creased flavor with additional salt or, in the case of
low-fat foods, additional sugar. In the 1980’s, nearly
20 percent of the average American’s food dollar
was spent on diet foods. One particularly striking
example of the interest in low-calorie foods was
Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine frozen diet meals. Within a
year of their 1981 release, they resurrected the de-
clining frozen-food business, turning it into an $800
million market. Their success was due in large part
to another 1980’s innovation: the microwave oven.
Health Concerns During the 1980’s, Americans be-
came more aware that healthy eating habits played
a significant role in disease prevention thanks to
the release of a number of studies on lifestyle and
health. Serum cholesterol was singled out for its part
in heart disease, and the consumption of cholesterol
in foodstuffs was at the time thought to be directly
related to the level of cholesterol in the blood-
stream. As a result, many Americans decreased their
consumption of whole milk and eggs, as they be-
came familiar with saturated and unsaturated fats.
The consumption of foods thought to lower choles-
terol levels, such as oats, dramatically increased and
many existing products, particularly breakfast cere-
als, were reformulated to include them. In 1988,
sales of oatmeal increased by 20 percent and sales of
oat bran quintupled.
Even as diet and exercise tomes topped the best
seller lists, obesity rates in the United States contin-
ued to rise. By 1985, about 34 million Americans, or
one out of every five, was obese. In 1988, the Sur-
geon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health de-
clared that poor diet played a role in two-thirds of
the 21.5 million deaths of the previous year.
Eating Disorders The trend toward thinner bodies
contributed to a dramatic increase in eating disor-
ders, primarily among women. Previously rare, an-
orexia nervosa—a psychological disorder in which
sufferers increasingly limit their intake to the point
of starvation and death—and bulimia—a binging
and purging disorder—became much more preva-
lent during the 1980’s. Singer Karen Carpenter’s
death of anorexia complications in 1983 brought na-
tional attention to eating disorders. Critiques of the
cultural imperative to be thin began to appear from
feminists and larger Americans, who claimed that
eating disorders, as well as discrimination, were the
result of too much attention to one’s weight.
Impact Men as well as women were under intense
social pressure to conform to a physical ideal that
was increasingly slender during the 1980’s. As a re-
sult, the decade saw a dramatic surge in the number
of weight-loss products available; retooled foods,
weight-loss plans, and diet counseling were popular
ways to shed pounds. The financial success of these
products failed to alleviate the nation’s growing
weight problem, however, as Americans tried to re-
pair their diets with quick fixes rather than long-
term solutions.Further Reading
Belasco, Warren.Appetite for Change: How the Counter-
culture Took on the Food Industr y.Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor-
nell University Press, 1989. Includes information
on light foods and frozen diet meals introduced
during the 1980’s.
Brumburg, Joan Jacobs.Fasting Girls: The Histor y of
Anorexia Nervosa.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1988. Cultural history of an-
orexia that seeks to explain why the disease be-
came prevalent in the 1980’s.
Chernin, Kim.The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny
of Slenderness. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
One of the first feminist critiques of the obsession
with thinness.
Fraser, Laura.Losing It: America’s Obsession with Weight
and the Industr y That Feeds on It.New York: Dutton,- A magazine writer’s take on the weight-loss
industry of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Includes pro-
files of several diets popular in the 1980’s.
Levenstein, Harvey.Paradox of Plenty: A Social Histor y
of Eating in Modern America.New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993. Contains an overview of
trends in 1980’s food styles, including light foods
and dieting.
Schwartz, Hillel.Never Satisfied: A Cultural Histor y of
Diets, Fantasies, and Fat. New York: Anchor Books, - Historical overview of dieting, including di-
ets of the 1980’s.
Seid, Roberta Pollack. “Why Thin Is Never Thin
Enough.” InNever Too Thin: Why Women Are at War
with Their Bodies. New York: Prentice Hall, 1989.
Critical examination of the thinness trend in the
1980’s.
Shelly McKenzie
See also Aerobics; Aspartame; Food trends; Sim-
mons, Richard.The Eighties in America Diets 289