Real Southern Barbecue

Book excerpt: The focus on barbecue in this book uncovers how processes and rhetoric surrounding a specific food product, and food culture as a whole, shape the food appearing on our plates, which can impact people’s health as well as market dynamics. The book takes an in-depth look at barbecue chefs and restaurant owners to triangulate the relationship between producers and their products. It uses barbecue to explore the intersection of deindustrialization, commercialization, and changing health concerns. Finally, it explores the changes in food culture presented in the book highlight the need for producers to justify their positioning in response to commercialization and changing environmental laws and concerns. The scope of this book describes the creation of authentic food products and questions how these products evolve over time in response to changes in broader society. It sheds light on the rise and fall of food trends through in-depth analyses of barbecue and its producers.