Tom Hughes

Anchovy to Zabaione Tom Hughes

Food Museums matter because they: ---explore how our species has sustained itself, ---examine artifacts as diverse as spearheads and petrified remains of meals, to the foods designed for space, ---teach about the world's food resources (animal, vegetable and mineral), their identities, origins and travels around the globe, ---display innovative exhibits that depict hunting, gathering, fishing, herding, growing, marketing, cooking, processing and eating, ---invite us to learn about the planet's diversity of diets, agriculture and culinary techniques, ---celebrate food through art, music and literature, ---entertain us with food-related art, film, musical programs. In museums the past and future meet like few other places. Objects and explanations of the past are preserved to be observed by us all, but especially our youth who will exist in a future the adults among them won't experience. Some of these now young people will collect, preserve and display artifacts in the museum displays of the future. Some of these future exhibits will relate the history of our late 20th and early 21st-centuries' industrialized food system which fed so many while at the same time contributed, more than any other factor, to the compromised health of our planet and its people.