Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century by Helen Zoe Veit (review)

Helen Zoe Veit asks how did our modern ideas about eating evolve? The title Modern Food, Moral Food sets up the essential premise and promise of this work, which, as the subtitle suggests is that modern American scientific foodways are a distinct legacy of the World War I era, in which they emerged. Using food as an example that marches alongside the basic tenets of the Progressive reforms, she persuasively argues that food was not just another facet of those changes, rather that it was the most definitive and quintessential of all Progressive impulses. Beyond examining new thinking about food, this work questions the legacy of these changes, so to it seeks an explanation of reform methods as a part of the many concurrent societal and political upheavals. Veit joins other social historians like Christopher Capozzola in imagining new ways of thinking about the history of the era, making this book relevant for anyone interested in political, cultural and food studies. Using a found archive of nearly 400,000 World War I era letters to the government, Viet is able to articulate how multiple forces came to bear on the way Americans rationalized, acquired, researched, prepared and debated food.

In the first half of the work, Viet makes a convincing argument that the pubic was willing to accept dietary changes emanating from and formalized by the federal government that were unique to the times. This hegemonic change is clearly different than earlier moral food reforms because of its widespread public acceptance. Noting, “self discipline around food was a moral virtue,” Veit proposes four critical changes that came together to support her case: newly industrialized food production, the evolution of food science, home economics and the First World War (4).

Passed in 1917, the Lever Act created the United States Food Administration (USFA) and while its title belies its status as a wartime agency, it never used its regulatory powers, such as rationing and regulation of distribution. It did, however, publish standard prices and play a critical role in helping to manage morale. Starting with the USFA, the work explains how caloric science, vitamins and other nutritional teaching helped educate Americans regarding the proper ways to fuel the “human engine.” Another chapter is set against the background of war, showing how Americans embraced food aid, thoughtful eating and voluntary rationing. This thoughtful and engaging narrative moves on to demonstrate how women and housewives, (as they were then known), willingly embraced new ideas about food and hygiene and thus helped to foster the widespread acceptance of the new science of home economics.

The middle chapters of the book, “Race, Diet and Eugenics” and “Immigrant Cuisines and Not–So-Foreign Foods” do extremely useful intellectual work by establishing the role of race as it relates to food, for African Americans and others. Race must play a major role in our understanding of the Progressive—Populist era, and nowhere is this more evident than in the pernicious racism of eugenics. We typically do not, however, think of the foodist construct in this regard. Filling an existing knowledge gap, Veit has recovered “euthenics—anew discipline that united the concerns of eugenics with those of home economics by arguing that environmental factors—food prominent among them—affected racial development” (184). This is extremely valuable in helping articulate a more nuanced understanding of this complex era in American history. She shows us how regional differences, a hierarchy of foods and racist tropes all worked together to create a pseudo-scientific literature. In this well-evidenced section that relies on letters, cookbooks, menus, advertising and what ultimately could be called propaganda, such as pamphlets and posters, we learn that the drive to new foodways was not just scientific but also that it was political. For example, in the fascinating chapter...