About The Food Historian
Sarah Wassberg Johnson is The Food Historian - author, speaker, educator, podcaster, and blogger on all things related to food history. A frequent interviewee of journalists looking for historical context, she was featured in seasons 1-4 of The History Channel's "The Food That Built America" and has been featured on NPR, the Atlantic, CNN, Atlas Obscura, and more. She has published in New York History journal and the Agricultural History journal and is currently finalizing edits on her book, "Preserve or Perish: Food in New York State during the Great War, 1916-1919," under contract with SUNY Press.
Sarah is a frequent lecturer for libraries, museums, and historical societies. You can find past and upcoming talks on her events page. She accepts requests for speaking engagements.
Sarah received her MA in History/Public History from the University at Albany, State University of New York and her BA in History and Scandinavian Studies from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.
Her Master's thesis is "Preserve or Perish: The Orange County Food Preservation Battalion and Food Conservation Efforts in New York State During the Great War, 1917 to 1919."
Although she currently works as a museum professional in the museum education field, her lifelong love of food and history has led her to focus increasingly on American food history. Her areas of specialty include: rural and agricultural history, women's history, the history of domestic science, World War I and World War II home front history, the Progressive Era, particularly the Country Life movement, and food history in general.
In her spare time, Sarah enjoys cooking vegetable-rich meals from scratch, collecting vintage, ethnic, and community cookbooks, throwing parties, hiking with her husband and her Shetland sheepdog, volunteering at other museums, and writing.
Sarah is a frequent lecturer for libraries, museums, and historical societies. You can find past and upcoming talks on her events page. She accepts requests for speaking engagements.
Sarah received her MA in History/Public History from the University at Albany, State University of New York and her BA in History and Scandinavian Studies from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.
Her Master's thesis is "Preserve or Perish: The Orange County Food Preservation Battalion and Food Conservation Efforts in New York State During the Great War, 1917 to 1919."
Although she currently works as a museum professional in the museum education field, her lifelong love of food and history has led her to focus increasingly on American food history. Her areas of specialty include: rural and agricultural history, women's history, the history of domestic science, World War I and World War II home front history, the Progressive Era, particularly the Country Life movement, and food history in general.
In her spare time, Sarah enjoys cooking vegetable-rich meals from scratch, collecting vintage, ethnic, and community cookbooks, throwing parties, hiking with her husband and her Shetland sheepdog, volunteering at other museums, and writing.
About The Food Historian Website
Food history is the gateway history - food is the one thing that connects everybody across space and time. And after decades of being largely ignored by academia, food history is finally taking off. I started this website in 2015 as a way to share my research, but it quickly morphed into something much bigger.
So today, the goal of The Food Historian website is to create interesting, engaging, and accurate food history content for the general public (articles, videos, podcasts, and more) and to provide access to food history resources for researchers and the curious alike. There's a lot of shallow or even lazy food history out there on the interwebs (most of which drives me nuts), so this website is a reflection of both my research interests (especially the food of the two world wars), requests from readers, and deep dives to correct food history myths and set the record straight with primary source evidence and nuanced historical context.
It's also free with few to no advertisements. I will never post affiliate articles (although submissions are welcome), do paid sponsorships for products I don't use or companies I don't trust, and my efforts to keep ads to an absolute minimum have led to laughably small payouts (we're talking pennies a day). So that means that while this website is at this point a labor of love, it does rely on support from readers like you to keep it free for everyone. If you'd like to help support this website, you can join us on Patreon or leave a tip. If you purchase anything from one of the connected Amazon or Bookshop.org links, I'll also receive a small commission.
Thanks for being a reader! I hope you'll find lots to enjoy.
So today, the goal of The Food Historian website is to create interesting, engaging, and accurate food history content for the general public (articles, videos, podcasts, and more) and to provide access to food history resources for researchers and the curious alike. There's a lot of shallow or even lazy food history out there on the interwebs (most of which drives me nuts), so this website is a reflection of both my research interests (especially the food of the two world wars), requests from readers, and deep dives to correct food history myths and set the record straight with primary source evidence and nuanced historical context.
It's also free with few to no advertisements. I will never post affiliate articles (although submissions are welcome), do paid sponsorships for products I don't use or companies I don't trust, and my efforts to keep ads to an absolute minimum have led to laughably small payouts (we're talking pennies a day). So that means that while this website is at this point a labor of love, it does rely on support from readers like you to keep it free for everyone. If you'd like to help support this website, you can join us on Patreon or leave a tip. If you purchase anything from one of the connected Amazon or Bookshop.org links, I'll also receive a small commission.
Thanks for being a reader! I hope you'll find lots to enjoy.