Revolution at the table : the transformation of the American diet / Harvey A. Levenstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levenstein, Harvey A., 1938-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food habits--United States--History.

Food habits.

Diet--United States--History.

Diet.

Diet in disease--United States--History.

Diet in disease.

Diet--history.

Feeding Behavior.

United States.

Medical Subjects:

Diet--history.

Feeding Behavior.

United States.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 275 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1988.

Summary:

For most Americans in the 19th century, it wasn't what you ate, but how much you ate, that mattered. Late in the century, doctors wrote books like How To Be Plumb and the voluptuous woman was the ideal. The famed actress Lillian Russell, considered by many the epitome of beauty, weighed almost two hundred pounds. Today, in contrast, Americans seem obsessed with calories, diets and slimness, and with eating healthful amounts of vitamins, minerals, fats and proteins. What sparked this remarkable revolution in the way we eat.

As historian Harvey Levenstein points out, the great American food revolution really occurred between the years 1880 and 1930. Focusing on this pivotal half-century, Levenstein provides a vivid account of the people and social forces that redirected the American diet, spiced with colorful portraits of the reformers, scientists, businessmen, faddists and hucksters who promoted or exploited the eating revolution. Here we meet the MIT chemist Ellen Richards and the "scientific" home economists who failed to change workers' diets, but then succeeded with the middle class ... the wealthy faddist Horace Fletcher, the Great Masticator, advocate of a low-protein diet and "thorough mastication" (over 100 chews per mouthful) ... the social workers who despaired over immigrants' eating habits, particularly their love of spicey, one-pot dinners ... the flamboyant Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and his brother William, who invented corn flakes as a vegetarian health food ... and Elmer McCollum, who discovered vitamins A and D, and who was later hired by General Mills tout the nutritional benefits of white bread.

Levenstein serves up fascinating insights into the social, economic, and political forces that spurred the eating revolution--urbanization, immigration, technological and agricultural advances, and the changing role of women in society. He examines how nutritional science developed in America; how Prohibition's ban on wine helped destroy French cuisine in America; how changes in women's work, marriage, and the family led to lighter, time-saving meals; and how giant food corporations used massive advertising budgets to change the way Americans prepared foods.

By 1930, the eating habits of Americans had undergone an incredible metamorphosis. For anyone who has ever wondered why we eat what we eat, and why we sometimes change, this wide-ranging, colorful social history offers some illuminating and even surprising answers.

Contents:

The American table in 1880: the tastes of the upper crust

How the other half ate

The rise of the giant food processors

The New England kitchen and the failure to reform working-class eating habits

The "servant problem" and middle-class cookery

The new nutritionists assault the middle classes

Scientists, pseudoscientists, and faddists

New reformers and new immigrants

The great malnutrition scare, 1907-1930

"Best for babies" or "preventable infanticide"?: the controversy over artificial feeding of infants, 1880-1930

"Food will win the war"

The newer nutrition, 1915-1930

A revolution of declining expectations

Workers and farmers during the "prosperity decade"

The old (restaurant) order changeth

Too rich and too thin?

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-260) and index.

Local Notes:

HSP Historic Culinary Arts Collection.

Other Format:

Online version: Levenstein, Harvey A., 1938- Revolution at the table.

ISBN:

0195043650

9780195043655

OCLC:

16464971

Online:

Contributor biographical information

French equivalent / Équivalent français

Publisher description