Introduction: Unearthing Technology in Public Histories of Food

While there is significant public interest in the culture and history of food, popular and scholarly studies often overlook that food is technological. This article argues that public histories foregrounding food technology offer historians of technology opportunities to engage the public in topics that are both intimately familiar to all and yet riddled with misconceptions about the past, especially on pressing moral concerns relating to public health and the environment. Looking at past innovations in food requires unearthing tacit skills and invisible work routinely done by people whose stories, because of their gender, class, race, or nationality, were often erased from conventional histories of technology. Works that unmask food's hidden complexity demonstrate how even mundane, everyday objects are products of contested innovation.