The Warmest Room in the House or The Way We Eat

The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home

Author: Maury Klein

The first book that puts the hearth of the American home—its many unique challenges and innovations—in its proper place in contemporary history.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that if you really want to understand the workings of a society, you have to “look into their pots” and “eat their bread.” Steven Gdula gives us a view of American culture from the most popular room in the house: the kitchen. Examining the relationship between trends and innovations in the kitchen and the cultural attitudes beyond its four walls, Gdula creates a lively portrait of the last hundred years of American domestic life. The Warmest Room in the House explores food trends and technology, kitchen design, appliances and furniture, china and flatware, cookery bookery, food lit, and much more.
Gdula traces the evolution of the kitchen from the back room where the work of the home happened to its place at the center of family life and entertainment today. Filled with fun facts about food trends, from Hamburger Helper to The Moosewood Cookbook, and food personalities, from Julia Child to Rachael Ray, The Warmest Room in the House is the perfect addition to any well-rounded kitchen larder.
 

Kirkus Reviews

Superficial, research-skimpy overview of middle-class American innovations in the 20th-century kitchen. Freelance journalist Gdula's warm-and-fuzzy chronological narrative of America's industry-driven tastes barely takes into account the history of cooking before 1900 and largely neglects this country's staggering regional and class differences. Frequently settling for such lazy summaries as, "changes were occurring so quickly in American society," he always means middle-class, white society. Suddenly, by 1900, the "down-hearth fireplace" of prairie living was replaced by the freestanding cook stove, transforming the kitchen from a hot, dangerous place into a welcoming center of the house to which even guests were invited. The new century's lady of the house saw herself as a domestic scientist, thanks to cooking primers by Sarah Tyson Rorer and Fannie Farmer. Guesswork was eschewed in favor of measurement, and public awareness of food contamination spread thanks to Upton Sinclair (The Jungle) and others. The U.S. government passed the Pure Food Act of 1907, and sanitary measures became de rigueur, as evidenced by the advent of better lighting, linoleum and the Hoosier cabinet. The consolidation of industry during World War I ushered innovations into the kitchen: canning, calorie counting, Borden's condensed milk and Pyrex. Boxed cold cereal and sliced bread miraculously appeared in the 1920s, the Waring Blender, SPAM and Fiestaware in the Depression. Victory gardens and vitamins helped Americans stay healthy during World War II, and wartime experiments such as Teflon and aluminum foil ended up in the kitchen. Access to refrigeration, plastics and frozen French fries promised to make thekitchen less of a scullery in the 1950s. From the '60s onward, Julia Childs and others familiarized Americans with the preparation of international cuisine. From dieting to genetically modified foods, Gdula skates through a century of America's eating habits, regurgitating articles from magazines and offering few fresh ideas.

Read also Management Fundamentals or Consumer Behavior

The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter

Author: Peter Singer

A thought-provoking look at how what we eat profoundly affects all living things—and how we can make more ethical food choices

Five Principles for Making Conscientious Food Choices
1. Transparency: We have the right to know how our food is produced.
2. Fairness: Producing food should not impose costs on others.
3. Humanity: Inflicting unnecessary suffering on animals is wrong.
4. Social Responsibility: Workers are entitled to decent wages and working conditions.
5. Needs: Preserving life and health justifies more than other desires.

Peter Singer, the groundbreaking ethicist who "may be the most controversial philosopher alive" (The New Yorker), now sets his critical sights on the food we buy and eat: where it comes from, how it’s produced, and whether it was raised humanely. Teaming up once again with attorney Jim Mason, his coauthor on the acclaimed Animal Factories, Singer explores the impact our food choices have on humans, animals, and the environment.

In The Way We Eat, Singer and Mason examine the eating habits of three American families with very different diets. They track down the sources of each family’s food to probe the ethical issues involved in its production and marketing. What kinds of meat are most humane to eat? Is "organic" always better? Wild fish or farmed? Recognizing that not all of us will become vegetarians, Singer and Mason offer ways to make the best food choices. As they point out: "You can be ethical without being fanatical."