A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age 1st Edition

Visit the link below to download the full version of this book:

https://homemader.com/shop/a-cultural-history-of-food-in-the-modern-age/

Click Download Now

a cultural history
of food
VOLUME 6
A Cultural History of Food
General Editors: Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers

Volume 1
A Cultural History of Food in Antiquity
Edited by Paul Erdkamp

Volume 2
A Cultural History of Food in the Medieval Age
Edited by Massimo Montanari

Volume 3
A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance
Edited by Ken Albala

Volume 4
A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age
Edited by Beat Kümin

Volume 5
A Cultural History of Food in the Age of Empire
Edited by Martin Bruegel

Volume 6
A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age
Edited by Amy Bentley
 A CULTURAL HISTORY
OF FOOD

IN THE
MODERN AGE
VOLUME 6

Edited by Amy Bentley

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON
LON DON• OX
DON • NFEO
WR D
DE• LNHEIW• YO
N ER
WK YOR
• N EK
W •DSY
E LDN
H I EY
• SY DN EY
 Bloomsbury Academic
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway
London New York
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
www.bloomsbury.com
First published in 2012 by Berg
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of
Reprinted by Bloomsbury Academic 2013
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
© Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers 2012
Hardback edition first published in 2012 by Berg Publishers,
an imprint of Bloomsbury Academic
Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers have asserted thier right under the Copyright,
Paperback edition first published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Academic
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.
© Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers, 2012, 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers have asserted their right under the Copyright,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.
permission in writing from the publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors.
ISBN: HB: 978-0-8578-5028-7 (volume 6)
978-1-8478-8355-1 (set)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: HB: 978-0-8578-5028-7
HB set: 978-1-8478-8355-1
Typeset by Apex CoVantage, LLC
PB: 978-1-4742-7004-5
Printed and bound in Great Britain
PB set: 978-1-4742-7075-5
EPDF: 978-1-3509-9580-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Apex CoVantage, LLC

 contents

Series Preface vii

Introduction 1
Amy Bentley

1 Food Production 27
Jeffrey M. Pilcher

2 Food Systems 47
Daniel Block

3 Food Security, Safety, and Crises: 1920–2000 69

Peter J. Atkins

4 Food and Politics in the Modern Age: 1920–2012 87

Maya Joseph and Marion Nestle

5 Eating Out: Going Out, Staying In 111

Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson

6 Kitchen Work: 1920–Present 127

Amy B. Trubek

7 Family and Domesticity 145

Alice Julier

8 Body and Soul 165

Warren Belasco
vi CONTENTS

9 Food Representations 183

Signe Rousseau

10 World Developments 201

Fabio Parasecoli

Notes 211
Bibliography 229
Notes on Contributors 263
Index 267
 series preface
general editors, fabio parasecoli
and peter scholliers

A Cultural History of Food presents an authoritative survey from ancient

times to the present. This set of six volumes covers nearly 3,000 years of
food and its physical, spiritual, social, and cultural dimensions. Volume
editors and authors, representing different nationalities and cultural tradi-
tions, constitute the cutting edge in historical research on food and offer an
overview of the field that reflects the state of the art of the discipline. While
the volumes focus mostly on the West (Europe in its broadest sense and
North America), they also draw in comparative material and each volume
concludes with a brief final chapter on contemporaneous developments in
food ideas and practices outside the West. These works will contribute to
the expansion of the food history research in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and
South America, which is already growing at an increasingly fast pace.
The six volumes, which follow the traditional approach to examining
the past in Western cultures, divide the history of food as follows:

Volume 1: A Cultural History of Food in Antiquity (800 bce–500 ce)

Volume 2: A Cultural History of Food in the Medieval Age (500–1300)
Volume 3: A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance (1300–1600)
Volume 4: A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age
(1600–1800)
Volume 5: A Cultural History of Food in the Age of Empire (1800–1900)
Volume 6: A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age (1920–2000)
viii SERIES PREFACE

This periodization does not necessarily reflect the realities and the histori-
cal dynamics of non-Western regions, but the relevance of cultural and ma-
terial exchanges among different civilizations in each period is emphasized.
Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters:

