a ban may be unnecessary. People in Europe aren’t dropping dead
left and right from eating unpasteurized cheese; in fact, they have
been eating these cheeses for centuries. This is only one example
of what can happen when big business takes over food production. Another invention is steel, which is much cheaper in the long run
to make than iron, and much stronger. Machines themselves can
be made from it, with replaceable parts. In the kitchen, stainless
steel—an alloy of steel and nickel and enough chromium to form a
protective surface—is developed after the turn of the century. Food-
processing equipment can now be built on an enormous scale. There are also communications breakthroughs, including
telephones, radios, and phonographs. These inventions lead not
only to advertising, but also to a quicker pace of business—the
ability to organize businesses on a much larger and international
scale. There’s also photography and eventually moving pictures,
which will revolutionize the way things are sold to people, and
because they’re expensive to mass-produce, it will tend to be only
the biggest companies that can do it, pushing out all the others.From Peanuts to Peanut Butter
Into the 19th century, most people just ate peanuts as a snack food,
roasted. Growers were small and independent. Distributors who
shipped and sold them remained small scale, and most importantly,
the vendors were small, privately owned operations.
At the time that John Harvey Kellogg, following a vegetarian diet,
promoted nut butters as a healthy meat substitute, peanut butter was
made at home. This process was time consuming, laborious, messy,
and diffi cult. Like other health-food products, peanut butter began
to go mainstream. In 1901, the fi rst recipe for peanut butter with
jelly was published. Technology, big business, and mass manufacturing all combine to
make peanut butter cheap. Soon, sugar is added, and it’s marketed