Studying Supper

We are living in a moment of intense gastronomic introspection.

Bestselling American books such as Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals have stirred up feelings of profound unease about what is on our plates and how it got there. Since food production and distribution between our two countries are closely entwined, the anxiety about food seeps across the border.

The innocent era of Julia Child, who persuaded North Americans that food was a simple, unalloyed pleasure, whatever its source, environmental impact or nutritional content, cannot be brought back no matter how hard blogger Julie Powell and film maker Nora Ephron have tried.

It is not surprising, then, that a tasty branch of academic study is rapidly emerging to examine rigorously the history and meaning of our...