CHEW: Roots of the American Food Industry, May 2

Culinary History Enthusiasts of Wisconsin

“Finding the Roots of the American Food Industry Beneath the Cannery Floor” by Anna Zeide

May 2 at 7:15 PM Goodman Atwood Community Center, Bolz Room A;
149 Waubesa Street, Madison 53704; 608-241-1574

Before there were the food industry giants of today, there were small, independent canning companies, spread across the eastern half of the United States. From these humble beginnings grew the huge industry we know today, which has increasingly come under attack for what many commentators see as the negative effects the industry's products have on our country's health, economy, and environment. These effects are underpinned by the industry's manipulation of consumers through media, of government agencies through lobbyists, and of science through industry-funded research. But these features are not products of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Rather, these complex relationships find their roots over a hundred years earlier, in the late nineteenth century, when the modern food industry first began to take shape, on the cannery floor. This talk will offer stories about the birth and growth of commercial canning.

Anna Zeide is a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the Program for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology. She is active in many food and community initiatives at the University and throughout Madison. Anna writes about food ethics and politics on her blog, Dining and Opining, and on the environmental website, Grist.