Fear of Food
A History of Why We Worry about What We Eat
There may be no greater source of anxiety for Americans today than the question of what to eat and drink. Are eggs the perfect protein, or are they cholesterol bombs? Is red wine good for my heart or bad for my liver? Will pesticides, additives, and processed foods kill me? Here with some very rare and very welcome advice is food historian Harvey Levenstein: Stop worrying!
In "Fear of Food" Levenstein reveals the people and interests who have created and exploited these worries, causing an extraordinary number of Americans to allow fear to trump pleasure in dictating their food choices. He tells of the prominent scientists who first warned about deadly germs and poisons in foods, and their successors who charged that processing foods robs them of life-giving vitamins and minerals. These include Nobel Prize-winner Eli Metchnikoff, who advised that yogurt would enable people to live to be 140 by killing the life-threatening germs in their intestines, and Elmer McCollum, the "discoverer" of vitamins, who tailored his warnings about vitamin deficiencies to suit the food producers who funded him. Levenstein also highlights how large food companies have taken advantage of these concerns by marketing their products to combat the fear of the moment. Such examples include the co-opting of the "natural foods" movement, which grew out of the belief that inhabitants of a remote Himalayan Shangri-la enjoyed remarkable health and longevity by avoiding the very kinds of processed food these corporations produced, and the physiologist Ancel Keys, originator of the Mediterranean Diet, who provided the basis for a powerful coalition of scientists, doctors, food producers, and others to convince Americans that high-fat foods were deadly.
In "Fear of Food", Levenstein offers a much-needed voice of reason; he expertly questions these stories of constantly changing advice to reveal that there are no hard-and-fast facts when it comes to eating. With this book, he hopes to free us from the fears that cloud so many of our food choices and allow us to finally rediscover the joys of eating something just because it tastes good.
About the Author
Harvey Levenstein is professor emeritus of history at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He has published a number of books on American history, including "Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet" and "Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America".
Reviews
"With wit, charm, accessibility, and impeccable scholarship (a powerful and unusual quartet), Harvey Levenstein chronicles the long history of Americans' food fears, tracing their origins, exposing and debunking the self-serving hucksters who promoted them, and, finally, offering his own 'cure': healthy skepticism. It's a riveting record of claims and counter-claims, greed and venality, that will keep you reading and, finally, reassessing your own diet" – Susan R. Friedland, author of "Ribs", "Caviar", and "The Passover Table"
"In 'Fear of Food' Harvey Levenstein explores one of the striking anomalies of American culture – its love/hate relationship with eating and the particularly perplexing choices that humans have to make about the food they eat because they can eat everything. The history of eating in America is thus the story of countless fads and special diets, designed to discipline the will rather than provide pleasure. Levenstein's take on this peculiar history is at once witty, sardonic, and quite serious, even profound" – James Gilbert, University of Maryland
"Harvey Levenstein's entertaining social history of American food scares places today's worries in a broader historical context, from the 'germophobia' of the 19th century to concerns about cholesterol and chemical residues in the 21st. Read this book and you'll understand why warnings about the safety of your food should always be taken with a pinch of salt. (Just a pinch, though – too much could be bad for you. )" – Tom Standage, author of "A History of the World in Six Glasses"
