What is cuisine? Sydney Mintz says that “cuisine requires a population that eats that cuisine with sufficient frequency to consider themselves experts on it. They all believe, and care that they believe, that they know what it consists of, how it is made, and how it should taste.”[1] By this definition, does America then have a cuisine? Mintz says that Americans do not have a cuisine, but in my opinion, we do have a food culture that is heavily influenced by consumerism. The nature of American consumerism as a result of capitalism has shaped American foodways and identity in the post-war era.

At the turn of the century, there was a shift in the way food was prepared as a result of information and technology. In Shapiro’s book, Perfection Salad, those responsible for the shift were home economists. Before technology reached women in the United States, they were responsible for the production of everything their family consumed. I imagine that the process of preparing a meal for some women at beginning of the 19^th century must have been similar to the experience of Michael Pollan’s, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, preparation of “the perfect meal”, which was “hunted, gathered, or grown” by him. Though many of these women were able to buy basic materials, bread did not come pre-sliced in a bag and seasoning did not consist of five different bottles. The women of this era spent large part of their days not only on the preparation of a meal but also in preserving foods for storage for use during the winter months. Particular days were set aside for the making of bread for the week. This aspect of domestic life was considered to be a fundamental extension of their existence, the natural role of the genders in society.

The turn of the century was marked by an increase in activism and reform. More and more women were attending colleges, but the gender roles were still firmly implanted into society; women were directed into areas of home economics in which they perfected their abilities as housewives. This era is also defined by an increase in technology and science, in 1913, for example, the first refrigerator was available for home use and the electric toaster was invented in 1909[2]. There was a desire to combine food with science; food scientists urged women to prepare food certain ways. Cooking was turned into a science: technology was introduced into the kitchen as well as a strict cleanliness and guidelines on food preparation and even on its presentation. Clean and bland food was required, for example a plate of white was most healthy; the purpose of this movement toward cleanliness and blandness was to make the nation healthy and harmonized. “If the home were made a more businesslike place, if husbands were fed and children raised according to scientific principles, if purity and fresh air reached every corner of the house–then, at last, the nation’s homes would be adequate to nurture its greatness.”[3]  The Food and Drug Act of 1906 prevented the manufacture, sale, or transportation of misbranded or poisonous foods, and liquors.[4]

The development of the American Dream also impacted our foodways, especially after the Second World War. The war forced women into the workplace as men went off to fight. Food was also invented for the soldiers; food that would last for conditions of travel. This innovation allowed for food to not only travel, but have a longer shelf-life such as frozen orange juice, introduced to the American consumer in 1947[5]. The food industry wanted women to think that they did not have time to prepare food let alone enjoy cooking. If the advertising agencies could convince women of this, they would buy the newly emerging boxed and canned or frozen foods such as frozen French fries, Redo-Whip, and Swanson frozen TV dinners.

The post-war period marked the beginning of the fast-moving era.  Everyone became concerned with saving time and saving money, this was largely influenced by advertisements and marketing. Women had less time to cook and prepare food, or at least that’s what they were told. “During the postwar era, time became an obsession of the food industry and eventually of American homemakers as a manufactured sense of panic began to pervade even day-to-day cooking. Advertisements and stories plowed across the media reminding readers again and again how busy they were, how frantic their days, how desperately they needed products and recipes for quick meals.”[6]

In Something from the Oven, Laura Shapiro introduces the post-war culture. Advertising agencies successfully convinced American consumers that they needed convenience food because they had no time to prepare meals. The food industry still advertises convenience foods in this way. Commercials show women struggling to do a million things at once before getting the children off to school. That’s why PopTarts and sugary cereals should be bought; and if they have no time to pack a lunch, Lunchables and pre-packaged chips and cookies are available. Or just send some cash for them to get a school lunch.

School lunches also emerged around the time that science of nutrition was taking root. It was not nationalized until 1946 when healthy boys was a national priority. Many men were turned away from the military because they were malnourished. Boys must be fed well in school so they may turn into better, healthier soldiers in the future. As school food became a permanent fixture of the federal budget “it also became a potent symbol for the American promise of equality and prosperity in the post-war world.”[7] After the policy became nationalized however it, “bore only slight resemblance to the goals of nutrition scientists and home economists,”[8] and instead, relied on surplus commodities from farmers. It wasn’t long before fast food entered the school. “Food-service industry advertisers viewed school lunchrooms as the perfect place to create and solidify brand loyalty.”

The post-war period also introduced fast food. Since the first few McDonalds popped up in the country in the late 1930s, the United States has come to be a fast food nation. Our food culture of the mid 20^th and 21^st centuries is defined in some part by fast food, completely changing the food industry as well as the health of the country. In Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan explores the food industry that is centered completely around corn. The fast food industry created a huge demand for beef and later, chicken; in order to keep up with the demand, the food industry and government changed the way in which we raise crops and livestock.

The ability to industrialize corn allowed for this high demand to be met. Corn is in almost all our food: “Corn is what feeds the cow that becomes the steak. Corn feeds the chicken and the pig…The eggs are made of corn. The milk and cheese and yogurt [come from dairy cows that are] eating corn.” Processed foods have even more intricate manifestations of corn. Take the chicken nugget for example: corn piled upon corn; wash that down with anything but water and your probably drinking a form of corn known as high fructose corn syrup. “Some forty thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn.” We even use corn in nonfood items such as toothpaste, trash bags, batteries and much, much more.[9] I am now positive that at least 90 percent of what I ate in my food journal had something to do with corn whether it be ingredients or packaging. The shiny wax on my apples were made with corn and the pork in my BBQ sandwich was fed with corn. Corn seems to be what our country is made of.

