Hamburgers in Paradise

The Stories behind the Food We Eat

Louise O. Fresco

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780691163871
• eBook ISBN: 9781400873319
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Food Industry
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A fascinating exploration of our past, present, and future relationship with food

For the first time in human history, there is food in abundance throughout the world. More people than ever before are now freed of the struggle for daily survival, yet few of us are aware of how food lands on our plates. Behind every meal you eat, there is a story. Hamburgers in Paradise explains how.

In this wise and passionate book, Louise Fresco takes readers on an enticing cultural journey to show how science has enabled us to overcome past scarcities—and why we have every reason to be optimistic about the future. Using hamburgers in the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for the confusion surrounding food today, she looks at everything from the dominance of supermarkets and the decrease of biodiversity to organic foods and GMOs. She casts doubt on many popular claims about sustainability, and takes issue with naïve rejections of globalization and the idealization of "true and honest" food. Fresco explores topics such as agriculture in human history, poverty and development, and surplus and obesity. She provides insightful discussions of basic foods such as bread, fish, and meat, and intertwines them with social topics like slow food and other gastronomy movements, the fear of technology and risk, food and climate change, the agricultural landscape, urban food systems, and food in art.

The culmination of decades of research, Hamburgers in Paradise provides valuable insights into how our food is produced, how it is consumed, and how we can use the lessons of the past to design food systems to feed all humankind in the future.

INDEX

abattoirs, 127, 128, 296. See also slaughtering

Abidjan, 318

Adam and Eve: diet of, 121–22, 282–83; expulsion from paradise, 8, 22, 27–30, 49, 50–51; images of, 4, 10, 17, 24, 30–31, 50–51, 244, 450; in paradise, 23; symbolism of, 8; tempted by apple, 24, 28–29, 31–33, 37, 48, 283, 441–42. See also paradise

“Adam and Eve” (Manafi al-Hayawan), 4, plate 4

additives: E numbers, 289, 371–72; health-promoting, 456–57; negative images of, 289; in past, 287; salts, 456, 468

Adrià, Ferran, 297–99

advertising: of consumer goods, 488; of fast food, 46, 467, 474; of food, 36, 446, 467; paradise metaphors in, 3, 24, 25, 36; regulation of, 467

Africa: agriculture in, 63, 191, 294, 398–99; bread in, 93–94; cassava in, 291; coffee in, 348–49; dietary change in, 294; ecosystem recovery in, 403–4; food aid to, 94; food trade in, 348; foreign investment in, 392–93; Lake Victoria, 158–59; overweight individuals in, 449; tropical forests in, 65. See also East Africa; West Africa; individual countries

agriculture: biodiversity and, 65–66, 245–46, 255–61, 264–65, 273–74, 393; competition in, 354–55; definition of, 54, 60; as ecological balancing act, 68–72, 76–77, 81–82, 176, 483–84; efficiency of, 357; evolution of, 314–15, 386, 433; fields, 16; future of, 391–98; governmental intervention in, 81–82; idealization of, 218–19; importance of, 55–56; insecurity of, 52; irrigation, 16, 60–61, 159–60, 396, 429; land available for, 258–...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction Food—A Voyage of Discovery
• One Paradise: An Exceptional Ecology
• Two Eve’s Temptation: Apple and Hamburger
• Three Agriculture: A Triumph of Hard Work
• Four Bread: The Most Iconic of Foods
• Five Meat: Necessity and Luxury
• Six Liquid Paradise: Food from Water
• Seven Hairy Apples: The Challenge of Biotechnology
• Eight Homesick for Paradise: “Organic” and “Natural”
• Nine Biodiversity: From Landscape to Gene
• Ten Roast Wolf and Deconstructed Olive: Cooking and Eating as a Worldview
• Eleven Paradise on Every Street Corner: Food in the City
• Twelve An Embarrassment of Riches: The Food Chain
• Thirteen A Shrinking Paradise: Back to Scarcity?
• Fourteen A Paradise within Reach: Sustainable Food Production
• Fifteen Food: Irresistible and Emotionally Charged
• Sixteen In Conclusion: Eve’s Paradise
• Bibliography
• Index