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Mark Humphrey / AP How an Enslaved Distiller Was Written Out of Jack Daniel's History
Uncovering the true story of a legendary American brand
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Winslow Townson / AP It’s Really Hard to Study Artificial Sweeteners
The health effects of saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose can be nearly impossible to tease apart from the impact of everything else people eat alongside them.
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Wilfredo Lee / AP The Stop Sign vs. the Soda Tax
Chile’s unusual approach to reducing obesity could prove to be the world’s most effective.
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Elaine Thompson / AP The U.S. Appetite for Sugar Has Skyrocketed
Americans are eating too much of the sweet stuff, and a staggering portion of it is coming from drinks like soda.
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Nir Elias / Reuters Teeth Tell the Story of the Early-Human Diet
… and of our own.
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Murray Clarkson / Shutterstock The U.S. Is Obsessed With Baby Carrots
How a gnarly white root became a tiny orange staple
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Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters One Egg to Rule Them All
It wasn’t just taste that raised one fowl above the rest.
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Vivek Prakash / Reuters One Week to Whiskey
A Los Angeles distillery aims to speed up a 10-year aging process to a matter of days.
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Chris Keane / Reuters The Cultural Convictions That Land Some Animals on the Menu
... and keep others off of it
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Amit Dave / Reuters The American Mango Is a Bland Disappointment
The U.S. lifted a long-standing ban on importing Indian mangoes in 2007. So why is it still so hard to find full-flavored fruit?
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U.S. National Library of Medicine The 'Poison Squad' That Shook America’s Faith in Preservatives
In the U.S., chemicals like borax were common in foods from bacon to margarine, until a shocking series of experiments revealed their toxic effects.
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DircinhaSW / Getty / Angela He / The ... How Jell-O Got Its Bounce
The dessert was once as high status as it is squishy.
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Tina Stallard / Getty How Pots and Pans Turned Us Into Creative Cooks
After harnessing fire, kitchenware is the most important invention to food as we know it.
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Bettmann / Getty How the Gas Oven Changed Humans’ Relationship With Fire
The ability to turn flames on and off at will was “one of the single greatest contributors to human happiness in the kitchen.”
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Eric Lafforgue / Art in All of Us ... How the U.S. Became the World’s Largest Food-Aid Donor
For its first 150 years, the nation was reluctant to feed the hungry overseas.
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Maggie Marsek / Getty / Katie Martin / ... Peak Avocado Is Yet to Come
How the fatty green fruit went from near-extinction to a worldwide boom
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Yuri Cortez / AFP / Getty How the ‘Golden Age’ of Travel Transformed American Cuisine
At the turn of the 20th century, one adventurous botanist brought kale, mangoes, and thousands of other plants to the U.S.
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Michaela Rehle / Reuters The Wonder Protein That Makes Cheese So Stretchy
Casein’s unique structure is the key to smooth brie and melting mozzarella.
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Alain Nogues / Getty How the Military Changed What America Eats
The same technology that keeps soldiers' meals edible for weeks now lines your pantry shelves.
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PeopleImages / Getty The Enduring Fantasies of Cookbooks
For millennia, collecting recipes has been driven more by aspiration than the reality of what’s for dinner.
