peasantry, trade in luxury products, and the history of cuisine.
He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Why Food Matters, and reported the following:
Page 99 comes at the end of Chapter 5 on "food and health." It only has five lines, but nevertheless, does give a good sense of the book as a whole. It summarizes a paradox of modern life that extends back in time as well, that the people who fuss the most about food in relation to personal health are those least likely to be suffering from such urgent nutritional problems as malnutrition, obesity, vitamin deficiencies. This is not to say that just because one is affluent means one should not take care of oneself, but that the "wellness" economy is powered by people with minor to no nutritional problems while the poor are left with little alternative to fast food and other damaging forms of sustenance. In turn, this reflects a concern of the book about the image of rich and poor forms of diet-- especially the widespread notion that the poor need to be educated. If only they realized that fresh produce was good for them while cheeseburgers are not, they would change their feckless ways. The reason poor people have poor nutritional habits is because they are poor, not because they are foolish. Ramen, McDonalds, food with lots of sugar, fat, salt (e.g. snack foods) are cheap. Access to fresh produce is limited both by price and the food-desert phenomenon.Learn more about Why Food Matters at the Yale University Press website.
The book deals with why food matters beyond the obvious fact that we need it to survive. I look at the cultural meaning of food in terms of rich and poor; racial and gender distinctions and also in assessing the environmental emergency we currently face, whose solution or amelioration will require changes to agriculture, food supply and consumption.
--Marshal Zeringue
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