Authenticity?

Edward Hopper “Chop Suey” (1929): Authentic American Chinese cuisine.

Yesterday I wrote a review of the book The Best American Food Writing 2020, a collection of short pieces from a variety of online and print magazines, predominantly The New Yorker, New York Times, Eater, and Serious Eats. I mentioned that a recurring theme in these writings was authenticity, which is introduced in the foreword to the collection:

"Stories about people, places, authenticity, and the rich diversity of America’s food scene seemed particularly relevant as the question of what it means to be American has been at the core of recent politics."

The idea of authentic tacos, authentic Chinese food, authentic Soul Food, and other authentic ethnic cuisine is debated, along with the idea of cultural appropriation -- which means white people making ethnic food (authentic or not) and using their economic advantages to finance their efforts, thus edging out the ethnic people who are poorer and don't have those advantages. Several buzz words or a "signifiers," make up a food writing vocabulary that speaks "to a contemporary antibourgeois bourgeois culture that selects for 'authenticity,' 'mindfulness,' and 'transparency'" (p. 207). 

Chinese food is especially subject to disputes over  what is "authentic." The essay by Dan Nosowitz, "What the Heck Is Crab Rangoon Anyway?" explores this topic in a most interesting way. His view:

"Crab rangoon is not inauthentic, and you should not be embarrassed to order it. American Chinese food is its own cuisine, with its own staples and a reasonably long and fascinating history. There’s a fundamental problem with the concept of authenticity in food, because cuisine is constantly mutating and adapting to new ingredients, new people, new techniques, and new ideas. Mexican food would be completely different without the influence of the Spanish and Arab immigrants and colonists; the tomato is not native to Italy; the chili pepper is not native to Thailand. There are old dishes and there are newer dishes, and that can be an interesting distinction. And there is tasty food and lousy food, but using some concept of authenticity alone as a criteria is a flawed approach." (p. 225). 

The essay by José R. Rala called "The Demand for 'Authenticity' Is Threatening Kansas City’s Homegrown Tacos" is a discussion of a particular type of tacos that emerged in Kansas City years ago, but is now viewed as inauthentic. However these tacos have a convincing history in the long-established Mexican immigrant community of the area. In 1958 the Spanish Gardens Taco House was opened by a member of this community. "On the restaurant’s menu were enchiladas, tamales, chili, and a regional specialty that developed as a result of the proximity of the area’s Italian and Mexican communities: fried tacos topped with a ketchup-like 'taco sauce' and Parmesan cheese." They were rolled, fastened with a toothpick, and fried. "The popularity of crunchy, toothpick-sealed Kansas City tacos only rose throughout the 1960s and ’70s." Now, thanks to Yelp, these taco places are much less popular, due in part to "the viral nature of media like Yelp reviews that claim the taco is not truly Mexican." (p. 76).

Indeed, Yelp reviewers turn out to be a major proponent of a particularly vile use of the concept of what is authentic, specifically, in propagating a particularly racist view of ethnic restaurants. In Sara Kay's research report, she makes this case very convincingly: "Yelp Reviewers’ Authenticity Fetish Is White Supremacy in Action." She writes:

"The term 'authenticity' is everywhere. Pundits claim that millennials crave it, restaurants boast authentic dining experiences, and Foursquare asks us to make judgments about it. These claims, often used as markers of quality, are employed by diners and restaurateurs alike— often used by owners to evoke a homespun or faraway romanticism. Nowhere does that come into play more than on user-based review sites like Yelp." (p. 230). 

"When reviewers picture authenticity in ethnic food, they mentally reference all the experiences they’ve had before with that cuisine and the people who make it— and most of the time, reviewers view those experiences, whether from personal interaction or from interacting with media, as not positive. Reviews tend to reflect the racism already existing in the world; people’s biases come into play. According to my data, the average Yelp reviewer connotes 'authentic' with characteristics such as dirt floors, plastic stools, and other patrons who are nonwhite, when reviewing non-European restaurants." (p. 231).

"And when reviewers use 'authentic,' they put unfair expectations on restaurateurs to maintain a low set of standards for their establishment— much lower than any restaurant serving Western cuisines. The language directly supports a hierarchy where white, Western cuisine is allowed more creative latitude to expand, explore, and generate profits than its non-Western counterparts. The use of 'authenticity' in the dining landscape is counterintuitive. Its usage to promote white supremacist norms furthers an atmosphere that’s antithetical to the spirit of authenticity. The language of authenticity holds up the supremely inauthentic— a single ideology that supports possibly the most powerful social group: white people." (pp. 233-236).  

