Food for Thought

Today marks the celebration of the first National Food Day! Along with promoting better eating habits and healthier food options for the future, National Food Day reminds us that it is important to recognize the history that shaped our food culture today. In Chapter 3 of Food Justice, Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi give an overview of various factors that contributed to the downsizing of cooking and food preparation through the years:

Even before the rise of fast food restaurants in the 1960s and 1970s and their influence on how we consume our food, changes were already taking place with respect to food preparation and the food products that shaped daily cuisine and diets. The loss of farmland and the demographic migration from rural areas to urban and then suburban locations picked up pace in the early twentieth century. By the 1920s the majority of the U.S. population lived in urban areas, and by the 1950s suburban areas had become the fastest-growing population centers. As the population moved, knowledge about growing and preparing food for the family meal faded. The early school garden movement in the first decade of the twentieth century emphasized the need for a new generation of children growing up in cities to regain that knowledge. The separation from home-grown and home-prepared food was accelerated by the advent of the school lunch program in the early twentieth century, which offered a consumable alternative to home-fixed meals carried in school lunch boxes…

Some cookbook authors would proclaim during the 1950s that processed foods for the home, such as frozen foods, had become “almost a necessity.” “Frozen vegetables are God’s own gift to the busy housewife,” declared Blanche Firman in her 1951 treatise on “recipes and entertainment ideas for young wives.”  A 1952 Business Week article celebrating the “revolution in eating habits” and the triumphant march of the food industry into the kitchen envisioned a not-so-distant future “when housewives will pick up an entire pre-cooked frozen meal”…

During the 1960s and 1970s a more complete makeover of food preparation occurred with the availability of new appliances such as the microwave, more instant foods on the market, and the continuing reach of television in influencing what food was purchased and how it was prepared. The key to food preparation became speed and convenience…Food preparation itself became linked to a culture of eating characterized by speed and convenience. By 1989, a Gallup survey about what food was eaten at home found that “almost half [of respondents] were sitting down to frozen, packaged, or take out meals.” And when food preparation and cleanup were combined, according to a 2007 government study, less than half an hour a day during the week was spent on that entire process and only a little more than half an hour on weekend days. In comparison, nearly two and a half hours a day were spend watching TV during the week and more than three hours a day on weekends.