Matt SiegelBesprekingen

This is an interesting book. It has a lot of good information and some of it was funny.

I didn't like the last three chapters of the book much. They seemed cluttered and were more focused on contemporary foods.

Chapter 1: How humans and food evolved together.

Chapter 2: More than I thought there was to know about pie.

Chapter 3: Cereal and the creepy people who made it possible.

Chapter 4: Corn and how it's in everything imaginable.

Chapter 5: Possibly more than I wanted to know about honey.

Chapter 6: Vanilla and the history of ice cream.

Chapter 7: Ancient holidays and the food associated with them.

Chapter 8: Too much about modern fast food and the different varieties of Oreo cookies.

Chapter 9: Hot peppers and why people eat them.

Chapter 10: Mostly a boring summary.

The narration by Roger Wayne was good.

A fascinating volume on where our food comes from and how our food choices have changed through history. There is chapter on the development of our modern breakfast cereals starting with the Kellogg brothers. Honey, where it comes from and how it may be contaminated with something as harmless as water but also other materials that are more harmful is a wakeup. Olive oil is another important food that is frequently augmented with other liquids as dangerous as machine oil but usually with other edible oils such as sunflower. Two thirds to 90% of olive oil sold in the USA is not pure olive oil.

Some of the most fun in the book is when Siegel describes what people in the Medieval period ate. As well, chapter on corn describes how this crop is in a lot of our food. A chapter on vanilla may make you appreciate why it is so expensive.

Who knew the guy that created everyone's favorite breakfast cereal was an absolute psychopath? Or that ice cream played such a big part in the war? A very interesting history surrounding the foods we eat, often without thinking much about.

This seems to be more of a rehash of information from other material I have read. I few new additions.½

I thought this would focus on different foods than it did. Some things I already knew, but the book quoted other works on those things more thoroughly. The book seems largely built out of others and has heaps of footnotes. "Stoned" is a nonfiction book about jewelry by Aja Raden. It also quotes other sources as well and has copious footnotes, but hers are far more chatty and interesting in physical book form. I read it once a year. Please don't read it as an ebook; it'll drive you nuts. She encourages people to read other books too and is open about her research methods, whereas this author does not. I don't doubt his research; he just approaches it differently. The author doesn't seem interested in writing exactly, but quoting other sources. It felt like a long seminar course at university with a professor who was worried about being bored. The blurb warns parts of the book are disgusting. Yeah, but it happens less frequently than I thought. This is a great example of why trigger warnings and content warnings should be advertised on blurbs and in copy regularly.

CW/TW: The bran cereal guy sexually abused female patients; rites of passage from other cultures that would make a Westerner (me) squeamish; the gross things foods are filled with in modern day and age.

The book doesn't end with a conclusion. The author increasingly quotes statistics for paragraphs at a time near the end. The structure of the book is not great. Still glad I read this. Over half the book is footnotes and acknowledgments, so this does seem like a quick read despite page count.

Fun food facts -- a quick and pleasant read about various strange eating habits. Icky in some places, but fun overall.

I had a lot of fun reading this. The subject matter is fascinating and the writing is fun. I do wish some of the chapters were a little meatier, though (pun intended). Each chapter is just a brief overview, which prevented the book from ever getting boring, but I did find myself wanting more at times.

The is a frolicky, fun book about food. Well, specifically more about apple pie, honey, corn, vanilla, breakfast cereal, Christmas traditions (through a lens about food) and tomatoes. People will learn something and make them look a little wittier at the next dinner party.

Humor is more frat-boyish than academic. I can see why it's a turn off.

The Secret History of Food by Matt Siegal is a 2021 Ecco publication.

This is a fun look at the history of some our most common- and beloved foods- such as apple pie, for example. The book takes what could be a great deal of minutia and trivia and turned it into an entertaining history and food lesson. The sarcastic remarks added humor, while keeping one engaged and focused.

Food is definitely something we spend a great deal of time thinking about, but how often do we really stop to consider the history of the food, or the psychological connections behind our food choices?

Do we really eat hot chilies to distract us from other types of pain? The science in this book appears to be dependable information, and I found it to be quite fascinating.

