Helen Zoe Veit

Helen Zoe Veit (PhD Yale 2008) specializes in the history of American food. Her next book, Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Easters in History (St. Martin’s, 2026) traces dramatic changes in children’s eating since the 19th century and tells the fascinating story of how “picky eating” came to hijack American childhood — and increasingly childhood around the world.

Her first book, Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (UNC Press, 2013) explores food and nutrition in the Progressive Era and was a finalist for a James Beard Award in Reference and Scholarship.

Veit’s writing on food history has appeared in a variety of academic journals and in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and elsewhere.

She directs two major digital projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities: the What America Ate project, a digital archive and interactive website on food in the Great Depression, and the new America in the Kitchen project, which will provide digital access to 200 of the most significant cookbooks in American history published between the 1790s and 1960. From 2018 to 2022 she was part of the editorial collective of Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies. She is a member of the governing council of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Veit edited three books with the American Food in History book series with Michigan State University Press. Food in the Civil War Era: The North (2014) won Gourmand International’s award for best cookbook in a series published in the United States and was a finalist for the award in food history from the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Food in the Civil War Era: The South was released in 2015 and Food in the American Gilded Age was released in 2017.

Veit teaches a variety of classes at Michigan State on American history, food, and culture. She won the 2024-25 College of Social Science Faculty Teaching Innovation Award, and she was named the 2018 College of Social Science Outstanding Teacher.

To learn more, visit her webpage at helenveit.com.