The History of Food

Author: Amos Tu / He Shuping (USA)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: Farming, only then can crops grow, let us harvest. Oh, land, why are you so stingy? Why must I toil in the fields until my sweat pours like rain? Without labor, giving food would be a fault? The land smiled gently and said: That would increase my fame somewhat, but you would lose your humanity. — Tagore
The joy at the dining table belongs to every era and dynasty, to every country and every day. It moves forward alongside the other pleasures in our lives, even more enduring than they. When we lose other pleasures, it remains with us, bringing solace. At the dining table, we come to know the entire world. The food on our plates reveals the secrets of the past and present of humanity: our roles, relationships, and social status. From eating raw meat and drinking blood to lavish feasts, the history of human progress is also the history of the evolution of food. Whether gentlemen or wild men, at their roots, eating is perhaps humanity's resistance and fear against nature over ten thousand years, and this resistance triggers the ancient questions: What to eat? How to eat? The ten thousand years of human civilization have provided the best footnotes to the answers to these questions.