Lecture 29: Big Business and the Homogenization of Food

Big Business and the Homogenization of Food..............................

Lecture 29

I

n the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a wave of new technology arrives,

and food habits are changed drastically. This lecture focuses on the

seizure of what we can now call the food industry in late-19th-century

Europe and America by big business. In fact, the process of food production

is taken from smaller hands forcefully at nearly every stage—from the

farmers in the fi eld to processing plants, to marketing and advertising, to

transport and retailing, and even down to the way it’s prepared in the

home with new labor-saving devices. In other words, food itself becomes

big business.

Innovation in the Food Industry

 Before the 19th century, European and American food had depended

on a lot of interconnected businesses working in cooperation. In the

late 19th century, big businesses increasingly fi gure out how to own

everything, including the fi elds and the processing plants. What had

previously been a synergistic community of businesses becomes a

single very large business.

 There are two very important developments in the late 19th century

that make all of this possible, and they are absolutely indispensable

to understanding how and why food undergoes fundamental

changes. First is what has been called a second industrial revolution,

which is really just a continuation of the fi rst a century or so later,

but this one happened quicker, involved more advanced science,

and did much more to change what gets called food—and not

always for the better. The other thing happening at this time is a

second wave of imperialism.

 Probably the most important discoveries and inventions involve

using new forms of energy. In the mid-19th century, coal, gas, and

oil were the main forms of energy. The big change comes with the

use of electricity. Within a few years after its invention, New York