Herbert L. Meiselman (editor) - Handbook of Eating and Drinking : Interdisciplinary Perspectives

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Before I introduceThe Handbook of Eating and Drinking: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, let me explain why we need another book on food and eating. There are already so many books on food, especially cookbooks and travel books. There are also many scientific and technical books on subjects surrounding food, including food science, food technology, biology, physiology, nutrition, dietetics, social sciences, and many others. There are also books on the history of food and philosophical approaches to food and eating including ethics. And there are many books on the issues involved in serving food and on culinary applications.

However, there are fewer books examining the acts of eating and drinking, bringing food and beverage in contact with people, and in context with people. Thus, this Handbook differs from many other books because it is not aimed at eating and drinking in isolation nor at food and drink separate from the people who are consuming them.

In addition to this different perspective on eating and drinking, this Handbook is aimed at combining inone placeall of the various fields that deal with eating and drinking. This includes technical and scientific subjects such as biology, nutrition, social science, etc. It also includes applied subjects such as food service, culinary arts, and business/marketing. It also includes non-technical subjects like the history and philosophy of eating/drinking.

Why is it important to combine all of these fields into one book? Why has this never been done before? First, it is important because the solutions to most problems of eating and drinking involve many disciplines. We slowly have learned this over the past decades. Dieting for better health involves knowledge of food chemistry, social sciences, nutrition, cultural food choices, food pathologies, and probably others. If we want to address dieting in specific population groups, we might need to get into ethics, culinary approaches, and food service approaches. Providing for undernourished populations in the developing world and undernourished parts of the developed world involves some of these same approaches, as well as others. We cannot solve the varied problems of eating and drinking without understanding the complexity of eating and drinking.

That is another reason why it is important to combine all of the relevant fields of inquiry into one book. People who want an overview of the component fields of eating and drinking need a place to find comprehensive knowledge across these fields. So too, professionals who work in one field need up-to-date reviews of the state of the other fields in eating and drinking. One cannot expect either laypeople or professionals to read individual textbooks in each subject area of interest.

The Handbook of Eating and Drinking: Interdisciplinary Perspectivespresents over 70 chapters in 15 areas of eating and drinking. The book begins with an historical perspective and ends with perspectives on what may lie ahead in eating and drinking. The Handbook is not a static view of each field; rather chapters will be updated, replaced online, and then published when new editions are released. Also new topics will be added over time. The goal is to keep the Handbook updated with progress in the fields as they grow. The Handbook will be a living book.

I hope you will benefit from this first-time presentation of this very broad view of eating and drinking, both in your personal approach to eating and drinking and in your professional pursuits as they relate to this important topic.

Herbert L. Meiselman, Ph.D.

Editor