Helen Zoe Veit is a professor of history at Michigan State University and also an author and editor. Her latest books are titled Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History and Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century. Greg and Helen discuss changes in American eating habits during the 20th century. Helen explains that food history became a viable academic field largely in the last 25 years, and describes early-20th-century shifts toward government regulation, nutrition science, calories, home economics, and factory food, which encouraged Americans to distrust appetite and pleasure while fueling diet culture and moralized views of weight. Their conversation traces how children’s “natural” pickiness was culturally constructed through things like Clara Davis’s studies, rising processed foods and instant alternatives, advice from Dr. Spock, and marketing power via supermarkets and the media. They discuss diluted “foreign” foods, faddists like Fletcher, the decline of Home Ec classes, and how history could inform a more balanced, pleasurable relationship to food. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes:When did picky eating become a “thing”? 14:56: You know, another thing I thought about a lot was that there are all sorts of things our kids are initially reluctant or fearful about today. My kids didn't want to put on pants for a while. They didn't want to wear snow boots in the snow. They didn't want to go to school or brush their teeth or put on sunblock or wear seat belts or car seats. But I just had this enormous cultural confidence. Of course they can get used to it because I see everybody else doing it, and I didn't hesitate to just, you know, insist that they do it in a way that the structure of daily life used to just insist children eat this kind of food, and they were getting used to it in such large numbers and so quickly that people didn't see it as a thing. So that really became the book. Like, how did we start to see this as a thing and to think it had this really unique psychological significance? And, you know, the answers are really complicated. And a lot of it happened in the 20th century. Why is our relationship with food so complicated? 34:20: Americans have a very uneasy relationship to pleasure of food, as like we're really hedonistic in a lot of ways. We consume a lot of junk food, this high-calorie, high-sugar delicious food, and we're like, ‘You can't tell me not to eat this.’ It's a big part of American culture, but it's not deeply pleasurable in some ways, right? The pleasure of eating with other people, the pleasure of feeling good about what we've eaten, and how it affects our bodies. We often have pleasure in a very narrow way today. How supermarkets changed what kids eat 25:12: Grocers as, you know, and general stores which preceded them, these were adult interactions. This was more or less designed to be one adult talking to another, with a list in hand. Kids were particularly invited into this conversation. But by the time modern grocery stores, which start really in the '20s, maybe 30s, start popping up in American towns and cities, and by the '50s we get supermarkets, really much larger stores with the big carts. That's a totally different model. Self-service leads immediately to just an explosion of impulse buying. In fact, the term was coined in the 1940s to describe what was going on in supermarkets, and it also led to an explosion of children's power over family food purchases in a way they hadn't before. Marketers keenly are aware of this. Show Links:Recommended Resources: Fernand BraudelJacques PépinSidney MintzAnnales SchoolClara M. Davis and the wisdom of letting children choose their own dietsNeophobiaBenjamin SpockSigmund FreudHorace FletcherJohn Harvey KelloggEuthenicsDarwinismHome EconomicsGuest Profile: Personal WebsiteFaculty Profile at Michigan State UniversityGuest Work: Amazon Author PagePicky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in HistoryModern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth CenturyFood in the Civil War Era: The SouthFood in the Civil War Era: The NorthFood in the American Gilded AgeIf you enjoyed this show, here are some other unSILOed episodes you may like: 236: James Hamblin - Cleanliness, Purity, Health and Culture454: Paula S. Fass - American Childhood From the Frontier to Helicopter Parenting Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