Some of the lists went on a little too long, as we got the gist long before Siegal exhausted us on the various flavors of Prego Pasta sauce, though the points made about numerous choices we are presented with in the supermarket was interesting. I can attest to feeling a little overwhelmed by the overabundance of brands, flavors, sizes, etc., from time to time.

Also, worth noting for those considering this book, nearly half of it is dedicated to notes. It is good to see the sources and I feel comforted by the legitimacy of the information I am asked to absorb, but I do wish there was some way to give readers a heads up about the actual number of reading pages in a book before purchasing it.

Other than that, this is an excellent way to learn about some little-known food facts, we should all consider, and is presented in an entertaining, engrossing manner. It’s also a quick, easy read that shouldn’t take long to digest…

3.5 stars½

Food writer Matt Siegel reminds me a great deal of history writer Simon Winder. Winder’s surveys of different regions of Europe are organized roughly like travelogues. He accentuates factual accounts with droll observations and fascinating curiosities. Siegel does the same analogously with his heavily footnoted tour of food and eating.

The author begins by making the point that "it is the absolute biological necessity of food that makes it so central to cultural history and so inclusive of all peoples in all times.”

Next he provides a brief look at the history of a human being from pre-natal development onward, apprising us about the impact of choice and/or availability of food. He switches from the micro to the macro level by looking back at the history of civilization from the standpoint of how food and its production has affected it.

Then he goes into the details of what we have been eating all this time. The ten chapters of this book are short, but chock-full of interesting and often unexpected information.

Pie, he tells us, has an important place in history, and he documents how, segueing into a history of the apple in America. But first he gives us plenty of reason to appreciate apple pie, with details about pre-America pies in Britain, including eel pie, lamprey pie, pigeon pie, and swan pie. For example, he quotes from a 1737 London recipe for lamprey pie, according to which one must first “cleanse the well from the slime” before mixing their blood with cinnamon.

Pigeon pie included lamb’s testicles, and then there was hare pie, full of broken bones, but gussied up with lemon and butter. The English used apples mainly as vegetables.

Thank heavens the first apple seeds arrived in the colonies on the Mayflower in 1620. Apple pies, Siegel writes, quickly became a colonial staple.

Apples, by the way - you may be surprised, as I was, to learn - are not free of corn (more about that below) which is the subject of his fourth chapter on corn’s centrality and ubiquity.

In terms of corn's centrality, Siegel explains that “ . . . corn is right up there with fire in terms of anthropological game changers.” He adds “. . . up until roughly ten or twelve thousand years ago corn wasn’t a thing, and neither was farming." Before that point, everyone who’d ever lived had survived by hunting and gathering. Farming meant staying in one place and also developing systems of trading, defense, permanent lodging, developing irrigation systems, and dealing with more free time.

About corn’s ubiquity, Siegel reports that the average American consumes about three pounds of food containing corn or corn products every day, often unknowingly. Even apples, he points out, have a layer of food-grade wax derived from corn sprayed onto them.

[“Still (he notes), human consumption accounts for only around 10 percent of the corn supply, as it’s also an industrial ingredient in basically everything” from aspirin to cosmetics to batteries, crayons, plastics, paper, fuel, soap, wallpaper, and much much more.]

My favorite chapter was of course Chapter 6, because it dealt with ice cream (and, as with his other chapters, a whole lot of other things that he could manage to make in the least way related). He observes that vanilla is the world’s most popular ice cream flavor and second most expensive spice. But it is so accessible because up to 99 percent of vanilla flavoring in foods is artificial.

He writes about the importance of ice cream to morale in both world wars, and adds the most wonderful anecdote:

“In 1942, when Japanese torpedoes struck the USS Lexington, then the second largest aircraft carrier in the navy’s arsenal, the crew abandoned ship - but not before breaking into the freezer and raiding all the ice cream. Survivors describe scooping it into their helmets before lowering themselves into shark-infested waters.”

He includes a history of holiday feasting, a discussion of fast food, and the explosion of choices of food. (For example, he writes, “we can now choose from more than fifty types of Oreos.”)

