> This may be just a semantic difference. There were certainly food
> reform efforts in America before the 1960s and to some extent
> every reform effort is countercultural by definition.
> But the term "counterculture" was raised to specifically describe
> a broad phenomena that began in the '60. It wasn't really a food
> reform effort, at least it wasn't like Graham's or Kellogg's previous
> efforts. It was a political movement -- with the anti-Vietnam War
> being the driving force. It certainly had social and economic
> dimensions-- the attempt to create a better world through communal
> living and the destruction (or replacement) of the capitalist economic
> system. Food was just a side order.
> As soon as Vietnam War ended, so did the counterculture movement,
> although there are indeed remnants still around today.

I think you're isolating something that wasn't seen as a distinct
phenomenon at the time, or (in its food-related aspects) as very
different from what came before. Nor I am I convinced Vietnam had
much to do with it.

I arrived in the US in 1974, from Australia and NZ, and stayed two
years, moving on to the UK. It struck me immediately that there
was much *less* of an active counterculture in the US than I was
used to, and what there was was mostly driven by black activism
rather than anything to do with the war. The communal values that
were being promoted as radical alternatives either came from Afro-
American culture or were perceived as doing so. (And insofar as the
US influenced radical movements in the rest of the developed world,
it was again black politics, with its agenda for social change, that
had more effect than the more limited politicized pacifism of the
white anti-war movement). Others (like the collective-food-buying
efforts that operated fitfully in all four countries I lived in round
then) seemed to come out of forms of community organization moulded
during prolonged strikes, dating back a few decades.

I left shortly after the end of the Vietnam war, and in the UK the
politicized-eating scene took off to a much greater extent after I
got there - in the late 70s and into the early years of the Thatcher
regime. And this was largely continuous with movements that came
before and continued after; most of the wholefood co-operatives and
"fair trade" initiatives that started then are still in operation in
much the same way. (There have not been many new ones, you'd have
a point there).

I don't think the social movements of the late 60s and 70s would have
been very different if the Vietnam War had never happened.

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