Several other essays in Best American Food Writing 2020 also touch on the development of "authenticity" as a way to critique foods and restaurants. For some time, I've been very suspicious of the way this idea is used -- I've written a number of blog posts about other discussions of the topic, particularly on the subject of American Chinese food and Chop Suey Restaurants of the early 20th century (especially this one: What is authentic?) I've therefore found the theme of "authenticity" in this book particularly interesting.

Also interesting but outside the realm of "food writing" -- a number of food shows on Netflix seem obsessed with authenticity of various cuisines. Many episodes of Chef's Table created by David Gelb, Ugly Delicious with David Chang, the Taco Chronicles, and probably others emphasize the "authenticity" of whatever cuisine they are covering -- and they cover a lot! I especially remember one episode where three of the major explorers of "authentic" cuisine gathered at the same time: the late Jonathan Gold, Gustavo Arellano, and David Chang. 

Blog post © 2020 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

"The Cooking Gene" and "The Potlikker Papers"

Two books I've read recently represent two fascinating ways to look at the history of the cuisine of the American South. Each one, in its own way, takes a new and highly imaginative orientation to southern food and the people who created it and continue to cook and eat it. There's amazingly little overlap between the two books because each author has found such an original way to approach the subject. The books are also somewhat connected: at some point, each of these authors quotes the other.

The Cooking Gene

Michael Twitty's book is a memoir, a search for his roots, and an effort to see American Black history clearly. He writes: "This book is about finding and honoring the soul of my people’s food by looking deep within my past and my family’s story." The Cooking Gene (p. 6).

His approach to finding his identity involves three things. First, he tries to learn everything he can about his ancestors -- both black and white. He employs every means available, including a professional genealogist, several DNA analyses, and many interviews with family members and with people who turned up in his research.

Second, he researches the entire history of black people in America and their ancestors in Africa, with very nuanced attention to the numerous regions, languages, and ethnic groups in that vast continent. He calls his travels in search of his people a "Southern Discomfort Tour."

Third, Twitty explores the foodways of his people and the incredibly intertwined influences of Africa on the African American foods. Obviously, the role of slavery and the post-Civil War efforts to deny freed black people civil rights or human rights play a large part in his search. His studies include agricultural practices (like the import of rice-growing techniques along with the slaves who brought them to the South); food preparation techniques and preferences brought from Africa; and food words derived from a variety of African languages.

Hands-on experience is also relevant: Twitty participates in re-enactments of kitchen activities at Colonial Williamsburg. He summarizes his feelings thus: "whenever I walk into the space of a plantation kitchen I am confronted with the dual legacy of the Southern food heritage— these were not neutral spaces; these were places of power against the enslaved in the most dehumanizing ways possible." The Cooking Gene (p. 107).

The Cooking Gene is a complex, long, and very involved narrative. Twitty's research into historic sources about American history in the South is extensive and very enlightening. He includes many quotes about the meals people ate at various times in the past, meals usually cooked and served by black slaves or later black hired help. He also includes a number of poignant quotes that show the incredible brutality of slavery. Some of the first-hand descriptions of how slaves were sold and their families broken up were so powerful that I couldn't bear to read them in their entirety.

A few paragraphs that I think capture the book's spirit:

"Traditional African religions have a complex understanding of food in the service of faith. Food is often a necessary vehicle between one’s ancestors or the spiritual forces that guide their destiny. Each one has its favorite foods." The Cooking Gene (p. 59).

Benne wafers remain a popular treat:
I noticed these at Trader Joe's!

"No African American language in the United States preserved more vocabulary from West and central African tongues than Gullah-Geechee, spoken on the subtropical coast of South Carolina and Georgia. When they spoke of a hog (gulu) or of wine (mavalu) or okra (kingumbo) or of the types of edible rodents (gone) they hunted at the edge of the rice marsh, they used words from Kikongo and Kimbundu. When they spoke of rice (malo), sesame (benne), and hunted heron, po’ Joe (podzo), and fished for catfish (wa maut), they were using words from Manding, Wolof, Vai, and Mende. They had Akan day names and their English equivalents, and the names of Yoruba gods, and when they grieved they sang mourning songs nearly word for word carried in the hull of the slave ship." The Cooking Gene (p. 182).