There is so much more - too much to delineate in a review, but foodies and history buffs alike with find it all informative and delightful.

Evaluation: This quirky book is extremely entertaining, and full of factoids you will want to share with everyone around you.

Neither history or science, rather a collection of fascinating food trivia
Includes almost fifty pages of notes citing sources. With chapters such as "Honey Laundering" and "Forbidden Berries".

I didn’t finish this book as the beginning consists of the author quoting copiously from books and studies full of asshole comments. Is it not enough to say “this book was very racist” or “this other book is super misogynistic”? We have to quote it and make the reader feel like absolute garbage?

Anyway, it reads as an attempt to be scholarly and is pretentious and intolerable.
Hard pass from me.

Chock full of intriguing facts and information about many of the common foods we eat. The history, changing faces of how they were used, where they came from and much more. Honey, corn, vanilla, and ice cream, etc. Loved the chapter on ice cream, never knew how important it was during the second world war.

The chapter on our first settlers provided a humorous visual I can't get out of my mind. When these settlers arrived in America, there was food a plenty, especially in the ocean, but they didn't know how to catch nor use what was available. "Meanwhile, civilized consists were attempting to fish with frying pans and eating their own dogs to keep from starving." Okay, the dog part is sad but cant you just see John Smith attempting to hit fish over the head with a frying pan?

Another fact I found astonishing and unfortunate, especially now when so many are considered obese, was found in the chapter titled, Choices of a new generation. "More than 36 percent of Americans consume fast food daily, increasing to 80 percent monthly and 96 percent annually." Makes one think.

Which is exactly what this book did, make me think, about history, food and what we put in our bodies.

This is a surprising, informative, enlightening book filled with food history that blew me away and got me thinking. The author also talks about some superstitions and things that make you go what? The author has an entertaining yet sincere way of discussing food that is easy to read. I found it fascinating to learn the history of pies, where they were originated and where the American’s humble pie saying was originated.

The author brings up some weird food practices, thoughts on food and fears about different types of foods others thought as ok. Learning to use fire to cook food made it easier to chew and changed everything, how we prepared, ate, and shared food. I never gave it much thought.

Some chapter titles are Pie, Progress and Plymouth Rock, Breakfast of Champions, Children of the Corn, Honey Laundering, The Vanilla Society, The Ghosts of Cockaigne past, The Choices of a New Generation Forbidden Berries, The choices of a new generation, Attack of the Killer tomato.

I was fascinated by the talk about cereal and how it came to be. How it became the “breakfast of champions?” the author says, “…it’s a morning staple enjoyed by 93 percent of Americans,…prevalent on grocery lists that it not only gets its own aisle in the supermarket but plays a key role in the psychology… cereal transcends race, social class, age, gender – and even dietary guidelines,…”For many people, it’s the one food that they still eat sitting down, at a table, or with family.”

The evolution of the breakfast cereal was fascinating. Another game changer in the way we eat was how the drive thru was created. The author packs a bunch in this 288 page book that will have you looking at your food in a very different way, especially when you learn about honey and corn.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have received a complimentary copy of this book by the publisher through NetGalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”

Nora St. Laurent
TBCN Where Book Fun Begins!
The Book Club Network blog www.bookfun.org

Siegel, Matt. The Secret History of Food. digital. 2021. HarperAudio. $20.99. ISBN 9780062973238.

Foodies and trivia lovers will eat up this irreverent and fascinating book about the origins, misconceptions, science, and subculture behind certain foods and spices. Author, Matt Siegel, digs deep to uncover weirdly entertaining facts about food that will leave readers both fascinated and moderately disgusted. From the origins of a well known cereal, to mummified heads in honey, to the most expensive and exotic spice in the world being used to describe boring sex lives; The Secret History of Food has something in it for everyone. Over the course of ten chapters, Siegel spills the beans on so many different "common" foods, that walking into the grocery store or showing up at a potluck with your favorite dish will never be the same again. Brilliantly read by Roger Wayne who effuses energy and hilarity into his narration. A feast for the mind. - Erin Cataldi, Johnson Co. Public Library, Franklin, IN

Historical book, which imparts us about the history of food.