Founded in 1998 by a coalition of youth, educators, and community leaders, LEJ addresses the ecological and health concerns of Bayview Hunters Point and the surrounding communities of southeast San Francisco.
Ask children where food comes from, and they’ll probably answer, “the supermarket.” Ask most adults, and their replies may not be much different. We know remarkably little about what we eat. Where our foods are raised and what happens to them between farm and supermarket shelf have become mysteries. How did we become so disconnected from the sources of our beef, cheeses, cereal, lettuce, and countless other foods that nourish us every day? Ann Vileisis’s answer is a sensory-rich journey through the history of making dinner. From eighteenth-century gardens and historic cookbooks to calculated advertising campaigns and sleek supermarket aisles, Kitchen Literacy chronicles profound changes in how Americans have shopped, cooked, and thought about their foods through two centuries.This history of our changing awareness—not only of food but of nature itself—takes us to bustling city markets, school gardens, ad-packed women’s magazines, and home economics classes. While the distance between farm and table grew, we went from knowing specific stories behind food’s origins to relying instead on advertisers’ claims and government assurances. As consumers gradually—and often begrudgingly—adjusted to buying modern foods in boxes and cans, they unwittingly adopted a habit of knowing very little in an enormous and anonymous system.Today, most foods travel 1,500 miles before they reach us. Fruits are doused with pesticides, and steaks come from feedlots of 50,000 animals that few people even want to go near. The industrialized eating that is so convenient has resulted in a host of health and environmental problems, including foodborne pathogens and water pollution.
