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

Can a book about self-denial be a pleasure to read? Viet’s Modern Food, Moral Food is certainly such a book; it is beautifully written, a monument to good historical research that is accessible to the average reader. It is much in the mode of Levenstein’s food books, telling great stories about the average eater as well as about the experts giving dietary advice.¹ For every point, Veit has a telling quotation hewn from a newspaper, diary, or letter. She makes good use of each piece of evidence to advance her case that World War I changed Americans into modern eaters.

Veit argues that, before the war, Americans preferred to be plump, as a way to show status and to “stock up” for potentially lean years. War officials, however, hoping to send as much food as possible to a starving Europe, campaigned for citizens to join the war effort by eating less—particularly, less wheat, sugar, butter, and meat. Laws passed during the war allowed more stringent rationing controls, but, for the most part, officials appealed to citizens’ patriotism rather than coercing them. The public responded, making plumpness a sign of selfishness and thinness a sign of patriotism.

Veit argues that dietary advice became popular with the mass public because of this new connection to patriotism. Veit shows how Americans began to listen to expert ideas about calories and nutrition in their choice of foods. Previously, the nutritional content of food was important only to small societies of food faddists, but it became a national concern when associated with the war effort. Once this link was established, Veit argues, ideas about eating efficiently and carefully became the definition of a “modern” American eater. Accordingly, Progressive-era reformers championed the promise of science and industry to make the world better through nutritional research, and industrial food processors began to advertise their products along such lines. In fact, new discoveries in food-preservation technology eliminated such problems as ptomaine in canned foods and made the public confident about including canned and other processed foods in their new modern diet. But behind all of these developments was the spur of patriotism, urging Americans to care about what they ate and how they looked.

This many-layered history examines some layers more than others. For example, Veit might have had said more about the discovery of the first vitamin in 1912, as well as about the scientists—Harvey Wiley, Elmer McCollum, Ellen Richards, and others—who made vital contributions to food and diet at the time. But given her interest in the ethics of eating, and in what consumers said and thought, her choice not to linger in areas that others have already covered is understandable.

Food study is an inherently interdisciplinary pursuit, but little of the work in the field, including Veit’s, strays from traditional disciplinary models. A social scientist might like to see more threads in the argument leading to a larger meta-story about morality, modernity, and science. Nonetheless, Veit has delved deeply into the archives on this topic, emerging with one of the best works of its kind. It may well be the “crossover” book that many food scholars have tried to write for the last few years.