With experimentation and hybridization of corn seeds, companies are now able to completely control the production of corn. “Hybrid corn now offered its breeders what no other plant at that time could: a biological patent. Farmers now had to buy new seeds every spring…they now depended on a corporation.”[10] Because corn is so useful, it isn’t surprising that ‘cities of corn’ are planted each year and with this high production of corn brings cheap prices. Corn, in fact, is cheaper the buy than to grow because of government subsidies. Surplus commodities are not to be wasted, so we stuff our livestock full of corn.

Along with the industrialization of corn, we have also urbanized our livestock. Because we need more room to grow the corn, we shove the livestock into “densely populated animal cities” referred to as CAFOs or Combined Animal Feeling Organizations. The new system of raising cattle in CAFOs in addition to feeding the livestock corn, farmers are able to fatten the livestock in a much shorter time period than ever seen before. In the fifties, cattle were four or five years old at slaughter, about twenty years ago the timeline was reduced to two or three years old, now its 14 to 16 months. The process that that’s up to four years naturally allows cattle to go from 80 to 1,100 pounds in just over a year due to “corn, protein and fat supplements, and an arsenal of new drugs.”[11]

Animals and workers alike are mistreated and abused. In Chicken, by Steve Striffler, the chicken industry was explored thoroughly. Surprisingly, the book was dedicated mainly to the mistreatment of the workers rather than the chickens. Because most of the companies, such as Purdue and Tyson, hire illegal immigrants, they are able to take advantage of the workers without consequence. Striffler himself worked in plants and experienced the mundane repetition required of the workers. The workers are obligated to stand on their feet for eight hours a day repeating motions that can and will cause repetitive stress injuries.

Recently, however, a consumer revolution has shown signs of success in the Organic movement. In, Omnivore’s Dilemma,  Pollan observes Joel Salatin, a self-proclaimed ‘grass farmer’ at Polyface Farms. I myself, have witnessed the effects of the Organic movement in my trip to Wegman’s as well as many other stores such as Target and Wal-Mart in which the product on the shelf was directly influenced by the consumer. In the beginning of his Organic section, Pollan eats an ‘Industrial Organic’ meal and traces it back to its roots. It turned out that “free-range” and “organic” are broadly defined by the farmers who have very different definitions than myself. Pollan brought up a point that I neglected to notice during my trip to Wegman’s: that “Organic” companies use heavy marketing to promote their product going as far as naming the chicken you are buying and giving a detailed account of its life, however misconstrued it may be.

When Pollan visited Polyface Farm, however, I was reminded of what I witness every day: open fields, grazing cows, and clucking chickens. Salatin refers to himself as a ‘grass-farmer’ because it is grass, not corn, that is the root to the cycle of life. Salatin also believes that ‘Industrial Organic’ is a contradiction and cannot exist. Once something is industrialized and widely distributed, it is no longer natural or sustainable, it has been tainted. Just because meat can travel across the country, it doesn’t mean that it should, said Salatin.[12]

Though Organic is showing up in stores, it is getting tainted by industrialization and marketing. The American consumer culture is shaped through marketing, even when it comes to something as personal and important as what we eat. While Americans may lack a cuisine by the definition of Mintz, we do have a food culture which is twisted and manipulated through advertisements.

Bibliography

Diner, Hasia. Hungering for America. Caimbridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Levine, Susan. School Lunch Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Mintz, Sydney. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Power, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

National Academy of Engineering. Household Appliances Timeline. 2011. http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3768 (accessed December 11, 2011).

Oliver, Lynn. FAQs: popular 20th century American foods. September 22, 2011. http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html#1940s (accessed December 11, 2011).

Pollan, Michael. Omnivore’s Dilemma. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.

Shapiro, Laura. Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century. New York: North Point Press, 1986.

—. Something from the Oven. New York: Penguin Press, 2005.

Striffler, Steve. Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favotite Food. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

This reading was probably my favorite. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest in farmland–the descriptions he used were so familiar to me–it was like being home again. I really enjoyed the article about organic farming. I think the only thing that gave me pause was the reality that when you are a successful organic farmer, trying to make a more than successful living, you become in many ways like an industrial farmer. When we reached the part of his story where he described feeding the animals corn–my first thought was “no” not them too, but I suppose there is a little that we all have to cave in on. After reading this, I know that I would much rather eat organic and/or vegetarian than ever eat another piece of meat. This has dramatically changed the way I eat–I read every label and am extremely careful about what I eat. I understand that there will be times when I have to make concessions, but those will be concessions I freely accept. My eating behavior is now on my terms, not someone else’s. Thank you for introducing us to the knowledge we need to be good eaters–I will forever be grateful. See you Monday.

In the second part of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan looks at the organic movement.  The organic movement is rooted in 60′s radicalism.  Initially, organic meant “growing food without synthetic chemicals” (142).  They also cared about an alternative system of distribution and mode of consumption.  As the organic food industry grew, it sacrificed some of the ideals.  Now, there is such a thing as “industrial organic,” which goes against the image I had of organic.  It resembles the system it was originally supposed to replace.  The government has made vague standards which allowed synthetics and for animals only to only need access to grass at some point in their life.  The organic movement became an industry to feed more people and to make more money by processing and shipping food.   This allowed organic TV dinners and other processed products.  Pure organic food failed because people did not value food enough to be willing to make a sacrifice for it.  I think this has been a major contributor to the changes that have been made to food in the past century.  Americans care more about convenience than quality.  Organic food has been able to connect consumers to the product by providing a bit more information about where their food comes from, but it is mainly just PR and flowery literature.  In order to look at the various types of organic farms, Pollan visited Cascadian Farm , Earthbound, Petula Poultry, and Polyface Farm to learn more.  Joe Saladin of Polyface Farm was different in that his farm was sustainable and followed the dying, agricultural ideal people still think of.