This original collection abandons culinary nostalgia and the cataloguing of regional cuisines to examine the role of food and food marketing in constructing culture, consumer behavior, and national identity.

Warren Belasco is Professor of American Studies at University of Maryland and one of the leading scholars in food studies. He is the author of Appetite for Change:How the Counterculture Took on the FoodIndustry.
Philip Scranton is the Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University and research director at the Hagley Museum and Library. He is the author or editor of six books, including EndlessNovelty: Specialty Production and AmericanIndustrialization.

Preface, Phillip ScrantonPart 1: Contexts1. Food Matters: Perspectives on an Emerging Field, Warren Belasco2. Food and Eating: Some Persisting Questions, Sidney W. MintzPart 2: The Construction of National Cusines3. Rituals of Pleasure in the Land of Treasures: Wine Consumption and the Making of French Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century, Kolleen M. Guy4. Eddie Shack was No Tim Horton: Donuts and the Folklore of Mass Culture in Canada, Steve Penfold5. Food and Nationalism: The Origins of Belizean Food, Richard R. WilkPart 3: The Business of Taste6. Inventing Baby Food: Gerber and the Discourse of Infancy in the United States, Amy Bentley7. How the French Learned to Eat Canned Food, 1809-1930s, Martin Bruegel8. Searching for Gold in Guacamole: California Growers Market the Avocado, 1910-1994, Jeffery CharlesPart 4: Ethnicity, Class, and the Food Industry9. Untangling Alliances: Social Tensions Surrounding Independent Grocery Stores and the Rise of Mass Retailing, Tracey Deutsch 10. As American as Budwiser and Pickles? Nation-Building in American Food Industries, Donna R. Gabaccia 11. Comida Sin Par. Construction of Mexican Food in Los Angeles: Foodscapes in a Transnational Consumer Society, Silivia FerreroPart 5: Food and National Politics12. Industrial Tortillas and Folkloric Pepsi: The Nutritional Consequences of Hybrid Cuisines in Mexico, Jeffery M. Pilcher13. Berlin in the Belle Epoque: A Fast Food History, Keith Allen14. Food and the Politics of Scarcity in Urban Soviet Russia, 1917-1941, Mauricio BorreroNotes on the ContributorsIndex