1. Food Production. These chapters examine agriculture, husbandry,

fishing, hunting, and foraging at any given period, considering the
environmental impact of technological and social innovations, and
the adaptation to the climate and environment changes.
2. Food Systems. These chapters explore the whole range of the trans-
portation, distribution, marketing, advertising, and retailing of food,
emphasizing trade, commerce, and the international routes that have
crisscrossed the world since antiquity.
3. Food Security, Safety, and Crises. We cannot have a complete picture
of the history of food without discussing how societies dealt with
moments of crisis and disruption of food production and distribu-
tion, such as wars, famines, shortages, and epidemics. These essays
reflect on the cultural, institutional, economic, and social ways of
coping with such crises.
4. Food and Politics. These chapters focus on the political aspects of
public food consumption: food aspects of public ceremonies and
feasts, the impact on public life, regulations, controls, and taxation
over food and alcohol production, exchange, and consumption.
5. Eating Out. The communal and public aspects of eating constitute
the main focus of these essays. Authors consider hospitality for
guests, at home and in public spaces (banquets and celebrations),
and discuss public places to eat and drink in urban and rural envi-
ronments, including street food, marketplaces, and fairs.
6. Professional Cooking, Kitchens, and Service Work. These chap-
ters look at the various roles involved in food preparation outside
the family nucleus: slaves, cooks, servants, waiters, maitre d’hotel
etc., investigating also the most relevant cooking techniques, tech-
nologies, and tools for each period, giving special consideration to
innovations.
7. Family and Domesticity. The acquisition, shopping and storage,
preparation, consumption, and disposal of food in a domestic setting
SERIES PREFACE ix

are among the most important aspects of food culture. These chap-
ters analyze family habits in different periods of time, paying par-
ticular attention to gender roles and the material culture of the
domestic kitchen.
8. Body and Soul. These chapters examine fundamental material
aspects such as nutritional patterns, food constituents, and food-
related diseases. Furthermore, spiritual and cultural aspects of
thinking about and consuming food are highlighted, including reli-
gion, philosophy, as well as health and diet theories.
9. Food Representations. These essays analyze cultural and discursive
reflections about food, which not only contributed to the way peo-
ple conceive of food, but also to the social and geographical diffu-
sion of techniques and behavior.
10. World Developments. These brief chapters overview developments,
dynamics, products, food-related behaviors, social structures, and
concepts in cultural environments that often found themselves at
the margins of Western modernity.

Rather than embracing the encyclopedic model, the authors apply a broad
multidisciplinary framework to examine the production, distribution, and
consumption of food, as grounded in the cultural experiences of the six
historical periods. This structure allows readers to obtain a broad overview
of a period by reading a volume, or to follow a theme through history by
reading the relevant chapter in each volume.
Highly illustrated, the full six-volume set combines to present the most
authoritative and comprehensive survey available on food through history.
 Introduction
amy bentley

Food—not the first subject most people think of to tell the story of history
and culture. Upon reflection, however, what better subject could there be?
At the base of human existence, food plays a role in virtually every arena
that is important to our lives: from the rituals of daily life, leisure activities,
and aesthetic pleasure, to politics and government, war, social interchange,
and commerce. Food fuels—literally and metaphorically—economic prac-
tices (domestic food-relief programs), social movements (lunch counter
sit-ins, counter-globalization rallies and protests), business–government
relationships (agriculture and farm subsidies), and international policy
(famine relief and military alliances). Food not only helps determine both
individual and collective identity, but it is also deeply enmeshed in politi-
cal institutions and economic health. In fact, the consumption of food is
an extraordinarily social activity laden with complex and shifting layers
of meaning. Not only what we eat, but how and why we eat, tell us much
about society, history, cultural change, and humans’ views of themselves.
Food has always played a major role, and the ways in which it is pro-
duced, processed, distributed, controlled, consumed, and portrayed re-
veal not only the hierarchies of power, but also the subtle, multi-leveled
challenges to that power by groups and individuals in society. Whether
minimally processed foods (wheat, cooking oil), industrially manufactured
2 INTRODUCTION

