A Square Food: A Culinary Background of the Good Despair


Selling price: $26.99 - $17.66
(as of Mar 29,2024 11:56:45 UTC – Details)


James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner

From the writer of the acclaimed 97 Orchard and her partner, a culinary historian, an in-depth exploration of the best food disaster the country has at any time faced—the Terrific Depression—and how it reworked America’s culinary tradition.

The 10 years-lengthy Great Melancholy, a period of time of shifts in the country’s political and social landscape, permanently altered the way The united states eats. Ahead of 1929, America’s romantic relationship with food stuff was outlined by abundance. But the collapse of the financial system, in both equally city and rural The united states, still left a quarter of all Individuals out of function and undernourished—shattering prolonged-held assumptions about the limitlessness of the nationwide larder.

In 1933, as gals struggled to feed their households, President Roosevelt reversed extensive-standing biases towards government-sponsored “food charity.” For the to start with time in American historical past, the federal government assumed, for a when, obligation for feeding its citizens. The outcomes were popular. Championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, “home economists” who had very long fought to bring science into the kitchen rose to countrywide stature.

Tapping into America’s very long-standing ambivalence toward culinary pleasure, they imposed their vision of a durable, utilitarian delicacies on the American meal desk. Via the Bureau of Residence Economics, these women led a sweeping marketing campaign to instill nutritional tips, the forerunners of today’s Dietary Pointers for People.

At the exact same time, climbing meals conglomerates introduced packaged and processed meals that gave rise to a new American delicacies based mostly on speed and convenience. This movement toward a homogenized nationwide cuisine sparked a revival of American regional cooking. In the ensuing decades, the pressure between nearby traditions and culinary science has defined our countrywide cuisine—a battle that proceeds now.

A Sq. Meal examines the impression of economic contraction and environmental disaster on how Us residents ate then—and the lessons and insights those people experiences may well hold for us right now.

A Square Meal functions 25 black-and-white images.

Harper