Anna Zeide
Anna Zeide, Associate Professor

Anna Zeide is an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech. She is also the founding director of the College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences Food Studies Program. She studies food as a way of understanding environmental change, dynamic cultural practices, consumer behavior, technology, health, and justice.
Her first book, Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry (University of California Press, 2018) won a James Beard media award in 2019.
She's now working on a history of food waste, on a book on U.S. History through 15 Foods, and editing an anthology on the making of modern food.
- Food Studies
- Environmental History
- Consumer & Business History
- 20th-century United States
- History of Agriculture
- Ph.D. in History of Science, Medicine, & Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- M.A.Ed. in Science Education, Washington University in St. Louis
- B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
Books
Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry (University of California Press, 2018)
Journal Articles
“Grocery Garbage: Food Waste and the Rise of Supermarkets in the Mid-Twentieth Century United States” History of Retailing and Consumption 5 (April 2019): 71-86.
Book Chapters
“Marion Harland, Tastemaker: How One Woman’s Influence Helped Build an Industry,” in Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food, eds. Benjamin R. Cohen, Michael Kideckel, & Anna Zeide (forthcoming with MIT Press).
Featured Books
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Article ItemHow America’s canned tuna industry went belly up , article
Slate, 8/17/2020
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