items (instant ramen, Coca-Cola), or hand-made creations (tamales, holi-

day sweets), people imbue particular foods with deep-seated meaning and
emotion and will go to great lengths to preserve or promote them, regard-
less of whether they are involved in their production (farmers, processors)
or merely their consumption (tea drinking). Not only is food intimately,
and intricately, tied to group image, but it is bound to national identity, and
a nation’s power or lack thereof. Since food is power—and an abundance
of food can mean a surfeit of power—nations have been shaped, blessed,
and at times intellectually and socially hindered by the availability of food
in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the time period with which
this volume of A Cultural History of Food is concerned.
Until the last couple of decades many in academia did not view food
as a fitting topic in its own right. Prior to this current popularity there
were earlier academic studies of food, originating mainly in anthropology,
folklore, and the Annales school, which regarded the study of food as key
to understanding cultures and societies, and individuals’ lives within them.
Food did not fit a traditional standard of worthiness in most traditional
academic disciplines. It was not seen and understood in political or intel-
lectual terms, nor was it analyzed aesthetically. And when considered at
all, food was often regarded as quotidian, seemingly mundane, and decid-
edly female. Frequently, food was employed as an indistinctive backdrop
through which to study, for example, labor relations (workers in canning
factories and slaughter houses), agrarian political movements (New Deal-
era food production), or twentieth-century industrialization (the rise of
food-processing conglomerates). However, as social and cultural history
combined to explore the intersection of everyday life, especially the ex-
periences of women and minorities, with the consumption of all manner
of objects, many more topics were deemed worthy of scholarly inquiry,
including food. Eating, after all, is much more than ingesting nutrients for
biological survival: food plays a significant role in social relationships, is a
highly symbolic element in religious and magical rites, aids in developing
and maintaining cultural distinctions, and assumes enormous significance
in shaping individual identities.
After all, not only does everyone have to eat (and ideally several times
daily) to survive, but also all the great civilizations, both ancient and mod-
ern, meticulously recorded by historians and philosophers, have essentially
INTRODUCTION 3

risen and fallen according to rulers’ abilities to feed their constituents suc-
cessfully. The salience of recent debates concerning food safety, global en-
vironmentalism, and the effect of food production on indigenous peoples
and cultures worldwide, and the renewed interest in high-quality, mini-
mally processed food, culinary tourism and fine dining, combined with
ever-rising rates of obesity and its adverse consequences, gives this history
of food in the modern era rich potential.
This volume examines food from 1920 to the beginning of the twenty-
first century: what was produced, processed, distributed, and consumed,
under what circumstances and to what end, and how these foods changed
over time within a larger framework of society, politics, economics, culture,
and important events. Further, it will use the production and consumption
of food as a lens to examine the effects of such watershed events as the
devastating First and Second World Wars; the emergence of the United
States and the Soviet Union as world superpowers; population booms and
the shifting landscapes as cities shrank and swelled again with new im-
migrants; struggles for independence, civil rights, and democracy; and the
uncertainty but also creativity of the so-called post-industrial, post-Cold
War era of globalization.

A BRIEF SURVEY OF MAJOR EVENTS

It is virtually impossible to summarize accurately the history of the mod-

ern era around the globe, and do justice to every nation, every group of
people, and every key event across continents—attempting to do so would
result more in a list of events than an exploration and interpretation of
the role of food in modern history. Despite the challenges, however, it is
important and useful to at least point to key events, as the modern era is
replete with transformative developments that directly affect the produc-
tion and consumption of food. To begin, think of the dramatic changes
that occurred between the beginning and the end of the twentieth century.
Those born in the 1920s whose lives spanned much of the century en-
tered into a markedly different society than the one in which they left. In
the 1920s, for example, most farms were devoid of electricity and indoor
plumbing, and airplane and automobile travel was unthinkable for most
people. By the early twenty-first century, the world was a dramatically
4 INTRODUCTION

different place. Modes of communication evolved from the radio to the tele-
phone, television, and satellites. Computers and digital media were an in-
tegral part of late-twentieth-century society and have continued to rapidly
evolve. Technology, as applied to industrialization and mass production of
goods, similarly fostered dramatic changes in people’s lives. While indus-
trialization and mass production of goods had begun prior to the modern
period, they continued to make dramatic inroads with regard to all-important
aspects of life, particularly food production and processing. Industrial pro-
cessing, the development of plastics, artificial fertilizers, pesticides and her-
bicides, and refrigeration, for example, all had dramatic effects on food,
culture, and society.
The modern era also experienced dramatic development and change with
regard to political and social institutions, systems of government, and social
movements, including the demise or continuation of colonialism, democracy,
fascism, and communism. De jure colonialist regimes were replaced with
de facto colonialism, despots, and corruption. Both the West and East con-
ducted their own evil actions: Jim Crow segregation and other indignities
in the United States, the European Holocaust, as well as Japanese domina-
tion and cruel treatment of those in other Asian countries. Yet struggling
independent nations also emerged during this period. Post-colonial indepen-
dence in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, India/Pakistan, the formation of the
state of Israel and its ensuing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the emergence of
the European Union—all took their place on the world political stage. Much
of the emergence of more democratic states was a result of those protest-
ing and fighting for equality and human rights: Mohatmas Ghandi, Nelson
Mandela, and Martin Luther King Jr. All took place against the terrible
backdrop of global and regional warfare in the modern era: World War II,
the Cold War, the American wars in Asia (Korea, Vietnam) and the Middle
East (the Gulf Wars), hot and cold wars all over the globe, between indus-
trialized nations, between developing nations, between the mighty (United
States, Soviet Union) and the meager who wore down and outlasted the
superpowers (the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, American wars in Asia and
the Middle East). Further, growing impatience with totalitarianism led to
counter-culture protests around the world, in Europe, the Baltic countries,
the United States, China (Tiananmen Square), and most recently the 2011
social and political protest movements across the Arab world.
INTRODUCTION 5

