Inventing baby food : taste, health, and the industrialization of the American diet / Amy Bentley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bentley, Amy, 1962- author.

Series:

California studies in food and culture ; 51.

California Studies in Food and Culture ; 51

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Infants--Nutrition--United States--History.

Infants.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (252 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Food consumption is a significant and complex social activity-and what a society chooses to feed its children reveals much about its tastes and ideas regarding health. In this groundbreaking historical work, Amy Bentley explores how the invention of commercial baby food shaped American notions of infancy and influenced the evolution of parental and pediatric care. Until the late nineteenth century, infants were almost exclusively fed breast milk. But over the course of a few short decades, Americans began feeding their babies formula and solid foods, frequently as early as a few weeks after birth. By the 1950's, commercial baby food had become emblematic of all things modern in postwar America. Little jars of baby food were thought to resolve a multitude of problems in the domestic sphere: they reduced parental anxieties about nutrition and health; they made caretakers feel empowered; and they offered women entering the workforce an irresistible convenience. But these baby food products laden with sugar, salt, and starch also became a gateway to the industrialized diet that blossomed during this period. Today, baby food continues to be shaped by medical, commercial, and parenting trends. Baby food producers now contend with health and nutrition problems as well as the rise of alternative food movements. All of this matters because, as the author suggests, it's during infancy that American palates become acclimated to tastes and textures, including those of highly processed, minimally nutritious, and calorie-dense industrial food products.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

List Of Illustrations

Introduction

1. Industrial Food, Industrial Baby Food: The 1890's to the 1930's

2. Shifting Child-Rearing Philosophies and Early Solids: The Golden Age of Baby Food at Midcentury

3. Industrialization, Taste, and Their Discontents: The 1960's to the 1970's

4. Natural Food, Natural Motherhood, and the Turn toward Homemade: The 1970's to the 1990's

5. Reinventing Baby Food in the Twenty-First Century

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780520283459

0520283457

9780520959149

0520959140

OCLC:

890207961