Michael Ackerman wrote:

> There are some useful history books on this subject:
>
> Warren Belasco's _Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the
> Food Industry_ views the food reform movement of the 1960s and 1970s as many
> of the previous respondents do: as a leftist, pro-environmental,
> anti-corporate crusade against agribusiness and the food industry.

Did the counterculture really "take on" the food industry or did it
simply opt out? Some of both?

> James Whorton's _Crusaders for Fitness_ looks at the health reform tradition
> in America that originated in the first half of the 19th century. (He
> discusses Graham, Kellogg, etc.) Although the book does not go beyond the
> 1920s, in the book's conclusion and in other writings, he links the
> post-1960s food reform movement to this tradition. He sees the movement as
> basically concerned with health and, in particular, with fears about the
> impact of urban-industrial society on health.

Lamentably, most of those pioneers were simply wrong about most of
their tenets. No science to speak of but a great deal of conviction.
Think Salisbury's steaks, Graham's flour that lives on as a sugary
cookie, Kellogg's empty cereals and Post's ersatz grain products.

> Next month, I believe, an article that I wrote on the subject will be
> published in Robert Johnston's _Politics of Healing_, an anthology of
> articles on alternative medicine in the US in the 20th century. I examine
> (what I call) the modern health foods movement, which originated in the
> 1930s in the wake of the discovery of vitamins and related nutritional
> matters. (The organic foods movement in the US was one part of this
> movement.) I discuss both the scientific aspect of the movement, and the
> ideological aspect (which is definitely anti-modernist and
> pro-environmental, but not fundamentally leftist -- in the 1950s the
> movement had close links to the far right). Although my articles stops in
> 1965, I believe that the food ideas embraced by the youth counterculture in
> the 1960s came mainly from the post-1930s health foods movement. (One
> difference: the post-1960s movement endorsed vegetarianism, while the
> earlier movement did not.)

And, I think it's fair to say, they also adopted other ways of eating
because they were other ways. Macrobiotic and the like.

> I'd also like to disagree with those who claim that the countercultural food
> movement died after the 1970s. Organic/sustainable agriculture, opposition
> to bioengineered foods, the slow-foods movement, etc. are all in the same
> anti-modernist ideological tradition as both the pre-and-post-1960s health
> foods movement.

I agree that it's still alive. The Staunton, VA farmers' market where
I live (and used to sell my products) shows it (about an hour from
Charlottesville). There are conventional producers selling their
wares, but also artisans who make baked goods, cheeses, soaps, etc.
And other farmers who grow antique varieties of commodity plants.
Others who grow livestock on open range. Not only health, but quality.
Better flavors. Better utility. Better appearance. Closed for the
season, unfortunately. Back up in april.

Pastorio


> Michael Ackerman
> Grad Student, Dept. of History
> University of Virginia