Book Review: At the Table: Food and Family around the World

Abstract

Humans are losing their tradition of the daily family meal. When everyone in the family works multiple jobs or keeps different schedules, when people never learned how to cook, or when there simply is no money to buy enough food, the challenge of keeping a family intact becomes greater. The family dinner, once a daily ritual in countries around the world, has become a historical relic as well as a cultural phenomenon among cultures that can sustain such a tradition. One can publish a book about the challenges of keeping the daily family dinner alive, or one can publish an encyclopedia of the typical daily family dinner traditions of every culture. While Dr. Ken Albala has the expertise and connections to accomplish both feats, he has struggled to do so in his latest edited volume At the Table: Food and Family around the World.