Food moves. Today, shoppers can load their shopping basket with spices from India, fruit from Honduras, and canned goods from Italy. Diners can decide between restaurants offering the cuisines of the world. Bringing together multidisciplinary scholars from the growing discipline of food studies, Food Mobilities examines food provisioning and the food cultures of the world, historically and in contemporary times.

This collection of essays addresses the connections between the symbolic relations of mobility and systems of food politics, production, transformation, exchange, and consumption. The authors offer a range of fascinating case studies, including explorations of Italian foods in colonial Ethiopia, traditional Cornish pasties in Mexico, migrant community gardeners in Toronto, and beer all around the world.

The book demonstrates that mobility is not only a logistical question of moving people, animals, plants, and commodities but also one of knowledge production. In exploring the origins of the contemporary global food system and how we cook and eat today, Food Mobilities uncovers the local and global circulation of food, ingredients, cooks, commodities, labour, and knowledge.

Food Mobilities tells the fascinating story of how we cook, shop, and eat in today’s global food system.

Introduction: Mobility and the Making of World Cuisines
Daniel E. Bender and Simone Cinotto

Mobility and Its Discontents: Historical Perspectives on Cities and Food Systems from the Paleolithic to the Present
Donna R. Gabaccia

Part One: The Body and the Self

1. Mobility of Food and Ideas in Egypt: Between Sterilization and Inoculation
Sara El-Sayed and Christy Spackman

2. Let’s Get Phygital: Food Representations on the Move
Signe Rousseau

3. People-Plant Mobilities: Growing Bitter Melon and Bottle Gourd in Toronto
Sarah Elton

Part Two: Infrastructures and Pathways

4. Gastrofascism in the Empire: Food in Italian East Africa, 1935–1941
Simone Cinotto

5. The Fastest Food in the World: Airplane Cuisine and the “Taste of Pace”
Elizabeth Zanoni

6. From Cloth Oil to Extra Virgin: Italian Olive Oil Before the Invention of the Mediterranean Diet
Carl Ipsen

7. Mobile and Immobile Histories of Tea
Jayeeta Sharma

Part Three: Mobilities and Immobilities

8. Street Food and Street Life in Immigrant Enclaves: A Case Study of the Jews of the United States
Hasia R. Diner

9. Rhythms of Mobility: How (Im)Mobility Shapes Rural Food Retail Practices in South Africa
Elizabeth Hull

10. Immobility: Threats to the Livelihoods of the Poor
Krishnendu Ray

Part Four: Biodiversity, Taste, and Nation

11. From Cornish Pasties to Mexican Pastes: Mobilities across Time and Space
Sandra C. Mendiola García

12. How the World Eats: Myra Waldo and the Around-the-World Cookbook
Daniel E. Bender

13. Hop Movements: The Global Invention of Craft Beer
Jeffrey M. Pilcher

14. Transnational Journeys and Biocultural Heritage: The Caribbean Food-Medicine Nexus
Ina Vandebroek

Coda: Food Mobilities in the Time of COVID-19

Locked Down: Writing about Food Mobility while Sheltering in Place
Daniel E. Bender and Simone Cinotto