The Secret Financial Life of Food

The Secret Financial Life of Food PDF Author: Kara Newman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231156715
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
One morning while reading Barron's, Kara Newman took note of a casual bit of advice offered by famed commodities trader Jim Rogers. "Buy breakfast," he told investors, referring to the increasing value of pork belly and frozen orange juice futures. The statement inspired Newman to take a closer look at agricultural commodities, from the iconic pork belly to the obscure peppercorn and nutmeg. The results of her investigation, recorded in this fascinating history, show how contracts listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange can read like a menu and how market behavior can dictate global economic and culinary practice. The Secret Financial Life of Food reveals the economic pathways that connect food to consumer, unlocking the mysteries behind culinary trends, grocery pricing, and restaurant dining. Newman travels back to the markets of ancient Rome and medieval Europe, where vendors first distinguished between "spot sales" and "sales for delivery." She retraces the storied spice routes of Asia and recounts the spice craze that prompted Christopher Columbus's journey to North America, linking these developments to modern-day India's bustling peppercorn market. Newman centers her history on the transformation of corn into a ubiquitous commodity and uses oats, wheat, and rye to recast America's westward expansion and the Industrial Revolution. She discusses the effects of such mega-corporations as Starbucks and McDonalds on futures markets and considers burgeoning markets, particularly "super soybeans," which could scramble the landscape of food finance. The ingredients of American power and culture, and the making of the modern world, can be found in the history of food commodities exchange, and Newman connects this unconventional story to the how and why of what we eat.

The Secret Financial Life of Food

The Secret Financial Life of Food PDF Author: Kara Newman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231156715
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book Here

Book Description
One morning while reading Barron's, Kara Newman took note of a casual bit of advice offered by famed commodities trader Jim Rogers. "Buy breakfast," he told investors, referring to the increasing value of pork belly and frozen orange juice futures. The statement inspired Newman to take a closer look at agricultural commodities, from the iconic pork belly to the obscure peppercorn and nutmeg. The results of her investigation, recorded in this fascinating history, show how contracts listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange can read like a menu and how market behavior can dictate global economic and culinary practice. The Secret Financial Life of Food reveals the economic pathways that connect food to consumer, unlocking the mysteries behind culinary trends, grocery pricing, and restaurant dining. Newman travels back to the markets of ancient Rome and medieval Europe, where vendors first distinguished between "spot sales" and "sales for delivery." She retraces the storied spice routes of Asia and recounts the spice craze that prompted Christopher Columbus's journey to North America, linking these developments to modern-day India's bustling peppercorn market. Newman centers her history on the transformation of corn into a ubiquitous commodity and uses oats, wheat, and rye to recast America's westward expansion and the Industrial Revolution. She discusses the effects of such mega-corporations as Starbucks and McDonalds on futures markets and considers burgeoning markets, particularly "super soybeans," which could scramble the landscape of food finance. The ingredients of American power and culture, and the making of the modern world, can be found in the history of food commodities exchange, and Newman connects this unconventional story to the how and why of what we eat.

Nutritionism

Nutritionism PDF Author: Gyorgy Scrinis
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527144
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Popularized by Michael Pollan in his best-selling In Defense of Food, Gyorgy Scrinis's concept of nutritionism refers to the reductive understanding of nutrients as the key indicators of healthy food—an approach that has dominated nutrition science, dietary advice, and food marketing. Scrinis argues this ideology has narrowed and in some cases distorted our appreciation of food quality, such that even highly processed foods may be perceived as healthful depending on their content of "good" or "bad" nutrients. Investigating the butter versus margarine debate, the battle between low-fat, low-carb, and other weight-loss diets, and the food industry's strategic promotion of nutritionally enhanced foods, Scrinis reveals the scientific, social, and economic factors driving our modern fascination with nutrition. Scrinis develops an original framework and terminology for analyzing the characteristics and consequences of nutritionism since the late nineteenth century. He begins with the era of quantification, in which the idea of protective nutrients, caloric reductionism, and vitamins' curative effects took shape. He follows with the era of good and bad nutritionism, which set nutricentric dietary guidelines and defined the parameters of unhealthy nutrients; and concludes with our current era of functional nutritionism, in which the focus has shifted to targeted nutrients, superfoods, and optimal diets. Scrinis's research underscores the critical role of nutrition science and dietary advice in shaping our relationship to food and our bodies and in heightening our nutritional anxieties. He ultimately shows how nutritionism has aligned the demands and perceived needs of consumers with the commercial interests of food manufacturers and corporations. Scrinis also offers an alternative paradigm for assessing the healthfulness of foods—the food quality paradigm—that privileges food production and processing quality, cultural-traditional knowledge, and sensual-practical experience, and promotes less reductive forms of nutrition research and dietary advice.

The Winemaker's Hand

The Winemaker's Hand PDF Author: Natalie Berkowitz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231537379
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
More than 40 vintners from across America and around the world reveal their winemaking secrets in this collection of fascinating interviews. In The Winemaker’s Hand, professional winemakers from Napa Valley to the Finger Lakes and from Chile to Italy share their personal approach to the ancient—yet constantly evolving—craft of winemaking. In candid discussions, they reveal how a combination of talent, passion, and experience shape the outcome of their individual wines. Wine and food writer Natalie Berkowitz interviews winemakers from small family wineries as well as large corporations that produce bottles in the hundreds of thousands. They discuss familiar and unfamiliar grape varietals, local terroirs, and the vagaries of Mother Nature—as well as how new technologies are revolutionizing historic winemaking practices. Complete with personal recipes, maps of winemaking regions, and an aroma wheel capturing the vast array of wine's complex flavors and aromas, The Winemaker’s Hand is a globe-hopping tour through the world of wine.

