Food for Thought

I guess it only makes sense that in serious times, serious people focus on the most serious aspects of life. And, of course, there could be no life without food, so we currently see many of our best writers and thinkers focused in one way or another on, what in other eras, passes for mere entertainment.

It's easy to view the current outpouring of food-related writing (in books, magazines, blogs...) as a passing fad, but I'm not so sure. I sense that it is a defining sign of a very important time when people are realizing that a truly fleeting way of life (mid-to-late-20th century American-style affluence) is passing away, and we are returning to something more permanent and authentic.


Mark Kurlansky's talk Wednesday night about his latest book, The Food of a Younger Land, at the Central Branch of the Atlanta-Fulton Library, certainly touched on such themes. Having resurrected the previously unpublished manuscripts from the WPA archives, this work portrays how Americans ate before highways, chain restaurants, frozen foods, etc. and Kurlansky and those in attendance were quite focused on how much that way of eating resembles the prescription that today's most thoughtful social observers recommend that we return to for the health of ourselves and our planet: seasonal, regional and traditional.

This Wednesday, May 27, at the Decatur Library, the Georgia Center for the Book presents a very different type of author with a very different type of book, but again, it is an indictment of the current state of American food. Robyn O'Brien will share her new book, The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It .

Her talk begins at 7:15 at the Decatur Library auditorium, 215 Sycamore St. in downtown Decatur. A book signing will follow. A Cappella will have copies of the book for sale. A portion of the proceeds benefit The Georgia Center for the Book.

The following night, Thursday, May 28, we'll celebrate a different another important food: beer. Don't laugh. As beeradvocate illustrates, beer is in fact food, and few beers are heartier than Guinness.



The Guinness Brewery is 250 years old, and its story is the subject of a new book by Tony Corcoran, The Goodness of Guinness: A Loving History of the Brewery, Its People and the City of Dublin.

We're marking the occasion at The Euclid Avenue Yacht Club in Little 5 Points. We'll have copies of the book for sale. Everyone who purchases a copy will be entered into a drawing to win valuable prizes, to be redeemed at the bar.

The local Guinness distributors will provide some goodies for the night, too. And the Yacht Club will have specials on pints and pitchers of Guinness, too.