"The domestic slave trade was the largest forced migration in American history, and during the antebellum period enslaved African Americans could expect to be sold or transferred as property two or three times during their lifetimes. The black body was the single most valuable commodity in the American marketplace between the years 1790 and 1860." The Cooking Gene (p. 321). 

"It is not enough to be white at the table. It is not enough to be black at the table. It is not enough to be 'just human' at the table. Complexity must come with us— in fact it will invite itself to the feast whether we like it or not. We can choose to acknowledge the presence of history, economics, class, cultural forces, and the idea of race in shaping our experience, or we can languish in circuitous arguments over what it all means and get nowhere. I present my journey to you as a means out of the whirlwind, an attempt to tell as much truth as time will allow." The Cooking Gene (pp. 403-404). 

The Potlikker Papers 

John Edge's book The Potlikker Papers is a more straightforward history of southern food including the foodways of many races and ethnic groups. European and African people, obviously. Native Americans, obviously. But also many recent immigrants from Mexico, South America, and several countries in Asia.

Edge begins his book with the 1960s and the connection of food to the struggle for civil rights for the incredibly abused black population. He considers why sit-ins at diners were particularly apt, covering the history of extreme segregation of the races by looking at the stories of a number of individual activists. It's wonderful history, and I was quite surprised to find this highly political start to a book that I expected to be just another food book!

I enjoyed the political history, and I also appreciated Edge's broad view of what southern food is -- much broader than most writers. He talks about the romantic view of southern food, and he criticizes writers who are unrealistic -- "fabulists," he calls them. He points out how things like pit barbecue and the like are constantly "rediscovered." The following paragraphs capture the way he does this:

"Citizens have been alternately claiming, dismissing, and reclaiming American culinary identities since the early days of the republic." -- The Potlikker Papers (p. 282).

"Every ten years, America discovered some facet of Southern cuisine, held it at arm’s length to admire, and showered praise on its makers before moving on. A 1960s love affair with soul food was, at its core, a fascination with the foods of rural Southerners who moved to the urban South and the industrial North. A grits and peanuts fad coincided with the 1976 election of Jimmy Carter. In the 1980s, when chefs like Paul Prudhomme interpreted the region and its larder, they had it both ways. ... The burst of creativity that began in the 1990s proved the longest, as chefs revived the crops, livestock, techniques, and traditions that previous generations had left to wither on the vine." The Potlikker Papers (pp. 288-289). 

"A new kind of hybridized South emerged in the twenty-first century. Chinese groceries in Jackson, Mississippi, stocked Louisiana-grown rice, marketed to Asian shoppers under the Jazzmen label, an elision of the term jasmine rice. Plastered with images of Louis Armstrong, the bags depicted the jazz great smiling broadly and blowing his horn. At strip mall charcuterie shops in Houston, Vietnamese artisans perfumed lunch meats with fish sauce and steamed bologna rolls in banana leaves. In Atlanta, Viet Cajun restaurants boiled crawfish in lemongrass broth and pressed sugarcane juice to order through wall-mounted rollers." The Potlikker Papers (p. 338). 

I find this paragraph by Twitty to be an interesting comparison to some of the material in Edge's book:

"Highly spicing meats; the roasting of whole goats; the use of peppery sauces or pepper vinegar; parboiling in some cases; the use of the wooden grill framework; the long and slow cooking process; sauces that utilized tomatoes, onions, peppers, and the like; and the social context of barbecue— as a tool to promote social conviviality and community— hearken back to the culture’s African roots. Even as barbecue certainly has roots among Native Americans and Europeans, it was enslaved Africans and their descendants who became heir to multiple traditions and, in turn, incorporated those traditions into a standard repertoire known as Southern barbecue." The Cooking Gene (p. 311). 

Writer of this review: Mae at maefood dot blogspot dot com. 

If you are reading this elsewhere, it has been stolen. 

"The Idiot" by Elif Batuman

"Spiderwebs attached themselves, like long trails of agglutinative suffixes, onto our arms and faces." 

