"cuisine and empire." why are we discussing this book? to bring the discussion into larger policy discussions. they are focusing on an issue that is of great public interest today. food is attracting attention in a variety of ways. people with disposable incomes eat not only for sustenance, but for cultural projects. they tried the latest restaurants, experiment with new ingredients and recipes, learn about new cuisine, and approach mealtime with a deliberate consideration. so much so, a new term has been coined for them, "foodies hugo ."

chefs have become celebrities. along with hunger, there are other related social ills like malnutrition, obesity. policymakers debate responses to the consumption of too little, too much, or the wrong kind of food. food hasnterest in burgeoned, so has the attention to history of food. historians have embraced food as an area of scholarship. besides dozens of books published yearly, there are checkbooks and primary sourcebooks on history for availability to use in college courses on food. cookson baker's look to historic recipes for new ideas. there is an annual food history we can.

situations have influenced. on food history, and does very well. on food and colonization, that amanda parry wrote. my sense is that they attract both public and academic readers. in recent years, food history has become an area of common ground for scholarly and public audiences. it reflects, in part, the shared ,esire to recover a lost past distinctive local foods and artist and all cooking techniques, before the advent of modern processes. rachel laudan challenges the assumption behind that, searching for a lost past in

food. she asked us to think more carefully about the history of cooking, which she observes as difficult, time-consuming, and requires an enormous amount of human energy. that there are implications for our contemporary debate about food. that is where this panel of esteemed historians will turn to. we will be discussing some of these issues at the roundtable. we will start with rachel, offering a synopsis of her book. and, the other panelists will offer their thoughts on topics raised in the book. finally, we will open it up to your questions. now, let me introduce the panel ists. .achel laudan is a historian she holds a degree, a phd in the history of philosophy of science

from the university college of london. she has a distinguished academic career, teaching at a number of situations. addition, she had another career as an independent scholar in the history of food. "cuisine and empire: cooking and world history," was published in 2013. she has also published widely from public audiences in "l.a. times," "boston globe," and other outlets. she has spoken on food in all sorts of places. competence is far

too long to read here. and expertise to the history of food that few can match. sitting next to her is chris hodgson. he is associate professor at the department of history at brigham young university. he earned his doctorate from northwestern university in 2004. after that, he spent two years as a mellon fellow in philadelphia. he has published articles and journals. his first book, "the akkadian inspora," was published 2012. "discoveringok, empire from the air of crusades to the revolution" will be published by oxford.

he is working on a book project on the conservative and lightman enlightenment. next to chris is libby o'connell . she received her degree from the university of virginia. channel,d the history at its conception in 1993. ur awardseceived for for her work. she is the author of, most recently, "the american plate." next is amy bentley, professor of food studies and public health at new york university. historian with interests in the

social and historical context of food. was a finalist for the james beard award. she is also winter of a best book award. she has a number of publications. cofounder of the experimental cuisine collective. she is cofounder of the nyu urban pharma and holds other distinguished positions. tabley, at the end of the is paul friedman, who is the chester d trip professor of

history at yale university. medieval europe. he has written on the history of spain and the middle ages. he also has an interest in the history of food and cuisine. he received his phd from atkeley in 1978 and taught vanderbilt before he moved to ale. .e is author of numerous books books include, "out in 2008.st," published restaurants "10

that changed america" in the fall of 2016. not only interesting which panel, but a panel with a wide sange of interest expertise. i will now turn it over to rachel. i cannot say how much it means to be here. a panel on one's work is something that historians dream of, or perhaps, dread a little. i would like to thank the american history center, the ah colleagues, and .ll of you

this is especially significant for me. historicale projects, this one also has deep personal roots. on a farm, surrounded by 1000 acres of wheat, beans, and barley. cooked.r just she had no choice but to just cook. that came with the territory. tributeways, this is a to her because she would love to be doing what i am doing now and have had a chance to develop her own career and ideas, but no choice. the project ashley started in earnest in the early 1980's at the wrist of hawaii where i engaged in long conversations

with visitors to hawaii and world history about food history. course began teaching a in food history, but in those days needed special permission from the dean. transformed into "cuisine and empire: cooking in world history." why cuisine? why empire? why cooking in world history question mark i would like to ideas inthe basic my story. i do not consider these the best ones, but food history is meant to be more than a fad. we need to have serious debates about the intellectual

