Ken Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific. He is the author or editor of 21 books on food including Eating Right in the Renaissance, Food in Early Modern Europe, Cooking in Europe 1250-1650, The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe, Beans: A History (winner of the 2008 IACP Jane Grigson Award), and Pancake. He has also co-edited The Business of Food, Human Cuisine, Food and Faith and edited A Cultural History of Food: The Renaissance and The Routledge International Handbook to Food Studies. Albala was also editor of the Food Cultures Around the World series with 30 volumes in print, the 4-volume Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia and is now series editor of Rowman Littlefield Studies in Food and Gastronomy for which he has written a textbook entitled Three World Cuisines: Italian, Chinese, Mexican (Winner of the Gourmand Best Foreign Food Book in the World 2012). Albala was also co-editor of the journal Food Culture and Society and is editing a 3 volume encyclopedia on Food Issues for Sage. He has also co-authored two cookbooks: The Lost Art of Real Cooking and The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home. His most recent works are a translation of the 16th century Livre fort excellent de cuysine, A Food History Reader and Nuts: A Global History.