manufacturers started selling their own (mass-produced) brands of
pita bread, tofu, pure peanut butter, yogurt, and whole wheat bread.
In other words, these foods went mainstream. Even the health-food stores changed. Instead of selling fresh
produce and locally raised foods, things increasingly came in
packages. Essentially, they became scarcely different than food-
industry products, except that these were usually lower in fat, used
only natural ingredients, or were specifi cally vegetarian. However,
they were still highly processed and corporately controlled. As
a result, the entire social consciousness side of the health-food
movement fell by the wayside.A New Interest in Cooking
Just as the counterculture was promoting its own ideal way of
eating, at the same time, there grew in this country a vibrant new
interest in cooking. At fi rst, it was French cooking that enthralled
middle-class Americans—not the sort of fancy haute cuisine that
was in the great restaurant kitchens of the 19th century but, rather,
a more simple and rustic French cuisine based on the countryside.
In her fi rst cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and
then on TV from the 1960s until her death in 2004, Julia Child taught
people basic cooking techniques that gave them the confi dence to
prepare good, honest meals from scratch. It was French food, but
defi nitely not haute cuisine. There were also cooking magazines
like Gourmet and Bon Appétit. Cooking and entertaining became something sophisticated, a
leisure activity, and also something to enjoy rather than household
drudgery. The interest in cooking from scratch was a direct affront
to mass-produced food. There was also a renewed interest in eating
out, at every level of the price spectrum. Along with a fl ood of cookbooks and television shows hitting the
market, in the 1970s especially, there was a new interest in “ethnic”
cuisines. American people on the whole began cooking things