foundations of the subject. . simply with very cooking. it is true, but not often taken seriously enough that we do not eat grains and we do not eat carcasses. we only eat these things, these raw materials when they have been transformed into bread, steaks, or other prepared foods. millennia ago, humans past the passed the point of no return. the majority of calories come from foodstuffs transformed from the natural state. extraordinarily, wide-ranging

and complex. they can include the use of heat, cold, mechanical changes -- grinding, cutting, slicing -- they can be chemical changes, adding salt and uncle lights, biochemical changes, particularly fermenting, and .ven biological changes have a good not collective for these various transformations. like processing, but when i considered titling of book, "food processing in world clearly a new was starter. i stuck with cooking. i want to reiterate that cooking

required, in the past, and still requires today, a great deal more energy, labor, and time than producing the raw materials in the first place. comparisonhills in comparisonpales in with human effort. traditionally, it took about five hours a day to process the because four and five we undertake these transformations, humans inside design their food. they design and to make them easier to chew, safety, and -- safer, and tastier, longer-lasting. establishform them to

andal status to show heidi moral concern, demonstrate political affiliation, and make money. in short, our most basic beliefs about the natural world, including about her own bodies, the socialbodies, and political will, or the supernatural and moral world, shaped the foods we make. of course, we don't take basic ideas about the economy, civility, or religion into account with every meal we produce, the eighthse are -- these are often internalize. however, they very often come

into play. these are what i call culinary ies.osoph food,ecause we design our every individual in every society eats foodstuffs that has been processed to achieve a certain set of goals. we think about what we want to have, and then we design the materials andraw ingredients. call cuisine, a style of cooking. evident in hawaii. competingree roughly

cuisines. the east asian cuisine basically , eaten from buddhism with chopsticks. byaiian cuisine, inspired --igenous culture using tyro taro and fish. and england food, cooked in the oven and eaten with knife and fork. if you are telling the history of food on a grand scale, it is the basic unit of analysis. they do evolve constantly, but every so often you get a major

change. change your: i philosophy, convert from one religion to another. , and you a republic will start changing your cuisine and what you bring in line with your new culinary philosophies. notice, we have moved along from the general theory that most people subscribe to with cuisines. fromy that cuisines are the ground up. the territorial cuisines. evolve slowly and gradually in that place. there's is a kind of coronaryual theory of change. backup of moment.

in the history of cuisines, grains have been disproportionately important. this is not an accident. there is no other raw material that offers such a wide range of nutrients as the grains do. there is no other raw material that can be changed into so many stuff -- s of good foodstuffs as the grains can. turnedohols, the pastes into spreads or noodles.

and, oils and sweetness, such as malt sugars. grains, in addition have a higher weight ratio. you only need two pounds of grain per person per day to feed an individual. roots,try to do it using another highly nutritious source, they are still wet and heavy, but it takes 15 pounds a day. with the facilities of the agent world, the only way people could armiesd to cities and went to a light to take grains. existence of the early states and the more

complex state empire, which i use for political units that can project cultural, military, or ,conomic power over large areas these empires are dependent on the part introduction of green cuisines. there are multiple interactions between states and cuisines. the agency -- legitimacy of the seee depends on people to themselves. we often talked about that in the moral economy. this goes right back to the earliest states where, if the people are entitled to rights, , theood supply runs out states have the ability to endorse, and to some extent, and

enforce their preferred culinary philosophy. another very important feature cuisines that are associated with powerful states are often believed to be the cause of power for that state. dietary determinism. an empire that is very powerful its features appropriated or imposed by surrounding on neighboring or distant states. so, powerful state and impairs transferred.

this cuisine which totally transformed the cuisine of southern asia. it, one empire after another, picking up this particular cuisine. with this idea, i have an overarching story. adoption ofth the s.ain the process that led to agriculture and allow the formation of state and empires. always at the was door, the formation of hierarchy of cuisines with high cuisine

and poor cuisine , beans, lesser grains on the right. that continued from the earliest states and empires until the last couple hundred of years when you got the development of middling cuisines, cuisines accessible to everyone. theave the president of united states and russia sitting down for a hamburger together. you cannot imagine the king of one ofitting down with

his peasants. cuisine is a kind of negotiation between the new culinary , favoring the republican and democratic political systems, and the transformation of food, thanks to the introduction of fossil fuels, which reduces the labor storing, andg, transport. falls andice of food everybody can participate in this kind of middling cuisine. very briefly, we have cuisine and empire, cooking in world outline and here is the of the way i see the major , howne throughout history

