Cambridge World History of Food - Introduction
Cambridge World History of Food - Contents
Cambridge World History of Food - Purchasing Information
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The Cambridge World History of Food is organized in the following sections:

  1. A determination of what our Paleolithic ancestors ate during their stay on the planet (over 99 percent of the time that humankind has lived on earth) - 6 chapters

  2. An extensive treatment of the domestication and development of each of humankind's staple plant and animal foods - 60 chapters

  3. The history of our dietary liquids from beer through soft drinks to water - 13 chapters

  4. Studies on the discovery of vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, and the essential fatty acids along with a lookat what they do for us and the diseases they trigger when they are not available. This section also covers food-related disorders (such as obesity, food allergies, and lactose intolerance) and diet and the chronic diseases (such as heart-related illnesses, diabetes, and cancer) - 37 chapters

  5. A history of food and drink for all the countries and regions of the world. In addition, there is a chapter on culinary history - 23 chapters

  6. Historical issues involving human health, such as the relationships between nutrition and mortality decline, height and nutrition, infection and nutrition, even food fads - 18 chapters

  7. Contemporary food-related policy issues are treated in this penultimate section of the work. Examples include chapters on food entitlements, food labeling, food biotechnology and the RDA's - 13 chapters

  8. The last section of the work is a food-plant dictionary with over 1,000 entries that emphasize history and usage. The dictionary also includes over 4,000 synonyms of names of plant foods. Here readers well-informed about potatoes or asparagus can learn about lesser-known or strictly regional foods such as ackee or zamia and - among the thousands of synonyms provided - can discover that an aubergine is an eggplant, that "swedes" are rutabas, and that "bulgar" comes from bulghur, which means "bruised grain".