| Book Review | Journal of World History, 14.3

Book Review

The Cambridge World History of Food. Edited by KENNETH F. KIPLE and KRIEMHILD CONEE OMELAS. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 2153 pp., 2 vols. $150.00.

This well-written, fully documented, closely printed, solidly bound boxed set will be an almost canonical text to the increasing number of scholars, researchers, and students who have to engage with food history. It results from the Cambridge History and Culture of Food and Nutrition Project, not localized in Cambridge but headed by Kenneth Kiple of Bowling Green University, editor of the successful and indispensable Cambridge World History of Human Disease (1993).

The contents, paginated straight through the two volumes, are Part I, "Determining What Our Ancestors Ate" (pp. 9–71); Part II, "Staple Foods: Domesticated Plants and Animals" (pp. 73–615); Part III: "Dietary Liquids" (pp. 619–737); Part IV: "The Nutrients-Deficiencies, Surfeits, and Food-Related Disorders" (pp. 739–1120); Part V: "Food and Drink around the World" (pp. 1121–1378); Part VI: "History, Nutrition and Health" (pp. 1379–1573); Part VI: "Contemporary Food-Related Policy Issues" (pp. 1575–1709); and Part VIII: "A Dictionary of the World's Plant Foods" (pp. 1711–1900). Each chapter has its own bibliography.

First the good news. The reader is offered a definitive survey of most of the major foods in our diet, notably cereals, cultivated vegetables, animal foods, and drinks (among which water is not forgotten). One learns where these foods came from, where and when they became part of the diet, the route from there to the modern United States, and their nutritional qualities. This survey is preceded by a short section (Part I) on the archaeological sources of information; these six chapters of very high quality should be read alongside Part V.F: "Culinary History," a survey of the written sources of information.

As expected from Kiple's previous work, the sections dealing with the relationship between foods, health, and disease are well executed. Part IV deals with specific nutrients (such as vitamins) and specific diseases; Part VI treats general issues from famine (1411–27) to prejudices and taboos (1495–1513). An important feature is that on each of two contentious issues, "nutrition and the decline of mortality" and vegetarianism, two scholars have contributed separately. All four of these chapters deserve their place.

Part V covers every continent. The first and last chapters are among the best: "The Beginnings of Agriculture," by Naomi F. Miller and Wilma Wetterstrom, and "The Pacific Islands," by Nancy Davis Lewis. A couple of omissions are signaled below, but most other regions are well covered. The sketchiest chapter is that on the Middle East and South Asia; unfortunately it lacks an adequate bibliography.

Part VII deals with current policy issues. The coverage of genetically modified foods (pp. 1666–67) is brief and anodyne; note the important recent articles on this issue in the new journal Gastronomica. By contrast, food labeling and dietary guidance are thoroughly discussed: Marion Nestle, author of the recent Food Politics (2002), contributes two chapters.

Following are some questions, doubts, and criticisms.

CWHF shows two statistical features unexpected in a "world history." Three-fourths of the 160 authors are from one country (the United States). Fewer than one-fifth of them are historians.

The first of these two features faithfully reflects this book's editorial history and potential market. The point of view is North American. There is no doubt that the largest market will be the universities and colleges of the United States. These facts have influenced the allocation of space to foodstuffs (an emphasis on meat, a lack of emphasis on fish) but their principal result has been the provision in many chapters of a world historical survey that develops toward and culminates in the modem U.S. situation: the natural and the most useful approach for U.S. student readers.

Four-fifths of the authors are not historians (this is a personal estimate: about one-tenth have pursued doctoral research in history, and about another tenth have previously demonstrated skill in historical research and writing). Now it's true that anyone can write history. But it isn't true that anyone can write history well. The result here is that a large proportion of authors, simply because they are untrained in history, don't know how to cite historical source materials and, much more important, don't know how to use historical information critically. Many have therefore tried to write as little history as possible; some of the finest chapters in this book, written by scrupulous scholars aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, are two-thirds botany or biology, one-third history (again a personal estimate). A warning, then, to teachers of graduate history students: although they will revel in the information and insights to be found here, they will find that not all this History is history, and not all of that is good professional history.

CWHF has a few surprising gaps. One suspects that the editors were aware of these and that the pressures of space, time, and publishing made it impossible to fill them. The best thing a reviewer can do is to say what's missing and how the reader may work around it.

Among the chapters on plant foods there are few fruits. The thousands of years of fruitful coexistence between human beings and their grapes, figs, dates, apples, pears, plums, olives, pineapples, et cetera are passed over. There are no nuts, except peanuts (so ubiquitous in the U.S. diet) and chestnuts: why not walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds? There is a useful short survey of cultivated green vegetables (by Robert C. Field), but where are the wild greens, roots, and seeds on which many still depend, as did many millions of our ancestors? There are chapters on coconut oil, palm oil, sesame oil, soybean oil, and sunflower oil, but a grudging two pages on olive oil; not enough in view of its historical importance. There is a good chapter on sugar, which begins: "Sugar is the world's predominant sweetener." But where's honey, which was the world's predominant sweetener until modern times? And where's chocolate? These foods occur in the index and the "historical dictionary," naturally; the real problem is that in these significant areas no connected history and no bibliography is supplied.

There is no chapter and no bibliography on classical Greece and Rome. Now it's quite true that the usual histories of food overemphasize the ancient Mediterranean: they all cover Greece and Rome in detail. The altered emphasis of CWHF, focusing instead on prehistoric North America and the Pacific Islands, is welcome and overdue. But, like it or not, Greece and Rome did contribute to the cultural heritage of North America (and that of much of the rest of the modern world); to omit these contributions in a world history, even one aimed at North Americans, is to leave the task incomplete. Possibly a planned chapter is missing: it's noticeable that the authors on northern Europe begin with prehistoric times, while southern Europe (by Ken Albala) begins with the spread of Christianity. To paper over the crack, Marion Nestle's chapter "The Mediterranean," which is incidentally a very good introduction to the modern Mediterranean diet, has been made to include about half a page on the prehistoric and classical Mediterranean. This short passage, written by someone who is not a historian, may have been added editorially at a late stage. The few bibliographical references are poorly chosen.

Notwithstanding criticisms, libraries and food historians must have this book. Very many students (and others) will use it and will learn from it.

To fill some of the gaps they will also need: K. T. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994. Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Eva Crane, The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting. London: Duckworth, 1999. Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Stephen Facciola, Cornucopia: A Source Book of Edible Plants. Vista, California: Kampong, 1990. Jean-Louis Flandrin and M. Montanari, eds.: Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Joan Morgan and Alison Richards, The Book of Apples. London: Ebury Press, 1993. World Olive Encyclopaedia. Madrid: International Olive Oil Council, 1996.

ANDREW DALBY

F-79120 Saint-Coutant, France

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