In her novel The Idiot, writer Elif Batuman loves linguistics. The sentence above, which occurs near the end of the book, is the only simile I've ever seen that uses a linguistic concept that way.  In The Idiot, a young woman, Selim, narrates the story of her first year at Harvard, and her following summer in Hungary. Quite near the beginning of the book, she describes her choice of courses for the year, especially a linguistics course:

I went to Linguistics 101, to see what linguistics was about. It was about how language was a biological faculty, hardwired into the brain— infinite, regenerative, never the same twice. The highest law, higher than Holy Scripture, was “the intuition of a native speaker,” a law you couldn’t find in any grammar book or program into any computer. Maybe that was what I wanted to learn.

As she describes her circumstances, her roommates, the people she meets, and so on, she also tells about her linguistics class, listing quite a few topics:

We learned that, because language was a universal human instinct, no human was bad at grammar— not even toddlers or black people. That’s what the book said: you might think that toddlers and black people had no grammar, but if you analyzed their utterances, they were actually following grammatical rules so sophisticated that they couldn’t be programmed into any computer.

A very important part of the class: "We learned about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which said that the language you spoke affected how you processed reality." Processing reality and using languages easily is in fact a major theme of the book. Selim constantly meets people with different native languages, and constantly deals with her own background: she was brought up in America by native speakers of Turkish, and often had visited her relatives in Turkey. In addition, she describes the varied linguistic backgrounds of the students in her Russian class.

As she proceeds through the semester, she feels she needs more:

Something basic about language had started to escape me. I thought I could fix it by taking classes. I signed up for a seminar on the philosophy of language. The point of the seminar turned out to be to come up with a theory such that, if a Martian read it, the Martian would understand what it is that we know when we know a language. To cover all the bases, I also signed up for a class on psycholinguistics.

By the following summer, Selim, who has been trying to understand something elusive about language goes to Hungary. She's supposed to teach English to villagers, but she's constantly looking for similarities between Turkish and Hungarian language usage. She also becomes somewhat fascinated by phrase books such as one that "translated between Russian, Esperanto, Hungarian, German, and English." Some of the phrases: “We would like to know more about the rest cures (sanatoriums) of your country.” “We would like to talk to the workers.” “I am a Communist (Socialist, Democrat, Liberal).” “I am an atheist (Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim).” “I would like to see this lathe more closely.”

Looking as I always do at the way authors use food in their novels was also an interesting part of reading this book, as food works throughout the book in a similar way to language -- defining reality and embedding reality. For example, a fellow student at Harvard, Svetlana, was Russian, and takes Selim to a Russian deli:

Bells rang when we opened the shop door, and then the smell of salami and smoked fish hit us in the face like a curtain. Two clerks, one fat and one thin, stood behind a glass counter.  

“Hello,” Svetlana said in Russian.  

“‘Hello,’” said the clerks, somehow making it sound ironic. 

It was interesting to see so many Russian things: hard and soft cheeses, red and black caviar, stuffed cabbage, bliny, piroshki, pickled mushrooms, pickled herrings, a muddy tank of carp that were alive, but perhaps only barely, and a barrel full of challenging-looking rectangular sweets, in wrappers printed with sentimental Cyrillic writing and pictures of squirrels. There was a whole aisle in the dry-goods section devoted to Turkish products: Koska halvah, Tat pepper paste, Tamek rose-petal jam and canned grape leaves, and Eti biscuits. 

Eti meant Hittite— there had been a commercial when I was little with children chanting, “Hittite, Hittite, Hittite.” The Hittites had been beloved by all Turkish children, because Atatürk said the Turks were descended from them and that’s why it was okay for Anatolia to be the Turkish homeland. ...

It turned out that Svetlana knew all these brands, because they had had them in Belgrade, and that the words for eggplant, bean, chickpea, and sour cherry were the same in Serbo-Croatian as in Turkish. “It stands to reason,” she said, “since the Turks occupied Serbia for practically four hundred years.” I nodded as if I knew what she was talking about.

In Hungary the following summer, Selim is constantly invited to people's houses. Her experiences are somewhat strange; frequently the topic is both food and language in one way or another. Like this:

“I brought you here because Gyula’s mother makes a very nice paprikás chicken with homemade noodles,” Margit whispered. 

