Adrienne Bitar

Adrienne Rose Bitar is a lecturer in American Studies at Cornell University. She specializes in the history and culture of American food and health. Her first book, Diet and the Disease of Civilization, reveals how 20th century diets (primarily Paleo, biblical, detox, and primitive) have articulated a powerful response to anxieties about the psychic and physical costs of modernity. Following an imaginary chronology of human origins, the book examines Paleolithic diets, biblical diets, precolonial diets, and environmentalist detoxification programs. She is currently working on a new project on lab-grown meat and meat analogues.

She earned her PhD in 2016 from Stanford University in Modern Thought and Literature. She can be reached at arj67@cornell.edu.