Coffeeland

Coffeeland PDF Author: Augustine Sedgewick
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143110748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “Extremely wide-ranging and well researched . . . In a tradition of protest literature rooted more in William Blake than in Marx.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker The epic story of how coffee connected and divided the modern world Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world. But few coffee drinkers know this story. It centers on the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill, born in the slums of Manchester, England, founded one of the world’s great coffee dynasties at the turn of the twentieth century. Adapting the innovations of the Industrial Revolution to plantation agriculture, Hill helped turn El Salvador into perhaps the most intensive monoculture in modern history—a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality, and violence. In the process, both El Salvador and the United States earned the nickname “Coffeeland,” but for starkly different reasons, and with consequences that reach into the present. Provoking a reconsideration of what it means to be connected to faraway people and places, Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism.

Umami

Umami PDF Author: Ole Mouritsen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231537581
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
In the West, we have identified only four basic tastes—sour, sweet, salty, and bitter—that, through skillful combination and technique, create delicious foods. Yet in many parts of East Asia over the past century, an additional flavor has entered the culinary lexicon: umami, a fifth taste impression that is savory, complex, and wholly distinct. Combining culinary history with recent research into the chemistry, preparation, nutrition, and culture of food, Mouritsen and Styrbæk encapsulate what we know to date about the concept of umami, from ancient times to today. Umami can be found in soup stocks, meat dishes, air-dried ham, shellfish, aged cheeses, mushrooms, and ripe tomatoes, and it can enhance other taste substances to produce a transformative gustatory experience. Researchers have also discovered which substances in foodstuffs bring out umami, a breakthrough that allows any casual cook to prepare delicious and more nutritious meals with less fat, salt, and sugar. The implications of harnessing umami are both sensuous and social, enabling us to become more intimate with the subtleties of human taste while making better food choices for ourselves and our families. This volume, the product of an ongoing collaboration between a chef and a scientist, won the Danish national Mad+Medier-Prisen (Food and Media Award) in the category of academic food communication.

The Secret Life of Groceries

The Secret Life of Groceries PDF Author: Benjamin Lorr
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0553459406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In the tradition of Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, an extraordinary investigation into the human lives at the heart of the American grocery store What does it take to run the American supermarket? How do products get to shelves? Who sets the price? And who suffers the consequences of increased convenience end efficiency? In this alarming exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing, immersive reporting, and compulsively readable prose, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn: • The secrets of Trader Joe’s success from Trader Joe himself • Why truckers call their job “sharecropping on wheels” • What it takes for a product to earn certification labels like “organic” and “fair trade” • The struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business • The truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry The result is a page-turning portrait of an industry in flux, filled with the passion, ingenuity, and exploitation required to make this everyday miracle continue to function. The product of five years of research and hundreds of interviews across every level of the industry, The Secret Life of Groceries delivers powerful social commentary on the inherently American quest for more and the social costs therein.

Epistenology

Epistenology PDF Author: Nicola Perullo
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231552203
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
We think we know how to appreciate wine—trained connoisseurs take dainty sips in sterile rooms and provide ratings based on objective knowledge and technical expertise. In Epistenology, Nicola Perullo vigorously challenges this approach, arguing that it is the enjoyment of drinking wine as an active and participatory experience that matters. Perullo argues that wine comes to life not in the abstract space of the professional tasting but in the real world of shared experiences; wines can change in these encounters, and drinkers along with them. Just as a winemaker is not simply a producer but a nurturer, a wine is fully known only through an encounter among a group of drinkers in a specific place and time. Wine is not an object to analyze but an experience to make, creatively opening up new perceptual possibilities for settings, cuisines, and companions. The result of more than twenty years of research and practical engagement, Epistenology presents a new paradigm for the enjoyment of wine and through it a philosophy based on participatory and relational knowledge. This model suggests a profound shift—not knowledge about but with wine. Interweaving philosophical arguments with personal reflections and literary examples, this book is a journey with wine that shows how it makes life more creative and free.

The Land of the Five Flavors

The Land of the Five Flavors PDF Author: Thomas O. Hšllmann
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231161867
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Translation of: Schlafender Lotos, trunkenes Huhn.

The Secret

The Secret PDF Author: Rhonda Byrne
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0731815297
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The tenth-anniversary edition of the book that changed lives in profound ways, now with a new foreword and afterword. In 2006, a groundbreaking feature-length film revealed the great mystery of the universe—The Secret—and, later that year, Rhonda Byrne followed with a book that became a worldwide bestseller. Fragments of a Great Secret have been found in the oral traditions, in literature, in religions and philosophies throughout the centuries. For the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that will be life-transforming for all who experience it. In this book, you’ll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life—money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You’ll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that’s within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life. The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers—men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.

Dining Out

Dining Out PDF Author: Katie Rawson
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789140951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A global history of restaurants beyond white tablecloths and maître d’s, Dining Out presents restaurants both as businesses and as venues for a range of human experiences. From banquets in twelfth-century China to the medicinal roots of French restaurants, the origins of restaurants are not singular—nor is the history this book tells. Katie Rawson and Elliott Shore highlight stories across time and place, including how chifa restaurants emerged from the migration of Chinese workers and their marriage to Peruvian businesswomen in nineteenth-century Peru; how Alexander Soyer transformed kitchen chemistry by popularizing the gas stove, pre-dating the pyrotechnics of molecular gastronomy by a century; and how Harvey Girls dispelled the ill repute of waiting tables, making rich lives for themselves across the American West. From restaurant architecture to technological developments, staffing and organization, tipping and waiting table, ethnic cuisines, and slow and fast foods, this delectably illustrated and profoundly informed and entertaining history takes us from the world’s first restaurants in Kaifeng, China, to the latest high-end dining experiences.