Conversation at dinner circled around the ambiguous nomenclature of seasonal barleys. Gyula’s mother brought out an apple strudel and poured us all brandy. I drank the brandy because it was less trouble than explaining about not drinking it. On the way out, she pressed something warm, heavy, and yielding into my hands. It was wrapped in foil but it felt alive. It was another strudel.

I've now presented the parts of the book that I found amusing and interesting. Unfortunately, it's pretty long: maybe twice as long as it should be, and tedious in parts. I've read some pretty good articles by  Elif Batuman, who writes for the New Yorker, but I was somewhat disappointed in this novel. It was a contender for the Pulitzer Prize so I must be missing something: maybe I just don't really like books about the first year of college of a narrator (or the alter-ego of the author).

Pondering the Chimichanga

"Where did the chimichanga, the glorious deep-fried burrito, come from anyway?" is the title of an article currently at the top of the L.A.Times column "The Daily Dish." I found both the question and the varying answers quite fascinating. I must admit that I find chimichangas delicious, enormous, and pretty undigestible, so in my experience they are more a memory of something I used to eat than an anticipation of something I might order in a Mexican restaurant any time soon. Maybe that's what inspired me to look around for more about this story.

What's a chimi? On the small chance that you don't know, the L.A.Times writer Margy Rochlin explains that a chimichanga is "a deep-fried burrito stuffed with steak, chicken or what-have-you. By most accounts, the chimi was invented in Tucson and is no less integral a part of the city’s fabric." Being invented in Tucson means that the chimi might be considered fusion food, though in fact the cuisine of southern Arizona in the early-to-mid twentieth century is pretty authentic Mexican.

Here's a screen shot of the google imagery for this dish:

The Times article summarized the two main origin stories for chimichangas, both taking place in Arizona restaurants. One story takes place in the 1920s: a burrito accidentally falling in hot oil elicited a near-curse from the restaurant owner (a curse that turned out to be "chimichanga!" which sounds like some other expression, never explained, in Spanish). Of course the resulting deep-fried burrito was so delicious that the restaurant kept making and serving them. The other story involves a restaurant owner who wanted to use up semi-stale burritos so he deep-fried them. These folklore-like tales also appear in numerous other sources as well -- in the New York Times in 2011, in a Smithsonian-sponsored website "What it Means to be American," in a 2014 article by Gustavo Arellano, and on quite a few sites of restaurants that claim some connection with this history.

The writers who looked into the chimichanga origin story generally agreed that smaller deep-fried snacks appear in the cuisine of Mexican state Sonora, nearest state to Arizona. Arellano, whose book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America I quite enjoyed, suggests (maybe whimsically) that Chinese men who lived in Arizona and Sonora in the early 1900s often married Mexican women, and that the chimichanga is their effort to make egg rolls for their homesick husbands. He even tries to invent a linguistic explanation with a Chinese origin for the name "chimichanga," which I would say is utterly unconvincing!

Arellano warns his readers: "Let me also note that folk etymologies are notoriously inaccurate, that Mexican-food origin stories are frequently ludicrous, and that this mini-essay might be the most ludicrously inaccurate history of a Mexican foodstuff yet."

Words and Foods: Ciabatta Bread

Maybe it was the influence of the book The Language of Food, maybe just one of those conversations... but I found myself wondering what ciabatta bread was named for. Maybe it would be one of those fascinating historic trails like those in the book. Anyway, as I was toasting some odd-shaped slices of a Whole Foods ciabatta bread, I googled it. Ancient word root trail? Nope?

In Italian "ciabatta" evidently means slipper, I discovered. Some people don't get the connection, but I looked at my feet:

My slippers

Ciabbata bread (source with recipe )

What about that ancient trail to a prehistoric origin and deeply meaningful linguistic background? Sorry -- the long and fascinating history of ciabatta bread goes back to 1982. Italian bakers were desperate because imported French loaves were eating their lunch -- actually sort of the other way around, baguettes were being eaten for lunch instead of Italian bread. From the Guardian:

"July, 1982 ... at a mill in Adria, a town near Venice, a small band of dedicated flour experts talk dough. One of their number, Arnaldo Cavallari, a miller in his late forties, is especially excited. For years, Rome could only look on, horrified, as large-scale baguette imports from France threatened to monopolise the lucrative sandwich market in Italy. It was time to hit back with an equally commercially viable product. After weeks spent testing new dough mixes and bake-times, refining and adapting existing regional loaves and using his own mineral- and gluten-rich flour, Cavallari came up with Italy's very own dedicated snack bread. He called it Ciabatta Polesano. It was hailed as the bread that saved Italy, and rocked the sandwich world." (source)

Ciabatta has its characteristic floppy shape because it is made from a very wet dough, invented by Cavallari. It's become a widely popular sandwich bread in Italy, England, and the US -- theoretically bakeries who use the name ciabatta have to license the name from his bakery, but I have no idea if they really do.

