Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Food
Episode: Sophie Egan, “Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are” (William Morrow, 2017)
Description: In Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are (William Morrow Books, 2017), food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan takes readers on an eye-opening journey through the American food psyche, examining the connections between the values that define our national character—work, freedom, and progress—and our eating habits, the good and the bad. Egan explores why these values make for such an unstable, and often unhealthy, food culture and, paradoxically, why they also make Americas cuisine so great.
Egan raises a host of intriguing questions: Why does McDonalds have 107 items on its...