they have been born, created, and disappeared. thank you very much. [applause] organizersu for the for inviting me to speak on this panel. let me congratulate the professor. this is a tremendous book. it is a remarkable intellectual accomplishment. someone who tries to work in a number of languages and so forth, i know how hard it is. the depth of her learning on these issues is staggering. after a little smarter

having read the book. it was an impressive achievement . i'm a historian of early modern empires. that by my training, i do not have anything intelligent to say about the professors first several brilliant chapters on the agent world. but i will say some stuff anyway since i have the microphone. as a reader, i was particularly taken with her accounts of the transformation of sacrificial ,egimes, regimes of feasting fasting, and contemplative ingredients like fish, sweetened teas, and coffees. was her account of persian cuisine. oftook centuries

reformulations that laid the foundation for greek and roman and ultimately european foodways. remarkable research. as i was saying before, this five minutes could have been pretty easily. you might of been better off for it. i have a beef with her characterization of the columbian exchange. 1970's.a from the it was the columbian exchange, the exchange of all kinds of oring things -- plants animals. it was triggered with the first encounter of the new world at the end of the 15th century. if i am understanding her correctly, she argues that because the transfer of new plants to the old world occurred

without the accompanying new world technologies -- what that means is that the exchange was a one way east to west transfer. in other words, because thick to were too realize that he had to rehydrate the chilies, or that you have to soak the maze in cash to get the kernel out. what that means is that the exchange was a one-way street. all of that is true. as a professor can tell you, lots and lots of italians in the 19th century consumed indian born in the form of polenta got an incredibly gnarly nutritional deficit disease because they did not know the right way to prepare the corn and could not release its nutrients. this is true.

that being said, isn't that fact got the italians disease a fact in itself? wholesaleon the transfer of plans and preparation technology, it sets a pretty high conceptual bar for the columbian exchange. risks empathizing with what these regimes did not do, at the risk of what many east-west exchanges actually did do. this is not so much a critique work as it isor's an invitation to get her to talk about a culinary perspective on food history. i'm totally convinced by her book that along with the biological and political after events of the columbian exchange, we have to consider culinary issues. i've not thought something about it before reading the book.

this is a nice gift of knowledge for me. i want to think about the limitations of thinking about food and exchanges in culinary terms really are. lousy, -- blogging -- i want to praise her book. we will spend a lot of time today talking about food. i have a lot of questions for the professor about food. o.m sure other people do to food is a sexy topic at this point. as a historian of early modern empires, i was heartened and convinced by her use of the term empire. often in my own field we fall back on nonpolitical terminology.

we talk about exchanges, circulation, hyper entities and so forth. power,sks alighting violence, terror, the imposition of norms, the adoption of norms -- and it is important to note that for much of the medieval and early modern. , empire does not just imply role overseas in a distance place, a means possessing imperium at close range with people who are your subjects. retelling,essor's food is a vector of empire, a vector of imperial power. the imperial dimensions of could seen -- of cuisine, to adopt it and repurpose it have been

overlooked by national histories in the attempt to create national cuisines. beyond its contribution to food history, which is a really good reason to read this book. also a powerful history of empire. thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon. i'm the commissioner for the world war i centennial commission. my response to the has nothing to do with world war i. i'm going on record here or it thank you to the national history center and the professor for writing this book. ,hank you for inviting me amanda, to participate in this panel today.

history from the point of view of a public historian. my first view desk job in college was working as an interpreter at a living history museum in cape cod. when jimre in 1975 we didhange the way public history. it was a moment of revolution there, and a moment in revolution for how food was being prepared for the tourists. i was working primarily at the house where we showcased historical food ways. i was working in the herb garden doing medicinal herbs and learning how to milk a cow. i was handling the dairy. those were big responsibilities. i did not know how to cook until i got to the plantation.

