Still Life with Ham, by Philippe Rousseau, c. 1870. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1982.

Food

Volume IV, Number 3 | summer 2011

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Still Life, by Carstian Luyckx, c. 1640. Columbus Museum of Art.

Preamble

The Midas Touch

By Lewis H. Lapham

The times change, and with them what, where, and how people eat.

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The Harvesters, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565. The Metropolitian Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1919.

Balanced Diets

By Daniel Mason

Pica is an unexplainable food curiosity—the overwhelming desire to eat the inedible.

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Map

Food Chains

Tracing the world travels of tomato, pepper, and coffee.

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Miscellany

Paul Newman’s character amazingly eats fifty hard-boiled eggs in one hour in Cool Hand Luke. 141 hard-boiled eggs eaten in eight minutes is the actual world record, held by Joey Chestnut.

1854 | Walden

Civil Abstinence

To fish or not to fish, that is the question.More

1724 | Block Island

Principle Versus Inclination

Ben Franklin rationalizes his seafood dinner.More

1771 | London

Tasting the Sweet and Sour

Tobias Smollett is definitely tired of London.More

Charts & Graphs

Melting Pots

The evolution of “national” dishes.

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American journalist Barbara Demick.

Sufi mystic and poet Rumi.

American cook and author Julia Child.

American chef, author, and television personality Anthony Bourdain.

English novelist and writer Frances Trollope.

Engraving of Roman poet Horace.

Black and white image of Greek biographer and writer Plutarch.

Painted portrait of English poet John Milton.

The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886

Ovid & Les Murray

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