Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet by Harvey Levenstein

I found this book very readable. Indeed I read it in about a week, which is fast for such a dense book.

The book covers American eating habits form 1880 to 1930 (with the last chapter giving a whirlwind tour of 1930 to about the 1980's). The book there for covers some of the same ground as Perfection Salad but is not spefically focused on women's roles. There is in stead more of focus on class and income and how these effected diet.

One thing that struck me was how terrible everyone's diet was in the 1880's; no on of any class ate very many veggies. I guess I've been reading too much Michael Pollan and other activist types who go on about the virtues of traditional foodways. This book is stark reminder that some old fashioned foodways where not really that good. (And of course they where less likely to be good if you where poor.

Over all Levenstein argues that economics probably had the biggest role in changing food habits, followed but advertising and education (including school lunch). However the book isn't really making a sweeping argument, more pulling together a lot of information in a informative and entertaining way.

A post not about books

It has been a while since I posted not about books. (Even longer if you think nattering about bookshelves is posting about books.) Really though my life has been fairly quite. I've been doing oyster work again. For newish readers, and those with vague memories: I work part time as a field tech for an environmental non-profit on a project to remove invasive oysters form the San Francisco Bay. This mostly means hiking over rocky bits of the bay shore, with eyes down looking for oysters that look almost like rocks. The tides where bad the last several months, but it is good to be back at work again. The weather has even been nice and sunny the last few days. I work again this afternoon.