so my first cooking lessons were in the 16 20's. life is gotten a whole lot easier, and that is what i wanted to point out about the book. she mentioned it in her introduction, the importance of food processing. the irony today when he say processed food, we immediately think of kraft singles. the processing of food is such an important way of understanding culinary history, foodways, and the people who are doing that labor, and it is very heavy labor and very time-consuming. it is such a part of the way food comes into our bodies. forget how damaging that labor could be to the women who ground the corn, two other

laborers who would end up with arthritis and bent loans for the rest of their lives making food. grinding the grains, toasting things, even carving up meat carcasses. the basic processing of food is very hard work. , iis really interesting think, an approach to women's labor issues because it remained an issue up until the 20th century when it became more mechanized. hand --re still doing there was a lot of food processing in the 19th century, but there are still women at heart -- at home working hard in that process. one of the lessons i learned when i was at plymouth plantation besides the difficulty of processing was is a wonderful way to engage the public's interest in history. people whoan just

are in your history classes, but people who may not understand what you're talking about until you address some of the things. they may not be drawn to what you are talking about until you address things that make it personally interesting to them. in that way, i do not worry that this is a fat -- fad. some peopleof food think will fade away in a few years. , know that a long time ago that was the house were people stayed. who wouldseum goers be looking at the wide saying, it is time to go, stayed and andens to the stories foodways of the past because it was something they understood intuitively. therefore, i think the future of the history of food and foodways be auisines is going to

long and strong one. aspect issing something i want to do -- dig in a little bit more. it relates to what chris rideout. whenhing it true is that he had the columbian exchange and the food go over to europe from the new world, there is a lack of understanding about food process and how to cook these things. but, there is also a huge demographic impact. if anything, food is about keeping us alive and as reproducing families. two foode impacts of is going to change history forever, one is the potato. everywhereto and it else but ireland, and look at the impact of the potato and what happens in that potato fails to look at what happens

when corn gets to africa is another supplement to their diet. you have an increase in population, an increase in population pressure with has never been before because people are able to have two more children, which is a lot more in their family growth. not a deciding factor, but a contributing factor to the growth of slavery in the long-term because you have that much territorial rates on people have each other communities. those are two foods that will have very stark impact on the history of the world and certainly the history and story of the new world. ironically, the columbian exchange example of potatoes and corn changes. it comes back in a different

form to alter the path of american history. i am up for my time. join chris want to and saying how much i learned from this book. what a valuable experience it is to read it. i recommend it to all. i also want to point out the index. it is a great index. when you your shelf, run across things you have never heard about before, you can learn something more about it by looking at this book. [applause] >> did you play music? [laughter] everybody, i'm in the nutrition and food studies department at and my you. nyu. there is a food centric

department. for 20 years i've been teaching a good history class in addition to other classes. i'm also a charter member of the professor's fan club. i started using it in my food history graduate class of years ago when it came out. ine read it several times debt and that a chance to talk to students about it. i've gone through their writings about it. it is an amazing piece of work. it is amazing because it synthesizes a lot of food history that has already been produced all of the world. it,puts her own spin on idea of a cuisine history. it is not about agriculture or commodities, it is the idea of cooking and cuisine through time and its relation to world history. it follows the similar world history narrative, and then you

have cuisine layered over it. the two interact and are instrumental. cuisine moves s civilizations developed and changed and are absorbed by others. you can really learn a lot about world history through the study of cuisine. an intellectual history book, a book about ideas. ,t is about culinary philosophy culinary cosmos, the ideas and impulses behind which people do things. it is about power. it is about people in power making decisions based on religious ideas, based on cultural ideas. people are definitely a part of the narrative. one of the things i love to do with class is to pair it

"guns, germs, and steel," which really should be named "food," because it is really about food. but that book covers the same territory and has a very different take. is environmentally determinist, that is civilization grow and develop because they have an abundance of food. the reason what they have an abundance of food is because they are lucky -- they got lucky in terms of geography and the right plants and animals that were suitable for domesticating. from then on you move through the evolution of civilization and the people with the most food and the optimal places get the guns, germs, and steel. it is an interesting and compelling argument, but there are no people or ideas in it at all. so pairing chapters with this

book is a wonderful example for to try the ideas out and see for themselves how important is a culinary cosmos. and is the deal with weeks -- wheat and why is it important in the western tradition and how does it move through europe? me and itsving spread and its use? that is something important to point out in the book and is the strength of the book. it is something the professor has deliberately focused on, cooking and cuisine. the other thing i want to point -- i will minute start in and get back to it in my second five minutes. that is, as she pointed out, she is a promoter and unapologetic

champion of the industrial food system. in that way you can read this book in light of conversations that are going on about food systems today. system, theood industrial food system, alternative food system, and politics. she sticks to her guns. she is unapologetic about the importance of industrial food. in one part of the book she says , what is better, starving people, or people that have some problems -- health problems from industrial food? that seems to be how she is thinking about it this way. of course, it is more complex than that, but she has really amazing this position on white bread and fish and chips. and that white bread is not just desired by the peasants because the rich could afford it and because it is white, but because

