About this item
We are what we eat, as the saying goes, but we are also how we eat, and when, and where. Our eating habits reveal as much about our society as the food on our plates, and our national identity is written in the eating schedules we follow and the customs we observe at the table and on the go.In Three Squares, food historian Abigail Carroll upends the popular understanding of our most cherished mealtime traditions, revealing that our eating habits have never been stable—far from it, in fact. The eating patterns and ideals we’ve inherited are relatively recent inventions, the products of complex social and economic forces, as well as the efforts of ambitious inventors, scientists and health gurus. Whether we’re pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, grabbing a quick sandwich, or congregating for a family dinner, our mealtime habits are living artifacts of our collective history—and represent only the latest stage in the evolution of the American meal.
About the Author
Abigail Carroll is author of A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim (Eerdmans 2017) . Her poetry has appeared in the anthology Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide (Paraclete Press 2016) as well as in a variety of magazines and literary journals, including the Anglican Theological Review, The Christian Century, Crab Orchard Review, Midwest Quarterly, Sojourners, and Terrain. Her first book, Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal, was a finalist for the Zocalo Public Square Book Prize. Carroll serves as pastor of arts and spiritual formation at Church at the Well in Burlington, Vermont.
