An exploration in the history of biopolitics which offers a study of the ways in which English colonists in North America incorporated the "you are what you eat" philosophy into their conception of themselves and their proper place in society.

In turn, this elite diet marked their social status and reaffirmed their entitlement to power.The Englishmen and women who colonized North America throughout the colonial period held this idea that diet shaped character. After only a few decades of settlement, many of them enjoyed the unprecedented prosperity enabled by the fertile environment. Lower and middling families could set their tables with a greater variety and higher quality of food than their social counterparts in England. As a result, in contrast to England where an aristocrat's dinner was far different than a laborer's, in America, the differences between the diets of artisans and urban laborers, of plantation owners and small farmers, were not as great. In short, the American diet was a democratic diet that had social and political consequences. Readers interested in biopolitics, the history of science and medicine, social history, food studies, early American history, British history, and colonial studies will enjoy this delightful study.