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A Rainbow Palate: How Chemical Dyes Changed the West’s Relationship with Food (Synthesis)
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About A Rainbow Palate: How Chemical Dyes Changed The
Product Description We live in a world saturated by chemicals—our food, our clothes, and even our bodies play host to hundreds of synthetic chemicals that did not exist before the nineteenth century. By the 1900s, a wave of bright coal tar dyes had begun to transform the Western world. Originally intended for textiles, the new dyes soon permeated daily life in unexpected ways, and by the time the risks and uncertainties surrounding the synthesized chemicals began to surface, they were being used in everything from clothes and home furnishings to cookware and food. In A Rainbow Palate, Carolyn Cobbold explores how the widespread use of new chemical substances influenced perceptions and understanding of food, science, and technology, as well as trust in science and scientists. Because the new dyes were among the earliest contested chemical additives in food, the battles over their use offer striking insights and parallels into today’s international struggles surrounding chemical, food, and trade regulation. Review "Elegant and insightful. . . . What is stunning is how pertinent the book is to our own times. You will find here a rehearsal for everything we are facing today—the fads, the fears, the government interventions that are either too late or too rushed, and the nagging sense that the food that most delights the eye may not always be the food that serves us best." ― Times Literary Supplement "Cobbold has produced a fascinating account and analysis of how these dyes were introduced, contested, and ultimately legitimized in an emerging globalized industrial food system. . . . What Cobbold draws our attention to is the inevitable negotiation around expertise and the permitted uses of novel chemical additives. In doing so, she enters a larger discussion about how novel scientific objects and processes evade control once they emerge from the laboratory and enter the world where they are unexpectedly transformed and used. More broadly, this book helps historicize the public construction of trust in science and chemistry." ― Scientia Canadensis "There are many reasons that Cobbold’s story is compelling. Her research is detailed and extensive, using many archival sources along with other primary and secondary ones. She also makes good use of the scientific and mainstream press, juxtaposing the opinions of chemists, government policymakers, and consumers. Lengthy excerpts from press articles, in particular, convey the flavor of shifting public discourse. A Rainbow Palate is also compelling due to Cobbold’s clear writing, accessible to those with little background in chemical history; the book is punctuated by helpful signposts summarizing and linking sections together. . . . Cobbold’s insights about the 19th century help us to understand why this system of trust has become frayed in the 21st century." ― H-Soz-Kult "A pioneering work of food science, this compact, well-referenced book captures the rise and fall of the use of synthetic chemicals—particularly coal tar dyes—which were employed in food coloring in the US and Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. . . . The book would be a good acquisition for academic and special collections that support food history, food science, and history of chemistry programs. . . . Recommended." ― Choice " A Rainbow Palate fits into a growing body of literature that attempts to bridge the history of modern chemistry to that of food consumption. . . . Cobbold's distinctive contributions to this scholarship become apparent from her deep research into the history of coal tar dyes, revealing the ways in which a profit-driven commitment to the discovery of new synthetic chemicals and their corresponding consumer markets encouraged the inclusion of textile dyes in food." ― Technology and Culture "[Cobbold] highlights a dichotomy between the intimacy we have with our diet and the gulf that often separates us from the understanding of where our ingredients
