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1900-1910 • During the early decades of the 20th century, Americans foods reflected the great diversity of people living in our country. What people ate depended primarily upon who they were (ethnic heritage, religious traditions), where they lived and how much money they had (wealthy railroad tycoon? immigrant street peddler?). • The average salary was 13$ PER WEEK • You went to a shop (right) with a list and someone got the items you needed for your dinner that night
1900-1910 • Waves of immigrants introduced new foods and flavors. Most immigrants settled in urban areas, many opened restaurants and imported foods. The first Italian-style pizzeria opened in New York City 1905.
1900-1910 • Advances in transportation, food preservation, and home storage began to equalize local food availability and lessen dependence upon seasonal variations. • in 1908, Henry Ford introduced the Model T, which changed the way that Americans were able to travel and transport food.
1900-1910 • Electricity was introduced to homes beginning with urban areas. Electric appliances (refrigerators, stoves) were introduced but not generally found in homes until the 1930s
1900-1910 • Food manufacturers flooded our markets with new "covenience" foods, such as Jell-O, cornflakes and instant coffee
1910-1920 • During the World War I the country was in a severe economic depression which affected food availability. So did the need to feed soldiers. Most folks are familiar with rationing during WWII. It also happened during the first World War.
1910-1920 • While immigrants and returning soldiers introduced new foods to America, they were not celebrated/accepted like they were after WWII. The 1910s was a period of social homogenization (aka melting pot). Social workers and domestic scientists worked hard to Americanize the "foreign-born."
1910-1920 • Commercial food manufacturers flourished. Products were promoted to American housewives as modern, sanitary and economical. • Self-serve supermarkets were introduced.
1910-1920 • Orange juice, oreo’s, and hostess cupcakes are manufactured
1910-1920 • A new trend was beginning – expanded waistlines. Over-indulgence that began in the first decade continued with the upper class menus still abundant in meats, shellfish, pȃte and mousses • The first diet book was published in 1918, written by Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters entitled Diet and Health With a Key to the Calorie. Dr. Peters recommended that we all should count calories our entire life
1920-1930 • "When Prohibition went into effect in America on January 16, 1920, it did more than stop the legal sale of alcoholic beverages in our country...[it] increased the production of soft drinks, put hundreds of restaurants and hotels out of business, spurred the growth of tea rooms and cafeterias, and destroyed the last vestiges of fine dining in the United States. Prohibition was repealed in 1933.
1920-1930 • Prohibition, with its tremendous impact on the eating habits of the country, also had a great deal to do with the introduction of Italian food to the masses • The Italians who opened up speakeasies by the thousands were our main recourse in time of trial. Whole hoards of Americans thus got exposed regularly and often to Italian food and got a taste for it. • Money was fluent and so were the types of foods available
1920-1930 • In 1920, Charles Birdseye started deep freezing food and that resulted in his own company forming in 1922. It was named Birdseye Seafoods Inc. By 1930 Birdseye was selling 26 different frozen vegetables, fruits, fish and meats. This helped promote the refrigerator that had came out in 1925 and people started buying more frozen foods.
1920-1930 • New food productions: reese’s peanut butter cups, koolaid, velveeta cheese
1930-1940 • Black Tuesday hurled America into the Great Depression for the better part of the 1930s. Families were now faced with the challenge of making due with less. The Depression was a great task master, forcing people to be thrifty and use every bit of food, ad every ounce of ingenuity, to stretch meals
1930-1940 • There was an ample, inexpensive food supply. People struggling to make put food on the table had the option of purchasing lesser grades of meat (chuck instead of sirlion beef), cheaper cuts of animal (heart, brains, feet), and manufactured substitutes (Crisco instead of butter). Folks who needed help were served by private soup kitchens and government programs. These services were in place throughout the country. This was a decade of cutting back; not starvation • There was hunger, of course, but it was primarily concentrated in the poorest rural areas. • The depression ended July 1938
1930-1940 • Popular foods: ketchup and twinkies
1940-1950 • The 1940s were all about rationing, protein stretching, substitutions, rediscovering "grandma's foods", and making do with less. Home cooks made sugarless cookies, eggless cakes, and meatless meals. Cookbooks, magazines, government pamphlets, and food company brochures were full of creative ideas for stretching food supplies.
