Canned

By Anna Zeide,

Book cover of Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry

Book description

2019 James Beard Foundation Book Award winner: Reference, History, and Scholarship

A century and a half ago, when the food industry was first taking root, few consumers trusted packaged foods. Americans had just begun to shift away from eating foods that they grew themselves or purchased from neighbors. With the…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Canned as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Today most foods American consumers purchase are packaged. A hundred years ago this wasn’t so.

This is a dramatic change in how we get our food, what we know about it, and what we even think food is. Zeide’s book is an important read because she takes us through this with one of the earliest forms of packaged food: canned foods.

Her discussions of how the canning industry overcame food safety concerns with canned products and consumer resistance to the idea of canned as less fresh, less palatable, and cheap helped me to rethink the different ways a packaged food…

Want books like Canned?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 47 books like Canned.

Browse books like Canned

Book cover of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
Book cover of Visualizing Taste: How Business Changed the Look of What You Eat
Book cover of Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,171

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the food system, food industry, and presidential biography?

The Food System 18 books
Food Industry 34 books