Devoured: From Chicken Wings to Kale Smoothies--How What We Eat Defines Who We Are - Couverture rigide

Egan, Sophie

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0062390988 ISBN 13 : 9780062390981

Editeur : William Morrow, 2016

Synopsis

A provocative look at how and what Americans eat and why—a flavorful blend of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Salt Sugar Fat, and Freakonomics that reveals how the way we live shapes the way we eat.

Food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan takes readers on an eye-opening journey through the American food psyche, examining the connections between the values that define our national character—work, freedom, and progress—and our eating habits, the good and the bad. Egan explores why these values make for such an unstable, and often unhealthy, food culture and, paradoxically, why they also make America’s cuisine so great.

Egan raises a host of intriguing questions: Why does McDonald’s have 107 items on its menu? Why are breakfast sandwiches, protein bars, and gluten-free anything so popular? Will bland, soulless meal replacements like Soylent revolutionize our definition of a meal? The search for answers takes her across the culinary landscape, from the prioritization of convenience over health to the unintended consequences of “perks” like free meals for employees; from the American obsession with “having it our way” to the surge of Starbucks, Chipotle, and other chains individualizing the eating experience; from high culture—artisan and organic and what exactly “natural” means—to low culture—the sale of 100 million Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos in ten weeks. She also looks at how America’s cuisine—like the nation itself—has been shaped by diverse influences from across the globe.

Devoured weaves together insights from the fields of psychology, anthropology, food science, and behavioral economics as well as myriad examples from daily life to create a powerful and unique look at food in America.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Sophie Egan is the Director of Health and Sustainability Leadership and Editorial Director at The Culinary Institute of America. Based in San Francisco, Sophie is a contributor to The New York Times' Well blog, and has written about food and health for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bon Appétit, WIRED, and Sunset magazine, where she worked on The Sunset Cookbook and The One-Block Feast book. She holds a master of public health from the University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on health and social behavior, and a bachelor of arts with honors in history from Stanford University. In 2016, she was named one of the UC Global Food Initiative’s 30 Under 30.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

Forty percent of North American workers eat lunch at their desks. Each year Americans spend more than $20 billion trying to lose weight. The average American supermarket contains 42,214 items.

How do the values that define our national character—work, freedom, and progress—shape our eating habits, the good and the bad? This is the question that Sophie Egan, food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director, addresses in her provocative, eye-opening book, Devoured.

There are 2,000 different kinds of snack bars on the market. On Super Bowl Sunday, Americans consume 1.25 billion chicken wings. “Gluten-free” is a multibillion-dollar industry.

In Devoured, Egan holds a mirror up to daily life, revealing the deeper meaning behind our food choices: from the prioritization of convenience over health to the ways food at work affects our happiness; from the American obsession with “having it our way” at Starbucks, Chipotle and other chains that individualize the eating experience to the fascinating dynamic between highbrow    food culture—artisan this and small-batch that—and the lowbrow, such as Taco Bell’s sale of 100 million Doritos Locos Tacos in just ten weeks. She also looks at how America’s cuisine—like the nation itself—has been shaped by diverse influences from across the globe.

Three-quarters of American households always have at least one carton of ice cream in their freezers. Only 26 percent of Americans eat breakfast every day. Nine in ten American households have microwave ovens.

Everybody eats—making it an activity ripe for examining our beliefs and motivations, our needs and desires. In Devoured, Sophie Egan weaves together insights from the fields of psychology, anthropology, food science, marketing, and behavioral economics and takes us from the workplace to the home kitchen, from the grocery aisles to fast-food counters, zeroing in on our relationships with meals and snacks, food labels and marketing stunts. Devoured is not only enormously entertaining; it’s also an insightful commentary about who Americans are today.

Praise for Devoured

“This book is for anyone who eats food (even if it’s Soylent). It’s a fun and thought-provoking tour of the bizarre stuff we now consume. You won’t look at your dinner—or lunch, breakfast, snack, and whatever Doritos Locos Tacos is—the same way again.”—A.J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author

“A wild and witty romp through the zaniness that infuses today’s American culture of food.”—Michael Moss, author of the New York Times bestseller Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

“Devoured is a well-researched and fascinating exploration of what we eat, how we eat, and why. It is only with this understanding of our food culture that we stand a chance of improving our food system. Devoured is a great contribution to this endeavor.”—Sam Kass, Senior Food Analyst for NBC News and former White House Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: William Morrow
• Date d'édition: 2016
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0062390988
• ISBN 13: 9780062390981
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 416
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible