Suchergebnisse

An historical account of food history points out that the immobility of food largely determined people's diets until at least the 16th century. Even then, only spices & condiments traveled far or fast. Within another century, however, transport by sea made many food products available not just to the wealthy but also to the common people. Tea & sugar soon become a daily "necessity" to the European working class, & other products followed suit. Today, scarcely a country exists that isn't involved in international food trade & the fast food market. Today time & money, rather than means of transport, determine what people eat. In developed countries, most people claim to be too busy to cook fresh food & are wealthy enough to buy processed & precooked food. Organizations such as Slow Food have much to give us -- if we are prepared to reject the global food system. Most people would reject Slow Food & many would opt for fast food. If we want better food, however, "food of moderate speeds" is the answer -- good, fresh, healthy food produced locally, for fast access, & prepared & enjoyed at a slow enough pace to suit each of us. References. J. Stanton

We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Foods and the Making of Americans. Donna R. Gabaccia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.288 pp.No Foreign Foods: The American Diet in Time and Place. Richard Pillsbury. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998.262 pp.Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society. Alan Beardsworth and Teresa Keil. New York: Routledge, 1997. 278 pp.Food Preferences and Taste: Continuity and Change. Helen Macbeth. ed. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1997.218 pp.

The islands of Puerto Rico and Jamaica, which lie roughly at the same latitude and less than 600 miles apart at their nearest points, share a number of remarkable similarities in general physical environment. Strikingly in contrast to the similarities in topography, climate, flora and fauna are the differences in the cultures of the two islands. One of the reasons for this cultural disparity has to do not with the cultures of the colonial powers, but with the persistence of a strong peasantry in one island (Jamaica), and a relatively weak peasantry in the other (Puerto Rico). This difference stems in large part from the individual histories of the two islands, histories predominantly determined by the colonial aims and policies of, in one case, Spain and Great Britain; in the other, Spain and the United States. The present paper purports to treat principally one brief period (1800–1850) during which a sharp divergence in the colonial objectives of the respective controlling powers affected the cultures of Jamaica and Puerto Rico accordingly. It was during this half-century that Puerto Rico repeated a historical experience which Jamaica had undergone nearly 150 years earlier: the development of a sugar plantation economy.