Books like American Indian Food (Food in American History) by Linda Murray Berzok

Michael Pollan explores how modern food choices—industrial, organic, and foraged—affect our health and the environment, revealing the complex ties between diet, ecology, and human evolution.

Surveys the evolution of man's diverse gastronomic habits, customs, and traditions against their cultural and historical background.

A practical guide to Southwest American Indian cuisine, featuring 150 authentic recipes from Apache, Zuni, Navajo, Havasupai, Yavapai, Piñon, and Pueblo traditions, plus illustrations of edible wild plants.

Describes the different kinds of food and methods of cooking that had been common to Indians in each of five areas of the United States. Includes recipes.

"Readers will be fascinated by the wide variety of foods that the early Native peoples hunted, gathered, and grew. They will also be amazed to learn that many of the foods they now eat were introduced by Native North Americans. This interesting book also includes Native cooking styles and several recipes inspired by the many Native nations throughout North America. Kids will find the recipes easy to follow and will love tasting Native foods and flavors! Beautiful images and clear text teach children b5s how Native people respected Natureb2ss gifts and celebrated the foods they were given b5s how some foods such as maple sugar, wild rice, and corn were gathered and cultivated b5s how Native people preserved and cooked foods."--Publisher's website (www.crabtreebooks.com)

Explore how European and Asian immigrants shaped U.S. cuisine from 1565 to 1920, and try recipes like German Potato Salad, Portuguese Sweetbread, Swedish Meatballs, Matzoh Balls, Fried Rice, and Sukiyaki.

This remarkable book, the sequel to the author's Revolution at the Table (1988), analyses changes in the American diet and nutritional ideas from 1930 to the present. Much more than a study of eating habits, Paradox of Plenty is a sophisticated analysis of the dynamics of cultural change that deserves a wide audience among economic historians, political historians, women's historians, medical historians, and social historians. One of Levenstein's many perceptive insights is that the history of eating is inextricably tied up with a broader political economy and culture. With admirable balance, he carefully disentangles the roles of food producers and processors, home economists, faddists, nutritionists, and political pressure groups in shaping broader cultural ideas of nutrition and taste. As in his earlier book, the author shows how food experts repeatedly recommended major changes in diet on the basis of flimsy evidence. The book will prove to be a valuable source of information on regulation of the food industry; changes in food distribution, processing, packaging, and preservation; and consumption patterns and food budgets among various ethnic and socio-economic groups. Carefully attentive to social class, Paradox of Plenty shows how food became a less important marker of social distinction between the 1930s and the 1960s, only to assume renewed symbolic importance in the 1970s and 1980s. Similarly sensitive to gender issues, the book charts the changing the role of food preparation in assessments of women's success as wives and mothers, the growing mania for slimness, and the impact of the increasing number of working mothers on American dining habits. The book's title, a variant on David Potter's People of Plenty, underscores two of Levenstein's central themes: persistent public concern over the extent of hunger and malnutrition in the midst of agricultural abundance and periodic American obsessions with dieting and obesity. The Depression highlighted both of these themes: the 1930s not only witnessed a growing political debate about the causes of and cures for malnutrition; it also saw a growing cultural obsession among the middle class with weight loss and vitamins. The book's core is a systematic examination of how major events of the twentieth century intersected with changing eating habits and ideas about food. The Depression, for example, encouraged a renewed emphasis on home cooking and an uncomplicated, straightforward cuisine. World War II spurred a heightened concern with poor nutrition. The early post-war era witnessed heightened fears of additives, pesticides, cholesterol, and saturated fats. Especially enlightening is Levenstein's, discussion of the growing cultural interest in health and organic foods during the 1960s and 1970s and the ways this was linked to broader countercultural values.