THE 1920s THROUGH POST–WORLD WAR II

The early period, the 1920s through to World War II, for many were de-
cades of dark, looming uncertainty and destruction. A significant portion
of the globe emerged from the Great War battered and despondent, if not
devastated by the unprecedented scale of death and destruction. Irish poet
William Butler Yeats’ famous lines, penned in 1919, embodied an era’s pes-
simism. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed
upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The
ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the
worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”1
The war ushered in economic booms and busts, leading to a sustained
global depression in the 1930s. The power vacuums left by the Great War
led to totalitarian dictators (Tojo, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) who quickly
capitalized on the political instability to rise to power, control society,
and eventually bring the globe to the brink of disaster with World War II.
Avant-garde art, philosophy, literature, and film all embodied a pessimism
and disillusionment.
In this era there emerged a noticeable shift in food and consumption
habits. The industrialization of the food supply allowed greater varia-
tion in people’s diets and their nutrition subsequently improved, though it
can be argued that canned goods and other processed foods diminished taste
and nutrients, leading to acclimation to salt and sugar in heavy quantities.
To sell these mass-produced items the early twentieth century witnessed the
proliferation of communications firms creating increasingly sophisticated
advertising. The increased number and circulation of magazines and news-
papers, and the growth in population and literacy rates ensured audiences
for corporate advertising.2
After the worldwide depression of the 1930s, and the destruction from
yet another, even more wide-spread and destructive world war, the United
States was one of the few to emerge from World War II with its industries
and economy thriving, signaling the arrival of what Time publisher Henry
Luce deemed the American Century. The war had changed, accelerated,
and altered the production, manufacturing, and advertising of industrial-
ized food, setting the stage for the remainder of the century. During the war
North American farmers, with fewer workers, had managed to produce
6 INTRODUCTION

food at record-breaking levels, in part because of the liberal use of manu-

factured fertilizers and pesticides, including the new miracle insect killer
DDT. After the war the continued reliance, and increased use, of such ele-
ments combined with more and more sophisticated farm equipment and
hybrid seeds led to even greater production (much of which was subsidized
by long-held government parity agreements).
After the war U.S. farmers, agriculture scientists, and politicians turned
their attention to providing adequate food for the postwar world, ultimately
through famine relief and crop production. Surplus food purchased by the
government was sent abroad to help alleviate and temper the global famine
conditions wrought by drought and wartime destruction. United States’
aid under the auspices of the Marshall Plan pumped in some $12.5 billion
to rebuild European economies and infrastructure, with several billions
going to Asia, particularly Japan, as well. Still, to help answer the demands
of the rapidly growing global population, Rockefeller Foundation scien-
tists engineered new seeds designed to produce significantly more grain
in countries all over the world, and ushered in what was christened the
Green Revolution (discussed in detail in chapter 1). The Green Revolution
seemed to work miracles, vastly increasing the amount of food available
to developing countries. Yet it also put a severe strain on local economies,
endangered subsistence farmers, the environment, and even indigenous cul-
tures, and accelerated the advance toward large, corporate-type farming in
the United States and elsewhere.
As in farm production, World War II provided the catalyst for the
postwar boom in food processing. Military quartermaster departments
pounded, dried, stretched, and shrunk food in every imaginable way in
order to reduce their bulk and weight to ship them overseas efficiently and
in large quantities. Frozen orange juice, instant coffee and cocoa, cake
mixes, brown-and-serve rolls, dehydrated soups in little plastic bags, in-
stant potatoes, powdered eggs and milk, ready trimmed and packaged
meats, and even the ubiquitous TV dinner all either got their start, or were
perfected with wartime research and technology. After the war the food
industry quickly adopted the knowledge and technology and began pro-
ducing food items for domestic consumers. Advertisers and enthusiastic
journalists deemed the new preservation techniques “a modern miracle in
the kitchen.”3 The technology so pervasively permeated the global food
INTRODUCTION 7

