A fascinating account of American food from WW1 to the end of the Depression. As background to examining the hunger and devastation of the Depression years, A Square Meal recounts the history of food relief and breadlines in turn-of-the-century New York City, the effect of the agricultural depression of the 1920s on the previously self-sufficient American farm household, and the ascendancy of convenience foods in the lives of young urbanites in the post-WW1 period. Ziegelman and Coe trace the influence of New England Puritanism on the distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor that contributed to failures in relief policy on the part of local governments, the Hoover Administration, and even to some extent the Roosevelt Administration's Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA).
Of special interest to baby boomers (as well as to any American who has ever eaten a hot school lunch), A Square Meal documents the rise of home economics and nutrition as sciences during the 1920s and '30s, a period which dovetailed with the marketing of canned foods as "scientifically engineered" convenience foods. Combine all that with Eleanor Roosevelt's influence on the nation as a devotee of the New England Puritan food ethos (her son, James, asserted that "Victuals to her are something to inject into the body"), and it becomes pretty clear why so much midcentury American food was so very, very bad. Ziegelman and Coe describe meatloaves made of canned chicken mixed with canned peas; salads made with lime Jell-O, canned grapefruit, canned pimento-stuffed olives, and mayonnaise; and so on. The book even includes recipes for abominations such as Liver Loaf and Chop Suey with Milkorno, a 1930s breakfast cereal developed (scientifically, of course!) at Cornell University and made from corn and powdered dry milk.
A culinary heroine emerges toward the end of A Square Meal: Sheila Hibben, author of The National Cookbook (1932). Long before the back-to-the-earth and natural-foods movements of the late 1960s and '70s, Hibben traveled through the United States, collecting simple, traditional, regional recipes made with fresh, local, minimally processed ingredients. Like the nutritionists and home economists of her era, Hibben "saw economic disaster as an opportunity to mend our gastronomic ways." But "[w]hile dieticians tended to our vitamin intake, Hibben was interested in the spirit-healing properties of humble food well prepared."
A Square Meal is a thoroughly engaging, beautifully written account of Americans' relationship with food during the first forty years of the twentieth century. Highly recommended.
Of special interest to baby boomers (as well as to any American who has ever eaten a hot school lunch), A Square Meal documents the rise of home economics and nutrition as sciences during the 1920s and '30s, a period which dovetailed with the marketing of canned foods as "scientifically engineered" convenience foods. Combine all that with Eleanor Roosevelt's influence on the nation as a devotee of the New England Puritan food ethos (her son, James, asserted that "Victuals to her are something to inject into the body"), and it becomes pretty clear why so much midcentury American food was so very, very bad. Ziegelman and Coe describe meatloaves made of canned chicken mixed with canned peas; salads made with lime Jell-O, canned grapefruit, canned pimento-stuffed olives, and mayonnaise; and so on. The book even includes recipes for abominations such as Liver Loaf and Chop Suey with Milkorno, a 1930s breakfast cereal developed (scientifically, of course!) at Cornell University and made from corn and powdered dry milk.
A culinary heroine emerges toward the end of A Square Meal: Sheila Hibben, author of The National Cookbook (1932). Long before the back-to-the-earth and natural-foods movements of the late 1960s and '70s, Hibben traveled through the United States, collecting simple, traditional, regional recipes made with fresh, local, minimally processed ingredients. Like the nutritionists and home economists of her era, Hibben "saw economic disaster as an opportunity to mend our gastronomic ways." But "[w]hile dieticians tended to our vitamin intake, Hibben was interested in the spirit-healing properties of humble food well prepared."
A Square Meal is a thoroughly engaging, beautifully written account of Americans' relationship with food during the first forty years of the twentieth century. Highly recommended.
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