it is easier to digest and is palatable and might have more calories per ounce, report per dollar. poor -- she has a complex argument about white bread that is more than just, it is bad for you and you should not just happened. we need to engage the long history of food processing to understand the current contemporary debates that are going on today. this book is really important. had,rlier essay you culinary modernism, it appeared in the early 2000's and was a thatconcise argument provides a backdrop for the entire book. students give it to

who are enthusiastic, passionate, energetic, and want to glad and change the world and change the food system. it is a splash of cold water on their face about the complexity. we can have an alternative food system in part because we have an industrial food system. thanks. [applause] >> i hope i'm not stealing a theme if i discussed the sunny as racheldern cuisine herself refers to it. how much i have learned from her work. it is a sign -- a sign for my undergraduate food studies course this coming semester.

industrial food products are modeledte sliced bread, fish sauce, or packaged snacks -- or convenient and responsible for the rise of better nutrition globally. that rachel opposes the romantic of arts dismal peasant cuisine of the past. all -- artisinal cousin cuisine of the past. merelyence this not mean frozen peas instead of breast

peas, it means convenience in backyou do not break your grinding for the tortillas. my sense is that the critique of -- let's say i agree with that more than the aggregate -- advocacy of modern cuisine with its process and industrial aspects. the bookartly because does not discuss the issue of sustainability, of agriculture, or the sustainability of livestock eating and processing. are not practices that

sustainable. that is to say literally not sustainable because of their environmental costs. alternativeing firms of agriculture as a kind of free ride on a solid basis of industrial agriculture, i see these as things that are going to have to be adopted whether we like them or not. that does not mean horse-drawn plows, but it may mean paying attention to nutrients in the soil, to replenishing the soil, mono crops, to having a variety of crops and things like that. ,he choice referred to by amy would you rather have people or have themally

starving purely without mcdonald's or without convenient foods, is not in my opinion a real choice. she says the diseases of plenty are less appalling than the diseases of poverty. that is true, but the problem is that diseases of plenty are new and diseases of poverty have not been eliminated. theians do not suffer from corn disease anymore. the diet of people in the southern united rates and appalachia is better than it was 100 years ago or so. the diet of many people around the world can actually work because there are many more of in the case because

of any society in the third world dependent on fish, their resources have been appropriated by other people. or, their resources have dwindled because of climate change, itself a result of processing and industrialization, if not exclusively in food, certainly very much including food. i do not think that the sanctimonious and preachiness of food activist or cooking and the kids -- cooking advocates justifies a sunny optimism. [applause]

>> thanks, all of you. thank you. let me address three issues that seem to be essential ones. thanks for raising jamie dimon. reading that book to be back. food, but he says nothing about what we eat. it is all about agriculture. that is fine. we cannot have food without agriculture in the modern world. but if somebody wrote a book about the american transport theem and only discussed deluded iron ranges and the extraction of iron ore, they would think this is a seriously deficient history of the american transport system. that is a part of what i am trying to do here.

why i set aside agriculture because i do think there has been a tremendous l.a. -- connect food and farming. we talk about food systems and it is different ways of farming. since that is only a part of what gets food on the table, it part, even the largest that does not mean it is necessary. there are other issues going on. we have to also pay attention to of what getsctrum food into people's mouths. that is jared diamond. the colombian exchange.

i would like to make three points about this. if you're talking about what people eat, then the columbian exchange is just one in a series of many that go right back to prehistory which is why i start my book with a rather tedious discussion of widespread transfer of plants, around 4000 or 5000 bc with their processing techniques. because the story of agriculture cuisine is a story of transfers. exchanges,ery rarely these are normally connected with power systems, and therefore normally one way. second point about the columbian exchange, it needs to be broken it would just run

together plants and animals and then ok, there may be an exchange. the new gets a lot of animals, and the old world gets lots of plants. but, if you look at much of latin america or the indigenous people from america, they still are only partially changed over plants orng western ortern processing techniques western foods. until very recently, the mexican population was still eating as they did before the columbian exchange as it is called. conversely, if you look at the europe,st of africa or

the adoption of food plants itself is a slow and difficult process. food ifsformation into you are not bringing over the techniques is a very laborious process. toojust because they are dim to figure it out, my feeling is the europeans did not want to do corn because they had rotary mills, and if you have rotary mills, you do not want to go back to grinding. they think they can be clever and just skip that, but you cannot grind that in a rotary mill. if we want to talk -- we are now 20-30 years since the columbian exchange, it is time to

introduce a little more sophistication into what exactly is being moved and to whom and how and why. points is ahic really important one. how it entirely clear want to deal with this. late 18thuntil the century until the potato gets picked out and then it is forced on people by governments. it is not something that people want. probably does help the demographic inclusion, i guess i would like to say let's have a bit more analysis on this. 1492 -- and then the foods of the old world are changed.

