Everyone eats : understanding food and culture /

Anderson (Univ. of California, Riverside) has produced an engaging synthesis of the biocultural approach to nutritional anthropology. His approach combines ecological, economic, and traditional monolithic structures so that readers are better able to understand food systems and patterns of adaptation in terms of physical development and human dietary evolution. Anderson maintains "that food is inseparable from emotion and meaning" and draws on his own research, along with less well-known sources not related to anthropology, in order to illustrate the phenomenology of food and eating with a worldwide perspective. His well-documented and organized book details how such factors as the natural environment, politics, domestication of cheap, fast-growing staples, refrigerated transport, and international movement affect patterns of behavior toward the nutrition and health of individuals and the global population. Anderson critically examines conventional wisdom toward world nutrition and expands on oversimplified theories in a manner that challenges readers to make the connection between food, emotion and meaning, changes over time, and the collective role humans play in feeding the world and saving the planet. Although intended for the general public and not as a textbook, this book is recommended for higher education, especially advanced courses. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. P. L. Palmer Lake Washington Technical College