Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet

This book examines the changes in diet and food habits of Americans that took place from 1880 to 1930. The best known change was decreasing calorie intake and the increasing concern with obesity. Related to diet changes were the great social and economic forces affecting American society in these years: changing agricultural techniques, improvements in transportation and communication, industrialization, urbanization, immigration patterns, and changes in business organization. The author also focuses on new attitudes towards food - what came to be known as the New Nutrition. The book begins with American food habits in 1880 and how radically different they are today; attempts in the years before the First World War to change first the middle-class diet and then the working-class diet; changing ideas about feeding infants; changing ideas towards food in the 1920s (including Prohibition, diet fads, and the decline of conspicuous consumption of food); and finally, dietary change and the health of Americans.