and the sunny one, thanks paul. points, what i think often gets left out in the of the problematic environmental consequences, particularly of the early industrialization of food and agriculture is that it is not the only thing that is at stake. i cannot imagine how we could ofe moved to a world republics and democracies. unless everyone had been able to beat roughly the same things. as long as you have a world of monarchists and the world of scarcity, then the correlation expressed in the color of your bread.

of course it is not true that everybody eats the same thing. distinctionsocial and will find it somewhere. the fact that everybody in the statesgates -- united has on occasion eaten bread and beef is unique in world history. i cannot imagine how the american republican experiment could have succeeded unless something like this happened. that takes us to the question, is not just there for a question of whether we are going back to treading the earth with our feet, but how can we preserve the kind of political systems we feel are more eager a la terry egalitariansive -- and inclusive if we cannot sustain the level of agricultural production.

impression is that there is a huge discussion on this and i cannot solve it myself. i will leave it there. to move into agriculture is to go beyond my -- >> let me try to do this super quick version of my next five minutes. we in denver or on the very cost of mormon country, where i live and work. mormons have staggeringly bad diets. the brief rundown on this is 19th-century commerce comes from england. in the 19th century, they ate the 19th century english diet that you describe, brett and

beef. 100% of the calories of the meal come from fat and carbs, so not particularly healthy. then because they have large families, mormons embrace processed foods like crazy. we are the people of casserole. all of the casseroles are bad. they contain cream of mushroom soup. since the 1970's, in part because of the large families, we have adopted fast food culture. you can understand why this is happening. , theesults of this professor talked about it in her book, and i am on board that there is a certain amount of food nonsense that should be attacked relentlessly. many of the people who attacked the mother industrial food system has never been hungry and do not know what the practice is.

on that level, i buy into the professor's argument. i happen to be a person whose spouse is the executive director of a not-for-profit group called "get healthy utah" that is working to combat obesity. the statistics are mind-boggling. i have a slide in front of me. she projects that by 2050, the obesity rate in utah will be 46.5%. unbelievable. million people in utah will be obese. the economic cost of that obesity in lost work hours and reduced productivity and problems with health to be $14 billion a year. agree that what we have now is better than starving, maybe to reframe the question for the professor because she is such a capacious

thinker, i want to know what do we do now? and is where we are going, based on your exploration of our culinary heritage, what is the appropriate response to all of these trends you have described really really well? thank you. >> one of the tenants of the professors book is culinary cosmology that you see in different cultures and empires that is so important. i really enjoyed reading about culinary cosmology and it helped frame lots of different ideas. i'm much more familiar with --opean history that i am

then i am in the history of india or china. reference to the cosmology of different empires and cultures being a really wonderful way of exploring what are the priorities of that empire. what are the priorities of that society. it fits neatly into my early modern european understanding of the great chain of being and how the food that you eat reinforces who you are. you aretter for you if a peasant to be eating peasant food because it is healthier for you to stay on your lands and eat that. because irested thought that in most of the empires that she addressed, and i wonder if you agree with this, that people understood that cosmology. it was imposed on them, but it

was something they understood as part of it. want --i wondered -- i i'm sure some people do not think about it -- but i wondered how we would understand culinary cosmology today? anything that was remotely unifying -- that is remotely unifying today in the 21st century question mark -- century? i think we can figure out the culinary cosmology of 21st century united states. but as we're getting into the time. when you cannot just have one saying eat whole grains, you have a variety of people and different points of view about what is the best thing to eat. many see it and would not use the word cosmology, but see it

as a frame of understanding their way. what is good for their family is good for the country and so on. -- perhaps some of you have had the experience of inviting people over to dinner and you let them know if you have any food allergies. and then suddenly you're getting all these females. people are much more comfortable talking about what they want to eat, what they will not eat, and what they find offensive to you. i'm wondering if there is a splintering of cosmology in this country, or is there no cosmology. i would argue that people do see the world and how they eat, and might not be as elaborated as it would have been 200 years ago, but it does influence what they are thinking.

