The Hungry Ages Get the app

Press kit

Everything you need
to tell the story.

Descriptions, a fact sheet, ten ready-to-use facts, and images cleared for editorial use.

Review copies and interviews: press@velunapress.com

Fact sheet

Series
The Hungry Ages (subtitle: Foods Through the Ages)
Category
Edutainment desktop app: a picture-led, comic history of food
Publisher
Veluna Press
Platforms
Windows 10 and 11; macOS and Linux builds coming
Content
105 foods in 10 families, 8 historical eras, 63 historical utensils
Editions
First Bite, free: 7 complete foods, the Time Machine, and the Utensil Museum. Ten volumes, one per food family: Crust & Crumb, Sugar Rush, Steam & Fizz, Curds & Cream, Fire & Salt, Heat & Zest, One-Pot Wonders, Seeds of Empire, Crunch Time, and Tin, Frost & Rocket. The Complete Series, all 105 foods.
Price
Each volume $9.99. The Complete Series $49.99 at launch, regularly $79.99. One-time payments, lifetime licenses, transferable between computers.
Connectivity
Fully offline after a one-time activation. No account, no ads, no tracking in the app.
Language
English (US). More languages are planned.
Audience
Curious readers of every age, families, teachers, and homeschoolers in the United States and Canada

Short description

The Hungry Ages is a cinematic, picture-led desktop history that tells the true and often hilarious story of 105 foods, from the first time a human thought of them to the plate in front of you. It is told in cinematic pictures and warm, witty stories, it works offline, and the license is yours for life.

Long description

Bread is 4,000 years older than farming. Ketchup started as a fish sauce. Hawaiian pizza was invented in Ontario. The Hungry Ages turns surprises like these into a series you can explore, in ten volumes: 105 foods, each with a timeline from its first appearance to today, myths checked against the evidence, a short story, a real historical recipe adapted for a modern kitchen, a before-and-after comparison, kitchen science explained with animation, and a quiz. A Time Machine spans two million years of cooking, from the first controlled fire to the 3D food printer, with natural soundscapes for each era and no music. Food Birthday finds the foods born in any year, and Time-Travel Dinner shows what could and could not be on the table in any time and place. The app runs on Windows (macOS and Linux builds are coming), needs no account, and works offline for life.

Ten ready facts

Each fact comes from the app's content and its cited sources. Feel free to quote them with credit to The Hungry Ages.

  1. The oldest bread on Earth was baked 14,400 years ago, four millennia before anyone planted wheat.
  2. In ancient Rome, bakers were forbidden by law from leaving their job. Their sons inherited it.
  3. Baghdad's market inspectors tested flour for chalk with a bowl of water a thousand years ago.
  4. The U.S. banned sliced bread in 1943. The public revolt lasted seven weeks.
  5. White bread was once food for caliphs. A Swiss steel roller made it the cheapest loaf on the shelf.
  6. The words lord and lady literally mean loaf-keeper and loaf-kneader.
  7. The Hawaiian pizza was invented in 1962 at the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario.
  8. Momofuku Ando launched the first instant ramen on August 25, 1958, after studying how tempura batter behaves in hot oil.
  9. Tortillas became a staple of the Space Shuttle menu in 1985 because they make almost no crumbs.
  10. In 2019, the first cookies baked in space took about two hours in an experimental oven on the International Space Station.

Images and logo

Every image shows food, tableware, and settings only. Click to open the full-size file.

Bread, hero image WebP, 1600 × 894 Before: tannur loaf, Baghdad, ca. 950 CE WebP, 1600 × 894 After: sliced white loaf, today WebP, 1600 × 894 Social card with wordmark PNG, 1200 × 630 App icon, hourglass on a plate SVG, scalable App icon PNG, 512 × 512

Usage notes

  • Write the name as The Hungry Ages, with a capital T; the subtitle is Foods Through the Ages. Volume names are set in title case, such as Crust & Crumb.
  • Images may be used in coverage of the app. Please do not crop the icon or add people, animals, or text to the images.
  • Prices are in US dollars; Payhip shows Canadian shoppers prices in Canadian dollars. The Complete Series launch price of $49.99 is for a limited time; the regular price is $79.99.
  • For screenshots of specific screens, a review license, or an interview, email press@velunapress.com.