniques.
Why Food Matters offers a great survey of how wide food’s cultural impact has been. Freedman touches on ancient Judeo-Christian context and Scripture references to the connection of medieval feasts and spices with eventual colonialism to how exactly salads were seen as unmanly (looking at you, 19thC cult of domesticity!) to the nitty-gritty of how enslaved people developed famous American cuisine by referencing the work of Michael Twitty.
If you’re a fan of authors like Bee Wilson, this book would probably be a great fit. If you love seeing how our cooking and dining habits of today find their sources in history, this is definitely worth a listen.
Just maybe skip past that first chapter or so if you’re already on board with the premise!
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-04-23
Boring
I still don’t know why it matters. It was like random information about food history.
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- Ciara Chesnut
- 04-06-22
cuew-linary
This was well researched and depressing. I struggled to finish it but I was also looking got a lighthearted read.
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- Jeanbry
- 07-29-22
It goes inside you
Food is a part of our daily life. Why not learn about one writer’s thoughts on how it has evolved over time? The historical context provided is ever more pertinent in the post-COVID world.
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- Shante Nixon
- 01-15-22
excellent read
I greatly appreciate how this book was broken up into mini studies. really on how foodways, societies, historically context are interconnected.
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- DeVere Peer
- 10-13-21
This was a hard read
Not easy to listen to. VERY wordy… so full of details it became kind of boring. Not cohesive… sorry…
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4 people found this helpful