Synopses & Reviews
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 stablefar from it, in fact. The eating patterns and ideals weve 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 were 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 historyand represent only the latest stage in the evolution of the American meal. Our early meals, Carroll explains, were rustic affairs, often eaten hastily, without utensils, and standing up. Only in the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution upset work schedules and drastically reduced the amount of time Americans could spend on the midday meal, did the shape of our modern three squares” emerge: quick, simple, and cold breakfasts and lunches and larger, sit-down dinners. Since evening was the only part of the day when families could come together, dinner became a ritualas American as apple pie. But with the rise of processed foods, snacking has become faster, cheaper, and easier than ever, and many fear for the fate of the cherished family meal as a result.
The story of how the simple gruel of our forefathers gave way to snack fixes and fast food, Three Squares also explains how Americans eating habits may change in the years to come. Only by understanding the history of the American meal can we can help determine its future.
Review
Mark Pendergrast, author of For God, Country and Coca-Cola and Uncommon GroundsIn Three Squares, Abigail Carroll has filled a gaping hole in our fetish for food histories. There are books on peanut butter, pumpkins, pancakes, milk, fried chicken, chocolatethe list goes onbut now we have the big picture. Learn here how the Industrial Revolution, television, and Mad Men affected how, when, and what we eat. Youll never look at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and between-meal snacks the same way again.”
Review
Concord MonitorA fascinating, readable history.”
Kirkus
"An information-packed history of American eating habits
[An] enjoyable history of American food culture."
Mark Pendergrast, author of For God, Country and Coca-Cola and Uncommon Grounds
In Three Squares, Abigail Carroll has filled a gaping hole in our fetish for food histories. There are books on peanut butter, pumpkins, pancakes, milk, fried chicken, chocolatethe list goes onbut now we have the big picture. Learn here how the Industrial Revolution, television, and Mad Men affected how, when, and what we eat. Youll never look at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and between-meal snacks the same way again.”
Bee Wilson, author of Consider the Fork
I was enthralled by this account of how radically Americas meals have changed over time, from dinner pails to TV dinners. This vividly written book makes you see that the American way of life at any given moment has been formed by meals. We meet the stander-uppers who ate quick cold working meals at lunch counters and the nineteenth-century critics who feared that six oclock dinner would destroy health. Three Squares shows that the tradition of an evening family meal, taken at a table, is a relatively recent innovation; but one with the power to improve not just our health but our vocabulary. Family meals, it turns out, are more beneficial to childrens word banks than play or having adults read to them. With warmth and scholarship, Abigail Carroll persuades us that much depends on breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as all the snacks in between.”
Barbara Haber, author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals
As Abigail Carroll so skillfully explains, the pattern of American mealsthree squares a dayis not a static entity but rather a social construction that has changed over time. By using imaginative sources and asking pertinent questions, Carroll traces not only the evolution of meals but of the people who have consumed them.”
Andrew F. Smith, author of Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine
Why do Americans eat what we eat at breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Abigail Carroll examines the American meal from colonial times to the present in Three Squares, providing delicious insights along the way. Three Squares is superbly researched, delightfully written, packed with insightsand easy to digest!”
Warren Belasco, author of Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food, and Visiting Professor of Gastronomy, Boston University
Combining scholarly rigor with lively storytelling, Abigail Carroll offers a fresh look at American culinary history. Resisting the nostalgia often associated with discussion of family meals, Carroll argues that American dining rituals are relatively modern and are constantly evolving to meet contemporary needs and values. This masterful synthesis will delight both professional scholars as well as newcomers to the exciting new field of food history. Highly recommended!”
Sandy Oliver, author of Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Food at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century
With Three Squares, Abigail Carroll gives us a very long view of American dining habits, beginning with life in colonial times and ending in the 21st century. With sometimes startling descriptions of the ad hoc eating that occurred on either side of a main noon meal in our earliest years, we witness the impact of away-from-home work in industry and commerce that appropriated the middle of the day and left us with cold, quick, and cheap lunches. The story of breakfast cereal and snack foods and the erosion of the properly set, middle-class dinner table with everyone minding their manners caps this fascinating narrative.”
Anne Fishel, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School, and consultant to The Family Dinner Project
You will never look at your three meals a day, or snacks throughout the day, the same way after you read this fascinating, well researched book. For anyone interested in food, this book is a must. It tells the historical stories and elucidates the business forces that underpin our current eating practices.”
Synopsis
We are what we eat, as the saying goesbut we are also how we eat, and when, and where. Our eating habits reveal as much about our national identity as the food on our plates, as food historian Abigail Carroll vividly demonstrates in
Three Squares. Reaching back to colonial America, when settlers enjoyed a single, midday meal, Carroll shows how later generations of Americans abandoned this utilitarian habit for more civilized, circumscribed rituals, trading in rustic pottages and puddings for complex roasts, sides, desserts, andincreasinglyprocessed foods. These new foodstuffs became the staples of breakfast and lunch in the late nineteenth century, and even brought with them a new eating tradition: snacking, which effectively transformed the American meal into one never-ending opportunity for indulgence.
Revealing how the simple gruel of our forefathers gave way to cheese puffs and moon pies, Three Squares fascinatingly traces the rise and fall of the American meal.
About the Author
Abigail Carroll is an independent author focusing on American food history. She holds a PhD in American and New England Studies from Boston University, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, among other publications. Carroll lives in Winooski, Vermont.