i wanted to add on to another respond,see how you when we're talking about the foodism, iddhism -- tonk one approach understanding the rise of meatless in this in that society lessness in that society is the cost and availability of me. cosmology can help you understand your lack of access to that need. will not justnism grow out of the sense that it is butg to take a life to eat, you can't have it, so you might as well have a good reason not to have it. possibilityhat is a and maybe something that works

together. you have a combination. -- itas not something might be in your book. but there so much in your book. meat in thatuch book. raised onlligently appeal on this, but there's so many points. i want to end by saying thank you for writing this and bringing your knowledge to all of us. [applause] >> i will be very so that we have more time for q&a. more points about the book i was thinking about. there's a lot about the high cuisines. it.ine has an air to

we do not think of peasants having a cuisine of bread, cheese, and grains. but one admirable thing about this book is to the extent possible, the professor is talking about high and humble cuisines all the way through. it is much easier to go back in time and try to figure out what deletes a, it is much more difficult to try to figure out what the people without a history date. i admire that in all of the air is an all around the world she has the high and the humble cuisines. i like that linguistic knowledge. she is calling it a humble cuisines. is making us realize that these are food systems and have a logic. they are using what they have, but there is also a definite cuisine element that we can talk about in terms of techniques and spicing elements and ingredients. knowecond thing i want to

-- note, is she spends a certain amount of time talking about the islamic influences on european western cuisine. if you're into. periods and ato lot of spices and products -- wheat and barley, a lot of food and cooking techniques are coming via the arabs and islamic civilization, moving into spain, and then moving into europe. age, maybe wed need to be reminded of that more. maybe we need to think about these things in the long range. another fascinating moment in this book and elsewhere that she

writes is the connection between malay in mexico and indian curries. they are both playing from the same source, similar grammar, similar ingredients, similar logic to them all across the world. defaultnot progress or in the same way that european food does. a pretty fascinating little moments in the book that can also speak to contemporary issues. that amongted to say the strongest points of this cuisines toating religious philosophies. oft is itself an aspect

relating cuisines to ideas and outlook and not just environmental or technological situations. there is an intellectual theory of cultural change that i applaud an embrace. very innovative idea is cuisine and empire and the ability of empires to impose themselves and export their culinary philosophies. so, this is the background to the columbian exchange. the columbian exchange idea is itself a kind of piety, it assumes it is a little bit like the notion that tourism helps world understanding. or the fact that you geeknet mexican food is somehow going to more tolerant about illegal immigrants.

manifestly false. one of the most original things about the ideological conception is the catholic cuisine. nobody else calls at this, sometimes medieval cuisine, or , asterranean cuisine opposed to a northern european or protestant cuisine which should be more widely excepted. i thought about this a lot. exported tothat is to the newca became the new world of spanish and portuguese influence is this catholic cuisine. it is also true that modern cuisine develops first in france, which is catholic, then it is a rejection of a medieval

--t self-consciously subconsciously. self-consciously a rejection of an islamic past. things like the love of sugar or immature oreen as muslim. there is no more thought-provoking book out there. i mean that not in the sense of line that i disagree with it entirely, i mean that this has changed my outlook on the history of food. >> now we have some time for questions. audience member: so many

different aspects you brought out with this book. i was wondering there may be different best ways to get to different people. going beyond individual allergies and so on. different ethnic groups may have cultivated zines as they were healthy for them. i think about gary's and milks -- gary and milk. milk, likeity of not almonds melt and so on. read that native americans suffered because they adopted industrial european diet, getting away from more natural diet. eating too much fast food is never good for anyone. that one particular point. empire,is, cuisine and are we honoring other cultures when we adopt? this is a question of cultural

appropriation versus honoring by adopting. one, our diets are good for certain physiology as developed connected with ethnicity or race. i am slightly fearful about this because it seems that if you look at it, humans digestive systems evolved very rapidly. the ability to judge milk you ball very rapidly in northern europe. it was not there necessarily. live in hawaii with a large asian population, they particularly if them while -- melt were cultured in some way, they could cope with milk. -- there ist to say

something to the fact that when you change your diet, you tend to have problems because your digestive floor is upset. love you not want to say this is a kind of fixed thing for all time. -- i will let more questions go first -- link some of this into the questions that chris and libby were raising. cuisines, looker trying in a world where new foods is a lovely thing to do. that is very recent. food is dangerous. taking the outside world and putting it in your body and is turning into you. most people for most of history were very nervous about doing this, particularly if it was a strange food.

