U.S. Farm and Food Subsidies

From its founding, the U.S. government has promoted agriculture, and since the Great Depression, has directly supported farm incomes and crop prices. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs linked farm subsidies to food assistance for the poor, a politically successful combination then and now. Sarah Ludington describes how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), through the Farm Bill, became responsible for school lunches, food stamps, and land conservation in addition to billions of dollars in subsidies for commodity crops like corn and cotton. Now a target for both the right wing and left wing of American politics, the Farm Bill continues to embody the tensions at the heart of American agriculture.

Can “Taste” Be Separated from Social Class?

For the last two decades the United States has witnessed the rise of the “foodie” movement, and yet this movement has not brought about widespread change among general American population. Margot Finn argues that this apparent contradiction can be explained by the fact that most food conscientiousness is elitist; it is driven not by any underlying progressive ideology, but by a desire of culturally elite consumers to distinguish themselves from the general populace. Thus, taste, cannot be separated from social class.

A Plea for Culinary Luddism

Americans have been known to idealize home cooked meals eaten with the family, but the general trend in our history has been to move away from these things. Ken Albala, one of America’s leading food historians, makes an impassioned plea for the importance of cooking from scratch, using fresh ingredients, and sharing the food with others, as one of the most meaningful and humane acts we can do. He is cognizant of the fact that cooking is not always easy, nor has it always been voluntary, but in his mind that should not prejudice against the social importance of spending time preparing food, which is a creative, emotionally fulfilling, and loving act.

Home, Cooking

History looms large in much recent writing about food, with a particular nostalgia for home cooking. But much of this wistfulness for traditional food carefully prepared at home replicates long-standing efforts to rein in women, argues Tracey Deutsch. Because women still do much of the cooking in American homes, any history of home cooking has to acknowledge the inequalities of work in the home. Deutsch encourages us to look at kitchens and home cooking through the lens of women’s history to see them as places of joy and power, authority and possibility, tradition and resistance.

The Standard of Taste Debate

On the one hand people like to say that “there is no accounting for taste.” On the other hand, people constantly make judgments about their own and other people’s taste (gustatory and aesthetic). Charles Ludington examines the taste for wine in eighteenth-century England and Scotland, and the taste for beer in twenty-first century America, to argue that taste can in fact be accounted for because it is a reflection of custom, “tribal” identity, gender, political beliefs, and conceptions of authenticity, which are mostly but not entirely conditioned by class status and aspirations. And rightly or wrongly, we judge other people’s taste because taste positions us in society.

Who Should Be Responsible for Food Safety?

The paradox of modern life is that consumers demand government protect them from an ever-greater range of risks, but at the same time complain about ever-greater government control. Reviewing epidemics of foodborne disease in the late 19th century, Matthew Booker shows how the U.S. government gradually took responsibility for food safety with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. We live longer and healthier lives because of those government regulations. But Americans today are threatened by illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, calling into question once again what is safe food and who should guarantee it.

What Does It Mean to Eat Right?

Over the course of their lifetimes, Americans will be given a vast array of changing and sometimes contradictory advice about what constitutes healthy eating and drinking. Charlotte Biltekoff looks at the history of nutrition science to argue that the reason for the changing advice has less to do with science per se, and more to do with the fact that what constitutes “eating right” is a product of social values that are determined by the dominant classes. These classes define their own eating habits as healthy and the mark of good citizenship, thereby condemning those (historically immigrants and the poor) to second-class status.

Introduction

Food is a contentious topic in the contemporary United States. But our debates surrounding food are hardly new. The chapters in Food Fights constitute a series of debates about food, emphasizing the historical background to our current arguments. All the authors share the assumption that knowing how we got the food and foodways we have today will help us appreciate both the triumphs and failures, strengths and weaknesses of our current food system, and thereby build some common understanding between those who only condemn its problems and those who see only its virtues.

What Should Babies Eat and Whose Business Is It?

In the nineteenth century, before the rise of commercial baby food, nearly all infants were breastfed exclusively for most of their first year. By 1950, most infants were eating solid food before two months of age, and that food was increasingly made by companies, not parents. At first, commercial baby food was the same as canned food for adults, just in smaller jars. But in the 1970s, when parents rebelled against “canned food taste,” baby food manufacturers responded by offering more variety and less salt and sugar. Today, age of first solid food and choice of baby food vary widely. When and what babies eat, argues Amy Bentley, mirrors our larger debates about nutrition, diet, and the morality of commercial versus home-made food.

Food Activism

Food activism in the United States has followed two broad currents that are critical of the conventional food system. The first seeks to reform the system by improving wages, working conditions, and the environmental impact, and the second focuses on alternative methods of production, transportation, and marketing. Steve Striffler argues that neither of these approaches has been terribly successful in changing the conventional food system because they are quickly co-opted by profit seeking corporations. Meaningful change, says Striffler, will only come when we remove the profit motive from the food system, and build a new system based on human need.