Helen Zoe Veit
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781469607702
- eISBN:
- 9781469612751
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469607702.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter shows that suggestions that Americans should eat cats, dogs, and a range of other seemingly bizarre foods were part of wide-ranging efforts in the first two decades of the twentieth ...
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This chapter shows that suggestions that Americans should eat cats, dogs, and a range of other seemingly bizarre foods were part of wide-ranging efforts in the first two decades of the twentieth century to establish rational justifications for the foods Americans ate, whether in the interest of health, economy, or patriotism, or—more nebulously but no less powerfully—in the interest of self-control as a moral virtue in its own right. Arguments for rational eating had circulated for decades, ranging from nineteenth-century health crazes to turn-of-the-century fad diets to long-standing attempts to get poor people to spend their food budgets more wisely to efforts to apply science to both agricultural production and industrial food processing.Less
This chapter shows that suggestions that Americans should eat cats, dogs, and a range of other seemingly bizarre foods were part of wide-ranging efforts in the first two decades of the twentieth century to establish rational justifications for the foods Americans ate, whether in the interest of health, economy, or patriotism, or—more nebulously but no less powerfully—in the interest of self-control as a moral virtue in its own right. Arguments for rational eating had circulated for decades, ranging from nineteenth-century health crazes to turn-of-the-century fad diets to long-standing attempts to get poor people to spend their food budgets more wisely to efforts to apply science to both agricultural production and industrial food processing.
C. M. Woolgar
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300181913
- eISBN:
- 9780300182361
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300181913.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Medieval History
This book shows that food in late-medieval England was far more complex, varied, and more culturally significant than we imagine today. Drawing on a vast range of sources, the book charts how ...
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This book shows that food in late-medieval England was far more complex, varied, and more culturally significant than we imagine today. Drawing on a vast range of sources, the book charts how emerging technologies as well as an influx of new flavours and trends from abroad had an impact on eating habits across the social spectrum. The book begins with a background of the concept of food in medieval England, and moves through discussions on food in the countryside, the importance of drinks and drinking to late medieval society, the importance of bread, the role of sauces and spices, gardens, food and drink at civic occasions, food of monks and nuns, cooks and kitchens, and hunger and famine. From the pauper's bowl to elite tables, from early fad diets to the perceived moral superiority of certain foods, and from regional folk remedies to luxuries such as lampreys, the book illuminates desire, necessity, daily rituals, and pleasure across four centuries.Less
This book shows that food in late-medieval England was far more complex, varied, and more culturally significant than we imagine today. Drawing on a vast range of sources, the book charts how emerging technologies as well as an influx of new flavours and trends from abroad had an impact on eating habits across the social spectrum. The book begins with a background of the concept of food in medieval England, and moves through discussions on food in the countryside, the importance of drinks and drinking to late medieval society, the importance of bread, the role of sauces and spices, gardens, food and drink at civic occasions, food of monks and nuns, cooks and kitchens, and hunger and famine. From the pauper's bowl to elite tables, from early fad diets to the perceived moral superiority of certain foods, and from regional folk remedies to luxuries such as lampreys, the book illuminates desire, necessity, daily rituals, and pleasure across four centuries.
