Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food.

MEALS TO COME: A History of the Future of Food WARREN BELASCO

With an ever-expanding world population facing an increasingly imperiled environment, what does the future hold for food production and consumption? Belasco, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, looks to the history of food production for clues about its future. He examines ethnic and economic influences on the consumption of animal products and the preference for meat over grain-based cuisines. He recounts past food predicaments, including the inflation of food prices, the inequitable distribution of food surpluses, and Cold War jitters about the appeal of communism to malnourished people. He writes that the West's preference for wheat over other grains such as rice and rye is misplaced, that such foods have different environmental as well as nutritional impacts, and that many non-Westerners live well without luxury foods. He looks at utopian and dystopian models of the future of food. In so doing, the author outlines three prevailing views: classic, which posits that a steady expansion of civilization will lead to an equilibrium between traditional food supplies and population; modernist, which predicts that technology will create food such as the science fiction standard meal-in-a-pill; and recombinant, which combines elements of the classic and modernist approaches to create both palatable organic foods and so-called functional foods marketed for their health benefits. Univ. Calif. Press, 2006, 358 p., b&w images, paperback, $21.95.