This course examines the role of provenance and place in the evolution of diet. In defining the geography of food as who eats what where and why, it considers how food's importance extends beyond mere nourishment; food is an idiom that provides individual and collective comfort and identity. However impoverished or affluent, contemporary cuisines are legacies of military conflict, colonization and commercial influence that have incorporated key, non-indigenous products that were introduced by the Columbian exchange.