What Was the American Diet Like 50 Years Ago
at was the I. What was the American diet like 50 years ago? a) Over the past 50 years, American diets have changed from leisurely family meals that were usually prepared at home using natural ingredients to today’s prepackaged, processed and convenience foods that are often eaten on the run with little thought towards nutrition or content. b) American diets have evolved in the last 50 years from natural ingredients to processed, high fat ingredients and will continue in the future to include convenience foods but with a greater emphasis on healthier choices. i) This wasn’t always the case. “Fifty years ago, people sitting down to a meal were simply looking for something hot, filling and, in most cases, inexpensive” (Heymsfield 142). c) Throughout the century, Americans experimented with various diets. d) In the 1950s, Adele Davis published a cookbook exploring a healthy approach to food. e) In the 1960s, there was a movement to use unprocessed food, natural ingredients and macrobiotic cooking (Klem 439). f) The notion of a balanced diet was still quite abstract. ii) People weren’t as well informed about nutrition as they are today. g) While nutritional research was revealing new information about everyday foods, the American household underwent an important structural shift (Klem 438). h) In the 1940s and 1950s women began to enter the workplace in large numbers, it was then that the country became caught up in an explosion of convenience items. iii) Time for food preparation became more limited, and the industry responded with a wide variety of pre-packaged foods. iv) Products like Bisquick, Spam, instant oatmeal, canned tomato sauce and pre-sliced American cheese began to appear (Klem 438). i) By the 1950s, the refrigerator had replaced the old-fashioned icebox and the cold cellar as a place to store food. v) Refrigeration, because it allowed food to