America鈥檚 obsession with food
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Top TV celebrity chefs lick their fingers and glance coyly at the cameras even as they tantalize viewers with unattainable meals.
The Food Network has 90 million enthusiastic viewers but if you ask Frederick Kaufman, professor of English at New York鈥檚 City University, the shows are just another example of 鈥済astroporn.鈥� This is only one of the topics that Kaufman explores in his recent book, A Short History of the American Stomach. Although the current preoccupation with food seems to have reached a peak within the past 15 years, Kaufman makes the case that Americans have been obsessed with food ever since the Puritans stumbled off the Mayflower.
From the historical writings of Cotton Mather and William Alcott to the modern-day antics of on-air chefs, Kaufman dissects the country鈥檚 fixation with its gut. His tastes are wide-ranging: eating contests at Coney Island, a lab genetically engineering Chesapeake Bay oysters, and an underground raw milk coven in New York.
En route back to the first American meal, Thanksgiving, Kaufman covers the Puritanical preoccupation with laxatives and diuretics, the reasons Benjamin Franklin gave up his vegetarian diet, and why dairy farmers created a 900-pound 鈥淢ammoth Cheese鈥� in honor of Thomas Jefferson supposedly made from 鈥渢he milk of one thousand Republican cows.鈥�
With sharp, irreverent commentary, Kaufman digests America鈥檚 relationship with food. The bottom line: It鈥檚 all consuming. 鈥淎nd the more I learned,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢he more convinced I became that absolutely nothing had changed鈥� throughout US history.
Because he locates the stomach as the center of outsized American idealism, Kaufman鈥檚 probe is more ironic than it is literal, reveling in pointing out inconsistencies from the furthest extremes of eating. Where else but America would the sheer volume of ecofriendly vegetarian books destroy entire forests? What about those diet gurus who promote the live-forever diet and yet die young? And why do Three Cheese Pizza Bagels need to receive a seal of approval from kosher certifiers?
The best of Kaufman鈥檚 reporting delves into the driving forces behind issues as broad as capitalism by considering, in detail, the throng of rabbis who inspect 13,000 grocery items produced in accordance with Jewish food laws.
At times, Kaufman appears to gloss over historical nuance, but this brief, chatty tour offers a fascinating interior view of the nation鈥檚 gut-centricity.
