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Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 6: 84. © American Folklore Society 2018

Review of:

Food on Foot: A History of Eating on Trails in 
the Wild
Demet Güzey. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Food on the Go 
Series, 2017. Pp. xii, 197, notes, bibliography, index.

By: Robert James Smith

The front cover of Food on Foot promises much in the way of adventure travel, 
with its picture of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay in a 
relaxed camp setting amidst snow, with a steep peak behind. While the implicit 
criterion for coverage in the book’s chapters appears to be any food eaten 
outside the home space and without mechanized travel, the subtitle “on Trails in 
the Wild” specifies for us what is meant here by foot. Indeed this work recounts 
gustatory history across a range of journey contexts in its eight chapters, but 
prominent are the two longest chapters “Polar Explorations” and “Mountain 
Expeditions,” where the author shows his greatest enthusiasm in moments of 
lyrical prose on the harshness and the sublime effect. These two chapters work 
through the history of journeys in both settings, and identify the types of food 
and drink that sustained those on foot. 

There are many interesting details throughout the work, such as the prominence 
of wine in early mountaineering, the collection and eating of the fungus tripe-
de-roche, or the eventual use of a pressure cooker to boil water in high altitude 
mountaineering. Decisions made on food and its preparation are traced over 
time and contexts: for example “pemmican,” a “concentrated mixture of fat 
and meat” (38) that was essential for polar exploration then also came to be 
used for high mountain expeditions. While some found the taste and specific 
combination of ingredients challenging, pemmican was nevertheless effective 
and many attempts were made over the decades to increase its acceptance. 
What emerges here is solid coverage of the ongoing struggle to provide food that 
was both nutritious and sufficiently high in calories for the task and journey 
undertaken, while being light enough to carry over the required time frame. 

This dominant theme of the relationship between food and travel in extremis is 



Smith, Robert James. 2017. Review of Food on Foot: A History of Eating on Trails in the Wild. 
Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 6: 85. © American Folklore Society 2018

also traced in chapter 5, “Desert Travel,” and in chapter 7, “Army Rations.” Yet 
subsequent sections do not address severe challenges, and so the final chapter, 
“Street Food,” seems somewhat tame.

While much of this book is informative and makes for enjoyable reading, long 
sections seem too discursive, however. Frequently the first sections of chapters 
give historical background but make no reference to either “food” or “foot.” The 
section on cannibalism (105) in Tierra del Fuego is merely an account given to 
the captain of the Beagle, and conjures awkward thoughts about whose foot 
journey or trail is intended. In chapter 6, “Pilgrimage,” the page and a half 
considering Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (129-130) has good detail on food 
but no mention of walking. At other places then, when either “food” or “foot” 
is mentioned, the topic seems an arbitrary inclusion. But this is part of the 
problem of the topic. As the fourth book in a series entitled “Food on the Go” 
(the other three cover mechanised forms of transport), one can see that this 
work requires broad coverage.

The geographical coverage of the work is impressive. For example, as an 
Australian, I would not have not expected much coverage of my continent in 
this relatively short work, yet Güzey details a wide range of Australian topics 
on pages 2, 20–31, and 147. However I was concerned when the First Fleet 
was mistakenly dated as 1838 (20) when it actually arrived in 1788. In a later 
section, Napoleon Bonaparte (136) and Napoleon III (138) are both referred to 
in close succession solely as “Napoleon.” While such points give some disquiet—
since one wonders how many other facts might not be relied upon—all appears 
well grounded in primary sources, or the earliest printed accounts available, 
and is detailed in the notes and bibliography. Taking on face value those early 
accounts, such as Favenc (1908) on Australian exploration, does tend to ignore, 
however, the important contributions of subsequent scholarship that at least 
deserve mention in passing.

I suggest that Güzey’s work is largely a musing upon walking and the discussion 
of related food. Folklorists will find broader enjoyment in it for, in effect, its 
mode is of an extended campfire yarn, where scope and interesting detail are 
valued, and especially where the story of food may aid progress along the trail, 
or perhaps survival. Even the attractive front cover has a relaxed Hillary and 
Norgay looking to their left off frame as if something interesting has just been 
said. This book’s many interesting details will instruct, amuse, and be readily 
recounted by those in calm times on their own trails. 