Some dispute Cavallari's claims to the invention of ciabatta. They suggest the existence of similar traditional loaves in various parts of Italy. However, there are no proofs of the name being used earlier, it seems. In 1992, the New York Times described ciabatta as a recently-introduced faddish bread in New York, mentioning its wide popularity in England, but not its history -- see "DE GUSTIBUS; So What if It Looks Like an Old Shoe? Ciabatta Is Loved" by Florence Fabricant.

That's about all I can find -- the Wikipedia article and the Food Timeline don't have anything else! So much for historic depth.

Food Grammar

I just read this book: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu by Dan Jurafsky. The author is a linguistics professor at Stanford, a resident of San Francisco, a man who loves lots of different foods and food history. I think I found the book enjoyable because it combines several things I love with new ideas. I especially enjoyed the author's willingness to share lots of personal experiences about his wife, grandparents, and neighbors and what they all eat.

Here's what I love that is in the book and what I found new:

First, I love reading about food. Jurafsky names so many books I've read that I find it amazing. For example, his chapter on ice cream cites Elizabeth David's Harvest of the Cold Months: The Social History of Ice and Ices, which I read recently. His chapter on why the Chinese don't do dessert cites my old favorite Jennifer 8 Lee's Fortune Cookie Chronicles.

I loved learning Jurafsky's explanation of food words also -- like his reasons why ice cream names sound the way they do. He explains how new-fangled ice cream flavors often violate our culinary "grammar," for example by putting bacon into ice cream when meat is not part of the syntax of an American dessert.

Jurafsky is passionate about food history.  I love it too! For example, Jurafsky provides a fascinating history of the relationship of the words "macaroon," "macaron," and "macaroni." At first, macaroon and macaron were the same -- that was back when spelling was somewhat a matter of personal choice. But the spelling and the ingredients diverged some time in the 19th century. The French stuck to tradition going back to at least the Renaissance, and used almonds in the macarons. In America, a coconut craze inspired the changeover to the sticky coconut macaroons, which were enthusiastically made part of Jewish Passover cuisine because they have no flour. (Which reminds me -- he had a fascinating discussion of the history of the words "flower" and "flour" too, but I don't think I'll try to elaborate on it.) And the word "macaroni" has the same root meaning pasta. But it also meant someone who ate exotic Italian food like macaroni, so 200 years ago or so meant a dandy like Yankee Doodle with a fancy hair style. So complicated. So amusing!

The Language of Food is full of detailed observations about language in the style of my favorite blog, Language Log -- another source that Jurafsky cites. Studying the frequency and meaning of words as the language changes has very recently emerged as more possible than it used to be. Research is now facilitated by availability of statistical modeling codes and by databases of language from google. Language Log bloggers frequently test their hypotheses about words and usage by this means, and Jurafsky does some fascinating experiments (and cites those of other linguists) to show some wonderful things about how menu writers and food ads choose their words. In fact, I learned about Jurafsky's book from a blog post by Language Log writer Arnold Zwicky.

The language of menu writers is one area where Jurafsky gets results from this type of statistical research. My favorite language analysis in the book was about junk food. Jurafsky does for the language on a potato chip bag what Michael Moss did in Salt Sugar Fat for the nutritional content of the chips inside -- they both expose the manufacturers' manipulation of the consumer. (Salt Sugar Fat is another of the books that I have read and Jurafsky mentions). Packages of fancy premium chips, Jurafsky shows, display far more claims about how healthy they are than packages of cheaper chips. In fact, Jurafsky calculates exactly how much you'll pay extra for an ounce of chips that says it has "no trans fats." The chips inside these bags aren't even much different from one another, just the claims.

Anyway it's a fun read, right from the start when he talks about Ketchup and how the both the word (with its many spellings) and the substance (with its originally many flavors, now only tomato) came into our linguistic and culinary vocabularies.