“Slow Food to Fast Food” at the Traer Library

Thursday, June 11 at 7 p.m. the next June Thursdays program will feature Trudy Eden from UNI on the topic “Slow Food to Fast Food: the Way Iowans Ate”.

Dr. Eden is an associate professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa and her research focuses on American foodways. She has published two books on food history. One is on cooking in early America 1590-1840 and the other on food and society in the New World.

Eating a meal is part of a complex process involving farmers and their land, processors of crops and livestock, distributors that move those foods over long distances, meal preparers in homes or restaurants, and the people who consume food in a variety of settings. Dr. Eden will describe how each step has dramatically changed in the United States over the last century and how Iowans who, while living on some of the most bountiful soil in the world, no longer grow most of their foods. She will also explain the term “slow food” and its connection to good food, healthy plants and animals, good health and environmental preservation.