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The Cultural Feast: An Introduction to Food and Society | 
 enlarge | Authors: Carol A. Bryant, Kathleen M. Dewalt, Anita Courtney, Jeffery Schwartz
Publisher: Brooks Cole
Category: Book
List Price: $102.95
Buy Used: $28.33
You Save: $74.62 (72%)
New (15) Used (29) from $28.33
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 506782
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 8 x 0.7
ISBN: 0534525822
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.3
EAN: 9780534525828
ASIN: 0534525822
Publication Date: March 11, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
THE CULTURAL FEAST looks at the impact of evolution, geography, environment, social structure, and religion on food practices around the world. The text is comprised of three units. The first unit explains the myriad influences on human diet and examines the role of evolution on contemporary food practices. The second unit looks at factors that influence current food practices, such as dietary revolutions that accompany advancements in agricultural practices; the influence of culture in what, how, when, and why we eat; and the influence of religion, social organizations and industrialization on foodways. The third unit of the text looks at nutrition problems and solutions to those problems. The text explores global and domestic hunger, examines diseases of under- and over-nutrition, and looks at dietary behavior change and large-scale programs to change dietary practices.
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| Customer Reviews:
impression on a cultural feast April 6, 2000
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
In The Cultural Feast; an Introduction to Food and Society, theauthors have sought, at the most basic level, to describe humans andtheir relationships to food. More specifically, the cultural growing pains of food exploitation are investigated in great detail. From the most basic and simple form of food acquisition to the complexity of organic chemistry and understanding of organismal development, this introductory text charts the history of humans and food. It is seemingly intuitive that food has altered culture, after all it is culture that serves as the main conduit for acquiring knowledge of techniques to most readily utilize food sources. However, less recognized is the fact that culture has changed food. Although this is widely accepted in some circles the instances of such change when thought of by most people today would probably relate to the genetic manipulations that have become increasingly common within the last few years. To think of recent cultural practices that change the face of food is appropriate, but humanity has a long history of such manipulation and in that context the manipulation that is taking place today makes much more sense, and is less shocking when viewed in that light. It would seem that sections of these chapters could be made into entire books or foci of lifelong research and so in this regard the authors' had a daunting task in making this book. The overview of the interrelationship of culture and food was quite extensive and gave plenty of examples of real world people who had passed through or were in each of the categories presented. Politics, religion, and economics are all critical factors in human dietary patterns and were well represented. This book serves well as a generalized introduction to the discipline of nutritional anthropology and leaves the reader with enough cursory exposure to fuel the desire for more specific information on the topics introduced. *Please note that having given this book 4 stars relates to its usefulness as a textbook...which is what this book is.
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