The New England Kitchen and the Origins of Modern American Eating Habits

Of all the great panoply of reformers seeking to change American life, a little group of turn-of-the-century proponents of "Scientific Eating" probably had more long-term impact on the daily lives of most Americans than any of their progressive colleagues, yet they remain in the shadows of the better-known political and economic reformers.

Abstract

culture, those which are very often the most resistant to change are food habits. 1 Yet in the course of the past hundred years, American food habits have changed markedly. Much of the change resulted from industrialization, urbanization, and the revolutions in food production, storage, transportation, distribution, and consumption. But American food habits also changed as a result of the deliberate attempts of small numbers of Americans to improve the health and extend the lives of their countrymen by transforming their eating habits. Of all the great panoply of reformers seeking to change American life, a little group of turn-of-the-century proponents of Scientific Eating probably had more long-term impact on the daily lives of most Americans than any of their progressive colleagues. Yet they remain in the shadows of the better-known political and economic reformers. The battles of those who fought for pure food and drug legislation have attracted much historical interest and controversy. But the more important growth of a vast establishment devoted to changing America's eating habits, rather than its food, has been ignored. By the 1920s this establishment had become perhaps the most successful of progressive reforms. Thousands of teachers of home economics were spreading new attitudes towards eating in the schools and universities. Pamphlets outlining the new rules of nutrition had been widely distributed