Lecture 32: War, Nutritionism, and the Great Depression
Because everything was prepackaged with readily identifi able
brand names, people could do larger shopping at one time, stocking
up the pantry and refrigerator for an entire week or longer with a
whole variety of foods that would last indefi nitely. By the 1920s
and 1930s, there were all kinds of junk foods and household
convenience items like Pyrex dishes and KitchenAid mixers. Perhaps just as important were new cookbooks—The Joy of
Cooking came out in 1931—along with all of the cookbooks made
by the manufacturers that explained how to use all of these new
products. There was also a slew of new ladies’ magazines like
Ladies’ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping, which touted the
wonderful benefi ts of food processing. The discovery of the calorie and the role of vitamins in nutrition
were equally important. This was largely the result of research done
in World War I on how to feed soldiers more effi ciently. Nutritional
scientists had already identifi ed proteins, carbohydrates, and fats
and how the body makes use of them. Wilbur Atwater fi gured out
how many calories are used in various activities using a respiration
calorimeter, a large airtight tank in which metabolism could
accurately be measured. Alongside of this was the development of home economics as an
academic discipline—one that was considered suitable for women
to enter—which was partly about domestic science (cooking and
household management), but was also increasingly about nutrition,
food science, and chemistry. Even the organization of the kitchen
became a serious topic. However, all of the nutritional science and scientifi c studies did
not make quackery obsolete. Perhaps the strangest fad of the early
20 th century was Fletcherizing, named after Horace Fletcher, who
lived in Venice and had endorsements of all sorts of scientists.
Fletcherizing meant to thoroughly chew food until it’s completely
broken down, which took about 100 chews per mouthful.