supply that eventually high-quality food became synonymous with food

capable of a long shelf life and low spoilage. Some of these new food
products made their way more quickly into homes than others, of course.
Commercial canning and bottling—well established by the early 1920s
and rationed during the war—reached a golden age in the 1950s as new
materials, new methods, proliferation of products, and a larger percentage
of household budget went to processed foods. Consumers’ use in particular
of canned foods kept increasing through the postwar years because of their
convenience and their ability to remain stable for several years. In many
rural areas still lacking in refrigeration and electricity, canned foods were
integral to rural long-term food supply.
As food production increased and food costs declined, consumption of
food in general went up. The new processing techniques resulted in a phe-
nomenal increase in the number of food products available to consumers,
and a corresponding expansion and alteration of grocery stores to accom-
modate them. Subtly at first, and more dramatically later, there occurred
a shift in the seasonal manner of eating experienced by those in devel-
oped countries. The increased number of freezers in homes, for example,
allowed for the purchase of more frozen items, and also allowed women to
buy large quantities of fresh produce and freeze it for later consumption.
Further, faster, more efficient methods of shipping (especially reliance on
air cargo) allowed fresh fruit and vegetables to be more widely available
year round. Similarly, fresh seafood was more frequently available in the
land-locked regions.4
To keep up with the overwhelming number of new food products, gro-
cery stores also underwent a radical transformation in the postwar era. In
the early part of the century most grocery stores were small corner shops,
with the grocer standing behind the counter to retrieve items at a shopper’s
request. Between 1890 and 1950, however, grocery stores became larger
and were often supplied by a central warehouse. Chain grocery stores rap-
idly proliferated, introducing branded food products to consumers. Thus
while larger, self-serve supermarkets existed before the war, specifically the
A&P, Piggly-Wiggly, and Tesco chains, after World War II they became
a permanent fixture on the landscape, eventually swallowing the older
style grocery store, as well as contributing to the decline in such specialty
stores as butchers, fresh-fruit markets, and bakeries. Supermarkets, as the
8 INTRODUCTION

name implies, expanded in size as well as number to accommodate the

plethora of products brought to market with regularity. The new super-
markets developed specialized departments, including areas for baby food,
gourmet items, self-serve meat departments, baked goods, produce, and
dairy. Because such stores allowed customers more freedom to pick up and
inspect items, brand names, eye-catching labels, and advertising became
more prominent in the hopes of attracting customers.

FOOD AND COLD WAR POLITICS

During World War II, while much of the U.S. food supply was shipped
overseas to the military, Allies, and newly liberated countries, consumers
received their fair share. United States’ food rationing, except for sugar,
was quickly dismantled at war’s end, largely at food manufacturers’ insis-
tence. Rationing continued in most European countries for several more
years as nations rebuilt farms and transportation systems ravaged by the
war. Though Americans made many sacrifices during World War II, includ-
ing the mandatory rationing of food and other items, they experienced little
(except for those who had fought in the war or who had lost loved ones) of
the horrible devastation wrought in other countries. Food, while often in
limited supply, was available in sufficient quantities thanks to farmers’ and
agricultural workers’ hard work, as well as a successful rationing program.
By early 1946 international reports revealed the grim details of the
world food situation. The war, combined with drought conditions, had
threatened crops in Europe, North Africa, India, China, and other parts of
Asia, reducing the 1945 total estimated world-food production by 12 per-
cent per capita below prewar levels. Further, estimates of the 1946–1947
world harvest, while slightly better, were predicted to come in at below
postwar levels as well. European production was 25 percent below normal.
In France, when the government’s collection of flour ran well below ex-
pected levels, citizens staged bread demonstrations. Officials in Italy simi-
larly were forced to reduce bread rations and faced similar protest. Even
England was short of food and would experience several more years of
rationing and shortages.
Outside of Europe the situation was far worse. Australia and parts of
South America were hit by drought. Mexicans, experiencing prohibitive