Still Life with Ham, by Philippe Rousseau, c. 1870. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1982.

Food

Volume IV, Number 3 | summer 2011

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Still Life, by Carstian Luyckx, c. 1640. Columbus Museum of Art.

Preamble

The Midas Touch

By Lewis H. Lapham

The times change, and with them what, where, and how people eat.

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The Harvesters, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565. The Metropolitian Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1919.

Balanced Diets

By Daniel Mason

Pica is an unexplainable food curiosity—the overwhelming desire to eat the inedible.

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Map

Food Chains

Tracing the world travels of tomato, pepper, and coffee.

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Miscellany

“I am the emperor, and I want dumplings,” said Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria. His only lucid remark, the historian A. J. P. Taylor thought.

1832 | United States

Abundant, Not Delicate

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of a second dinner.More

1979 | Texas

Breakfast of Champions

Hunter S. Thompson’s most important meal of the day.More

c. 1876 | Arabia

Boiled Not Flayed

Mastering the art of Bedouin cooking.More

Charts & Graphs

Melting Pots

The evolution of “national” dishes.

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American historian Francis Parkman.

Spanish soldier and author Bernal Díaz del Castillo.

British explorer John Smith.

Poet, essayist, and editor Ray Gonzalez.

British suffragette activist, writer, and speaker Constance Lytton.

Henry David Thoreau

Calvin Trillin standing in front of a refrigerator in a black and white photograph

American professor and journalist Deborah Blum.

The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886

Neoplatonist Greek philosopher Porphyry.

American rock musician Ted Nugent.

Porphyry & Ted Nugent

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