By Christina Ward
Process Media 2019
239 pages Food
and Eating
“For those 75 or so years we remember as the golden age of
advertising, corporations drove the American diet to the deleterious effect we
see today.”
With that, Christina Ward begins her study of how the rise
of American advertising influenced the diet of Americans, from Bananas to Jell-O
to Spam. She connects the relationship between the foods that families ate with
the purveyors of food who were part scientists and part con artists. American
Advertising Cookbooks is a fascinating look at the history of America’s
diet through its cookbooks and its recipes.
Sprinkled throughout the book are recipes and advertisements touting the food of the day. There is a large section on Jell-O. I don’t believe that I have made Jell-O in any form since I became a cook. The holidays of my childhood, however, were never complete without a Jell-O salad. My husband remembers the Jell-O of his childhood with affection, but I will not make it for him. Perfection salad! Yuck! To say nothing of Spam.
There are so many pictures of advertisements and recipes,
that the book is as compelling visually as it is historically. We are
constantly impressed with the influence of corporations on our food trends. And
my mother was an avid follower of food trends. As I looked at the pictures, I
could vividly remember many of the foods in the book, the recipes that my
mother tried, but also those recipes we continue to cook from memory, like
Green Bean Casserole with Durkee Real French Fried Onions, and Toll House
cookies.
Several years ago, my sister and I made a cookbook of family
favorite recipes, and as I looked over our cookbook, I saw very few recipes
for processed food—with the exception of Jell-O salads, particularly my Grandma’s
cranberry salad for Thanksgiving, and Chow Mein made with canned Chinese
vegetables. Our favorite recipes were primarily made from scratch recipes.
Two stories from my childhood. We had some of my father’s relatives
coming for a picnic lunch. They had never been to our house, and my mother was
very busy trying to create the perfect picnic. One item on the menu was cake.
Mother used a package cake mix and swore we children to secrecy. Cake mixes
were new, and Mother didn’t want anyone to think that she wasn’t a good cook.
The other story involves Swanson Chicken Pot Pie. We took a
Sunday trip to visit some college friends of our parents—about two hours away.
We arrived for Sunday dinner and we were served Swanson Chicken Pot Pies with mashed potatoes
and Jell-O salad. On the way home, my mother went on a rant about the chicken
pot pies. Apparently that wasn’t something that out-of-town guests should be
served.
Oh—one more! Because Minnesota was an agricultural state, butter was the only spread that was sold; margarine was not available, and margarine was cheaper than butter. My grandma would get margarine by the case from her Iowa relatives, which she would distribute among family members. But that margarine wasn’t colored. There was a little button on the top that you pressed down and then squeezed the color throughout the pound of margarine. It fell to the children to color the margarine. Frankly, I have never used margarine in my adult life!
My favorite chapters in American Advertising Cookbooks
concern the rise of Home Economics as the way that food and eating became more
scientific. This included the discussion of calories as well as the creation of
the nutritionally balanced meal. The other chapter discusses the use and abuse of
calories to make women understand that too many calories can make a woman fat.
My childhood and teen years exactly! This book was a trip down memory lane for
me, and if you were raised in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, you will find much to
identify with.
Christina Ward is a food writer and food expert. Here is her
website.
