Acquired Tastes

How the modern food system came together between 1870 and 1930: stories of bread, beer, sugar, canned food, cereal, bananas, and more.

The modern way of eating--our taste for food that is processed, packaged, and advertised--has its roots in the decades before World War II. Many food writers wax nostalgic over imagined good old days of wholesome and home-grown foods, but Acquired Tastes shows that our current food system began to coalesce in the 1870s. The result is modern food that is racialized, colonized, and globalized. Acquired Tastes describes a series of moments in food history--stories of bread, beer, sugar, canned food, cereal, bananas, and more--that shaped how we think about food today.

Contributors consider the food system in time and space, discussing subjects that range from the displacement of native peoples for agriculture to the invention of lager, the first international beer style; questions of trust and suspicion, including the "long con" of gilded sugar and corn syrup, Josephine Baker's banana skirt, and the the rise of celebrity tastemakers; and a commitment to institutionalized expertise that produced, among other things, food rankings and fake meat.