1940-1950 • Why the shortage? Food was needed to food soldiers fighting World War II. Farmers and food manufacturers were tapped to supply growing military needs, thus creating a shortage of foods available for domestic civilian consumers • The government restricted each American to 28 ounces of meat per week (overkill by today’s standard), plus limited the amounts of sugar, butter, milk, cheese, eggs and coffee permitted. As a result sales of convenience and prepared foods increased. “This is when margarine came in as a replacement for butter • USA food rationing ended in 1947
1940-1950 • The first Dairy Queen and McDonald’s fast food restaurants opened
1940-1950 • M and m’s invented, nutella (a way to ration chocolate b/c of the war)
1940-1955 • FDA introduced the first recomendations for diets • Foundation diet for nutrient adequacy • Included daily number of servings needed from each of seven food groups • Lacked specific serving sizes • Considered complex
1950-1960 • The 1950s brought a renewed vivacity to the country. Hope soared, giddiness rippled and money flowed. As long as I Love Lucy was on the newly invented television, life was good. So good, in fact, that over 16 million babies were born during the first half of the decade.
1950-1960 • Period cookbooks and magazines tell us belly-filling simple meals prepared from pre-packaged goods were popular in the 1950s. This was a perfectly understandable reaction to recent memories of lean pantries, government rationing, and WWII soldier rations. American companies did their best to convince the "typical" 1950s American homemaker to purchase time-saving appliances and serve her family new convenience foods. Did the average home cook buy into all this convenience? Yes, but not immediately
1950-1960 • The critical thing about food in the postwar years was the building of the national highway system,” Kraig points out. “Once that was built, [food] processors like Oscar Mayer became really big. And then there was the rise of McDonald’s and [other] hamburger chains along these highways.”
1950-1960 • Once Mom has been out of the house for the duration of the war, she found it really difficult to go back home and work as a housewife. It was at this time that we got all those ads about appliances and prepared foods freeing us from the kitchen.” • So we turned to the well-advertised can, package and pouch. Soups were available both in liquid and dry form, Tang landed on supermarket shelves
1950-1960 • Introduced in 1953 by Swanson, 98-cent TV dinners were the ultimate time- and energy-saver of the modern kitchen. A flick of the wrist turned back foil revealing turkey and stuffing floating in gelatinous gravy, whipped sweet potatoes and peas. About a half hour in the oven, and dinner was done. With nary a dish to wash. (no microwaves yet)
1960-1970 • In the United States, the 1960s was a stormy decade shaped by the clash of conforming tradition and radical change. Culinary wise? WWII rationing was a distant memory, 50s casseroles were old & boring. The 60s encouraged showy, complicated food with French influence (Julia Child, Jacqueline Kennedy), suburban devotion (backyard barbecues), vegetarian curiosity (Frieda Caplan) and ethnic cuisine (soul food, Japanese Steak houses). This was also the decade of flaming things (fondue & Steak Diane) and lots and lots of junk food (aimed at the baby boom children). "Average" suburban families patronized family-style restaurant chains like Howard Johnson's.
1960-1970 • In the late ’60s brought social unrest, growing tension over the Vietnam War and hippies with an unquenchable hunger for unprocessed, proletarian food made from scratch. Derogatorily referred to as granola-crunching, Birkenstock-wearing kind of folk, they eschewed anything prepackaged and began making their own products such as fresh bread, peanut butter, tahini and hummus.
1960-1970 • Julia Child was without a doubt the quintessential dish of the 1960s. She nearly single-handedly yanked us back from the crumbling edge of a culinary precipice and reintroduced us to the luxuries of French cooking (read: butter, eggs, cream and lots and lots of Cognac). Only this time is wasn’t just the rich who could afford such extravagance. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGg4njImm0Y
1960-1970 • Doritos, The Big Mac and gatorade all invented
1960-1970 • FDA issues new dietary guidelines • Foundation diet approach—goals for nutrient adequacy • Specified amounts from four food groups • Did not include guidance on appropriate fats, sugars, and calorie intake
1970-1980 • The Immigration Act of 1965 opened our doors to millions of Asians and was responsible for the exotic restaurants that were now springing up in the early 70’s in even the most homogenized neighborhoods.
