Food: A Cultural Culinary History

 As a result of nutritional science—quack or legitimate—food

corporations began to advertise their products with explicit health

claims. Probably the most

ingenious was how spinach

growers paid for not just ads,

but also for a cartoon of Popeye

the sailor, whose iron-enriched

muscles bulged whenever he

gulped down a can of spinach.

Popeye was introduced in

1929, and in the 1930s, spinach

consumption rose 33 percent,

apparently saving the industry.

Prohibition and the Great Depression
 Aligned with a new interest in
health was probably one of the
stranger experiments the United
States has tried as a nation:
Prohibition. The temperance
movement was growing steadily
since the latter 19th century with groups like the Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union, and lobbying pressure became so great that the
Eighteenth Amendment made alcohol illegal—and it lasted for 13
years. Prohibition was intended to reduce crime and poverty and
improve the nation’s health.

 People began drinking more hard liquor because beer and wine

were too diffi cult to transport. Liquor was smuggled in by gangs—

and there were only 1,500 federal offi cers employed to stop it—so

this actually led to increased crime. Crime in general rose because

Prohibition destroyed jobs. Breweries, bars, and wineries closed,

and the ones that survived had to either market malted milk or

grape juice—but most couldn’t survive.

 The prosperity and completely unregulated wild speculation of the

1920s simply could not last. Agriculture was actually hit hard even

Spinach contains a great deal of

iron and vitamins A and C.

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