Sameness in Diversity

"A refreshingly original analysis of how American eating has changed in the last half century. Delving into fruit marketing, cookbook editing, and constantly changing formulations of ethnicity, Jayasanker identifies suburbs, not coastal cities, as the places where the American diet has become increasingly diverse for the individual, even as the number of firms that deliver goods has shrunk."––Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History

"Americans may perceive a diversity of foods at the grocery stores, markets, and ethnic restaurants they frequent, but Jayasanker's inventive, clear-eyed study exposes how accelerated global trade and immigration since 1960 have actually narrowed our eating choices. Sameness in Diversity also clarifies the seemingly remote forces of globalization through a focus on the most intimate and universal cultural form: food. Finally, it offers a long-awaited sequel to Donna Gabaccia's We Are What We Eat, revealing the continued centrality of immigrants to the production and definition of American food."––Allison Varzally, author of Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations and Making a Non-White America: Californians Coloring outside Ethnic Lines, 1925–1955