Nearly thirty years ago I sat through a compelling talk by a futurist talking about how different clusters of age groups, or cohorts, viewed varied aspects of life. Having great respect for data but not being a statistician, I’ve always enjoyed hearing others lay out societal trends in a way that makes you think a new thought.
That night, the speaker talked about how people of the age I was, felt about their own personality and their approach to work. He described me to a “T”. Big realization that night: I felt like a very independent individual, but so did most everyone my age. Numerous examples were given. The realization? There might be something to this cohort business.
That memory came streaming back to at an unlikely time: reading about food in a magazine. What caught my eye was the comment that in the mid-1950s, “…most American kitchens were equipped with refrigerators, and housewives filled their new freezers with three iconic foods of that moment: TV dinners, fish sticks and Tater Tots.” Oh my, that rang a bell.
Turns out Tater Tots came from Ore-Ida’s effort to recycle french fry leftovers – genus. But origins are a different story.
What was fascinating was the answer to something that had puzzled me. How did TV dinners, Tater Tots, Campbell soup casseroles, Jiffy Pop, and frequent reliance on fast food become a hallmark of middle class eating? My mother grew up on a farm; how did the shift to processed food become a norm?
The evolution of U.S. food consumption became fascinating and leads to some hopeful trends going forward. AARP makes a good case in its recent issue.
Ruth Reichi, former restaurant critic for the L.A. Times and past editor of Gourmet magazine, points out that going into World War II, nearly 25 percent of Americans worked in farming. Following the war, the discovery that the “enormous” surplus of ammonium nitrate used for explosives could be used as a powerful fertilizer for crops. The resulting spike in productivity, coupled with advancements in farm machinery began our march away from food sources.
By 1960, farmers had dropped to 9 percent of the population, and farming presence began to disappear from urban and suburban areas. Convenience ruled as women entered the workforce in massive numbers through the 1960s. Even TV dinners seemed too long to prepare. The era of “instant” arrived and never left. Instant mashed potatoes, instant coffee, instant rice, ready canned meals.
Late coming home from work? The problem was solved with an explosion of snack foods: Pringles, Ruffles, Bugles and Doritos. We got out of touch with basic eating. The 1970s brought a counter-culture revival of growing one’s own, but that was largely squashed in the ‘80s by an era Reichi calls the “scares”: salmonella, botulism, mad cow disease and fear of food poisoning.
Then in 1993, television executive Maurice “Reese” Schonfeld launched the Food Network. Per Reichi, “I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the positive influence of food television”. A huge range of programs started changing the way people felt about food.
So what’s hopeful now? People in lockdown have begun to cook again. People have been planting gardens. Seed and nursery sales have soared. Food pantries providing to those in need have begun giving out recipes. People in rural areas are buying more straight from the farm.
In 2010, Reichi handed a New York City kid a cucumber. He looked at it suspiciously and said, “What’s that?” Maybe we’re on the verge of a new era of rediscovering a basic need, food.