UCSF

AbstractScholars of flavour and food preferences have shown us that a surprisingly difficult question to answer is, "why do you eat what you eat?" In "The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food," Adam Gopnik attempts to address this and a similarly vexing question, "why do we care so much about our food?" by tracing the roots of what happens at the dinner table. Written with both everyday eaters and scholars of food in mind, Gopnik interweaves ideas about the development and meanings of taste with the historical and social circumstances around which we make choices about food and evaluate flavors.