Salon • Jan. 23, 2007
America’s food enthusiasts may find it hard to place the name Barry Glassner. He’s not a television chef, or a restaurant critic, or a diet guru. Indeed, the University of Southern California sociologist is known primarily for his best-selling 2000 book, “The Culture of Fear,” a dissection of the anxious underpinnings of the American psyche. It’s a subject that might seem to have little relevance to the dinner table, but Glassner begs to differ. If his latest book, “The Gospel of Food,” makes one thing plain, it’s that few topics generate more worry among Americans than our breakfasts, lunches and dinners.