The Evolution of the American Diet

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Lloyd Harrison,
Lloyd Harrison, "Corn: The Food of the Nation," 1918. This Food Administration propaganda poster advertised some of the many uses of corn, one of the most prominent of the substitute foods administrators promoted.
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"Modern Food, Moral Food" by Helen Zoe Veit, weaves together cultural history and the history of science to bring readers into the strange and complex world of the American Progressive Era that left a profound mark on the American diet.

The American diet changed dramatically in the 20th century. As food production became more industrialized, nutritionists and home economists were all pointing Americans toward a newly scientific approach to diet. In Modern Food, Moral Food (University of North Carolina Press, 2013), Helen Zoe Veit argues that the food revolution was fueled by a powerful conviction that Americans had a moral obligation to use self-discipline and reason, rather than taste and tradition, in choosing what to eat. The following excerpt is from the introduction, “Victory Over Ourselves.”

You can purchase this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store:Modern Food, Moral Food.

American Diet in the Era of the Great War

Now is the hour of our testing. Let us make it the hour of our victory—victory over ourselves.
United States Food Administration slogan, 1918

In the 1890s, when a poor African American sharecropper in Mississippi ate a plate of beans, greens, gravy, and corn bread, her dinner seemed a world removed from a Gilded Age restaurant meal of steak, asparagus, Béarnaise sauce, and white rolls. Just two decades later, however, by the 1910s, chemical analyses of these foods would reveal disconcerting similarities in their nutritive content. In fact, the poor southern meal—lower in fat and higher in vitamins—would increasingly look like the healthier of the two. By breaking food down into units like vitamins, calories, proteins, and carbohydrates, nutritionists by the 1910s were able to argue convincingly that foods that had long seemed completely different could in fact be nutritionally equivalent. In so doing, they exposed striking similarities in foods from different classes and cultures and regions. It seems commonsensical in hindsight, but at the time this way of thinking about food was revolutionary.

  • Published on Jun 13, 2014
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