if you also believe in dietary determinism, that you were what you ate. even in my childhood, i remember reception went to a at the earl of pembroke's, i will not tell you why, they were not friends, and he served raw vegetables and they were outraged. raw vegetables are what animals eat. there is a very strong belief in most traditional societies that you do not eat raw vegetables. of either ourow enthusiasm and admiration for other foods, or are rejection of racist, those are very modern categories to apply to most of food history. they did likees

their own food because it was safer and because if you did have problems with your stomach, and most people did not want other people's food. that was more powerful. i really lover: your book. as a world historian and eating food for a long time and a former professional chef, i loved it. the trend in world history as well to bring people into the story increasingly is now being seen in food history which is gone from the history of commodities in a lot of way. your book is the pinnacle in the direction we want to move. i want to thank you for that. sorry i do not have a question, but i want to tell everybody but

the world history association conference at the end of june has two themes, one is atlantic history, the other is food history and world history. i invite you to come. we even have a panel -- an exhibition kitchen panel with just doing demonstration cooking around historical things. but i love the book. i look forward to teaching it next year. other questions? >> you want me to say something points?ese other two when you were writing this book, how did you hold all of these things in your head at one time? it is astounding that you are drawing from so many different places. i was just marching along

with my dog. i do not have an answer to that. is very slow. situation, i do not have an answer to obesity. i do not think historians are good at tapping the past. i do think we are in a very odd. and that for the first time in history almost everybody can choose what they want to eat, even children choose what they want to eat. that's the part that grew up with traditional parents -- says people can fashion their own menu, their own cuisine. that is a sort of natural outgrowth of the liberal and republican tradition. you do have choice and this is a

,ay to seek happiness fulfillment, and all the other good things. three times a day and several things at each meal, and that means we get -- decision fatigue i think. my sense is that perhaps the way forward is to not go back in the kitchen", because they do not want family meals with a have to eat the same as everybody else because they got used to this choice and they believed that that is part of citizenship. we have to find some kind of way of enabling -- what happens when you get a sudden change in cuisine -- if you look back to the church others, you have to create a cuisine that is neither jewish nor roman. it takes a long time to work out what that would be.

so then he turned allies it that you do not have to think every time you go to the table. we are at a moment where, for the people on the cutting edge of food activism, a have to think about every single byte they take. it is a very difficult time. the optimist in me thinks that over time maybe this will shake down into accepted ways of ways, not accepted just restaurants versus home cooking, but new ways of eating people. that is what i hope. >> any other questions? we have time for one more. any final comments? >> all right, thank you. this book has looked at the history of the spread of high cuisine and the emergence of

middling cuisine. interestingly, the most topicsnt are challenging today are about hunger, food, security, and obesity. i will and with one of the puns that chris avoided. this book leaves is for a lot of -- with a lot of food for thought. thank you. [applause] announcer: which presidents were ?merica's greatest leaders to billing this year went abraham lincoln. he has held the top spot in all three c-span historian surveys. george washington, franklin roosevelt, and theodore

roosevelt. dwight eisenhower, who served in from 1953-19ce 621, makes his first appearance in the c-span top five this year. harryng out the top 10, truman, thomas jefferson, john f. kennedy, and ronald reagan. lyndon johnson jumps up one spot this year to return to the top 10. dead buchanan is ranked last in all three c-span surveys. that news for andrew jackson as well. our seven president found his overall rating dropping this year from number 13 to number 18. the survey had good news for outgoing president barack obama. on his first time on the list, historians placed in a number 12 overall. george w. bush moved three spots up on the scale to 33 over wall with big gains in public persuasion and relations with congress. how did our historians rate your

favorite president? the were the leaders and the losers in each of the 10 categories? you can find all of and more on our website at www.c-span.org. >> you are looking at the national museum of african american history and culture on the mall in washington dc. is the newest smithsonian museum. it welcomed its one millionth visitor this week. we will take you inside the museum gallery for a look at the stories at artifacts that chronicle the african-american experience and tell a shared american story. we will be live for the next 2.5 hours. we will be taking your calls, tweets, facebook posts. we are joined with judge robert wilkins to talk about how this museum came about. he is the author of the book "long road to hard truth, the 100 year mission to