Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation

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A topical, informative and entertaining history of food preservation and waste in Britain from the sixteenth-century kitchen to the emergence of food justice movements in the present day. By exploring the many ingenious ways in which our ancestors sought to extend the life of food, Leftovers opens a window on the lives and values of ordinary people in the past, revealing how such factors as wealth, inequality and religious doctrine have shaped perceptions of food waste from Elizabethan times to the twenty-first century. Embracing a wide historical span that takes in Tudor household management, the introduction of new methods of food preservation during the Industrial Revolution; state promotion of the avoidance of food waste in two World Wars, and the politics of food in the era of sustainability, Leftovers links its central historical focus to humanitarian and environmental issues of urgent contemporary interest including the impacts of globalisation and scientific advancement, wealth and gender divisions, and the relationship of human beings with plants and animals.

Author Bio

Eleanor Barnett holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has recently been awarded a Leverhulme research fellowship. Her work uses food as a lens through which to access the daily lives of ordinary people as well as wider cultural, economic, political and religious historical processes. As @historyeats on Instagram, she posts daily food history stories, paintings and objects from across the world to a wide audience, and she is a regular contributor to radio and other public-facing media. Leftovers is her first non-fiction title.