Consuming Canada

During the Second World War, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, public health officials warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished Canadians to "Eat Right" because "Canada Needs You Strong" while cookbooks helped housewives become "housoldiers" through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household production. Ian Mosby explores the symbolic and material transformations that food and eating underwent as the Canadian state took unprecedented steps into the kitchens of the nation, changing the way women cooked, what their families ate, and how people thought about food. Canadians, in turn, rallied around food and nutrition to articulate new visions of citizenship for a new peacetime social order.

Food nourishes the body, but our relationship with food extends far beyond our need for survival. Food choices not only express our personal tastes but also communicate a range of beliefs, values, affiliations and aspirations—sometimes to the exclusion of others. In the media sphere, the enormous amount of food-related advice provided by government agencies, advocacy groups, diet books, and so on compete with efforts on the part of the food industry to sell their product and to respond to a consumer-driven desire for convenience. As a result, the topic of food has grown fraught, engendering sometimes acrimonious debates about what we should eat, and why. By examining topics such as the values embedded in food marketing, the locavore movement, food tourism, dinner parties, food bank donations, the moral panic surrounding obesity, food crises, and fears about food safety, the contributors to this volume paint a rich, and sometimes unsettling portrait of how food is represented, regulated, and consumed in Canada. With chapters from leading scholars such as Ken Albala, Harvey Levenstein, Stephen Kline and Valerie Tarasuk, the volume also includes contributions from “food insiders”—bestselling cookbook author and food editor Elizabeth Baird and veteran restaurant reviewer John Gilchrist. The result is a timely and thought-provoking look at food as a system of communication through which Canadians articulate cultural identity, personal values, and social distinction. Contributors include Ken Albala, Elizabeth Baird, Jacqueline Botterill, Rebecca Carruthers Den Hoed, Catherine Carstairs, Nathalie Cooke, Pierre Desrochers, Josh Greenberg, Stephen Kline, Jordan Lebel, Harvey Levenstein, Wayne McCready, Irina Mihalache, Eric Pateman, Rod Phillips, Sheilagh Quaile, Melanie Rock, Paige Schell, and Valerie Tarasuk.