1970-1980 • Microwaves introduced: first one made in 1945 weighed nearly 750 pounds and cost more than $2,000 (11,000$ today) • The Radarange introduced in 1967 cost $495 (pic right). • By late 1970’s the microwaves were cheap enough for most households to have one
1970-1980 • Alice Waters reintroduced the notion of cooking with natural, seasonal ingredients–-an almost forgotten concept because of the prepackaged-food boom. Her mantra: fresh food, simply prepared. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1hU2w0a0HQ
1970-1980 • Popular foods: pineapple, hamburger helper, quiche
1980-1990 • Nouvelle Cuisine, as it was coined in the late ’70s in France, was the hottest thing here. Diners now paid astronomically more to eat significantly less, and loved it. It was a sign of status to wait a half hour for a table, eat a pigeon’s portion of food, and then be the first to foist a platinum credit card on the waiter, loudly declaiming to the table, “This one’s on me!” The stock market was everyone’s best friend, and generosity flowed. But soon diners rebelled and instead opted for plates filled with sumptuous delights.
1980-1990 • Countertops were cleared to make way for the new stand mixer and the food processor.
1980-1990 • History repeated itself when, on October 19, 1987, the stock market once again plummeted — this time 508 points. As with the crash of 1929, spending skidded to a halt and we ran for cover. Haute restaurants began emptying out as more down-home eateries began filling up. Simple comfort food such as chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, meat loaf (again), pot pies, pasta, and chili became the rage. “Anything that was reminiscent of childhood was welcomed. • One problem: All that comforting added up to a lot of extra pounds that had to come off.
1980-1990 • Popular foods: pudding pops. Hi-c, pizza rolls
1980-1990 • FDA produces a new daily food guide • Developed after the 1977 Dietary Goals for the United States were released • Based on the Basic Four, but also included a fifth group to highlight the need to moderate intake of fats, sweets, and alcohol
1990-2000 • The "tall food" movement began in the early 1990s as an counterbalance to 1980s nouvelle cuisine. • After years of serving up famine-sized portions known as nouvelle cuisine, chefs have taken a U-turn. Boasting about their 'architectural presentation' and comparing one another's 'dish verticality,' chefs in some cases are building dishes that rise more than 14 inches off the table...
1990-2000 • Manufacturers found ways to make everything reduced fat, low-fat or fat-free — even fat. What foodie can forget where he was when he heard that Olestra, the new nonfat fat, was on its way to market? But try as we might, most of us didn’t lose weight. We fooled ourselves into believing that because we were eating low-fat foods we could guiltlessly binge.
1990-2000 • The movement toward simplicity and paring down also found its way into the home. Powered by the domestic juggernaut Martha Stewart, “cocooning”–-the turning homeward to nest with family and friends — began. We couldn’t get enough of good things like canning, cherry pie and handmade wrapping paper. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwt9bC5-px8
1990-2000 • As priorities shifted, we began carving out more time for herb gardening, PTA meetings and — arguably one of the most revolutionary cooking tools ever — the Internet. • With the World Wide Web we now had instant access to millions of recipes from around the globe
1990-2010 • 1994: First GMO introduced
1990-2000 • FDA approves Food Guide pyramid • Total diet approach—goals for both nutrient adequacy and moderation • Developed using consumer research, to bring awareness to the new food patterns • Illustration focused on concepts of variety, moderation, and proportion • Included visualization of added fats and sugars throughout five food groups and in the tip • Included range for daily amounts of food across three calorie levels • Lasted 1992- 2005
2000-2010 • Artisan breads & purple ketchup, sustainable fish & turkey SPAM, sushi bars & sliders, raw foods & deep fried twinkies, foot-long breakfast sandwiches & traveling cupcake vendors, pink water & green tea, farmers markets & Walmart bulk foods.
2000-2010 • The 21st century is a time of culinary irony. We celebrate product diversity while chowing comfort foods. We choose miniature products then consume more of them so they cancel each other out. We are told farmed salmon is sustainable but the fish is flavorless and injected with artificial dye. We carry our reusable bags to the supermarkets and fill them with overpackaged commercial products. We treasure our beloved cookooks but Google recipes on the fly. We worry about feeding our unemployed neighbors while we throw away our supersized leftovers.
