Anna Zeide

Anna Zeide is an American academic and author. She is an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech and writes on food, consumerism, and food systems. She was previously at Oklahoma State University.

Early life and education
Zeide was born on April 23, 1984, and raised in a rural and forested region of Arkansas. Her family were the only Jews in their town. The nearest synagogue was over two hours away in Little Rock, Arkansas. Zeide's father was a Russian-Jewish immigrant. She received a bachelor's degree and master's degree from Washington University in St. Louis and Doctor of Philosophy in History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Career
After receiving her doctorate in 2014, Zeide became an assistant professor of history at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater and wrote on food, consumerism, and food systems. She won a James Beard Award in the Reference, History, and Scholarship category for Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry. Zeide and her work has been featured on WORT, KPFA, BYU Radio, WYPR, KERA, and the New Books Network, and in the Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, Stillwater News-Press and The O'Colly. Her work about botulism has been published in the Saturday Evening Post and Smithsonian.

In 2020, Zeide left Oklahoma to become an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech and the founding director of their Food Studies Program.

Selected works

 * Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press (2019). ISBN 9780520322769
 * US History in 15 Foods. Bloomsbury Academic (2023). ISBN 9781350211971