Book Review: United States of Arugula

My favorite dinner was peanut butter on white toast for a certain period of my childhood. I turned up my nose to meatloaf, frozen peas and many other frozen vegetables. If it was green, I did not want it on my plate. Yet the landscape of what children put in their lunch boxes has changed dramatically over the past 30 years. Sushi is in school cafeterias; school pizzas are topped with sun dried tomatoes, and even if they are not, kids wish that it were so. I think that many kids would still protest if they found brussel sprouts at the dinner table, but the spectrum of acceptable flavors and textures has augmented dramatically in the past couple of decades. And not just amongst kids.

To gain a better understanding of why olive bars are frequented, well more frequently, I recently devoured David Kamp's United States of Arugula. Kamp's history of American food culture is driven by personalities. Economic factors such as the advent of just-in-time supply chain management and the development of hybrid varieties capable of weathering long distances make no appearance in his analysis. One knows that these and other very boring economic factors influenced changes in food culture, but it is simply more entertaining to hear how the chortles of Julia, inner-temptations of James Beard and the coke-driven madness of Jeremiah Towers changed what we eat for dinner.

The book is mainly the journey of those who put down their jello molds, frozen peas and hamburger-helper mix. Americans already eating kim-chee, burritos, and caprese salads as a part of their family traditions are laregly ignored. Yet, all of us can now get arugula salads at McDonald's. We all see celebrity chefs on the Today show with regularity, and I am fairly certain that many Americans can name more famous chefs and foodies than U.S. senators (and I am not saying that this is a bad thing). Even with the omission of ethnic diversity and economic factors, I would recommend this book. Kamp writes a witty and convincing tale of idiosyncratic Americans propelling us into a new reality in which there is chevre in my neighborhood bodega, Chipotle offers free range meat and curious Americans will stroll to their local farmer's market on Saturday morning to see how the swiss chard is looking these days.