Table of Contents

Introduction: The British-American Culinary Heritage

1. The American Table in 1880:
The Tastes of the Upper Crust
2. How the Other Half Ate
3. The Rise of the Giant Food Processors
4. The New England Kitchen and the Failure
to Reform Working-Class Eating Habits 44
5. The "Servant Problem" and Middle-Class Cookery 60
6. The New Nutritionists Assault the Middle Classes 72
7. Scientists, Pseudoscientists, and Faddists 86
8. New Reformers and New Immigrants 98
9. The Great Malnutrition Scare, 1907-1921 109
10. "Best for Babies" or "Preventable Infanticide"?:
The Controversy Over Artificial Feeding of Infants,
1880-1930
11. "Food Will Win the War"
12. The Newer Nutrition, 1915-1930
13. A Revolution of Declining Expectations
14. Workers and Farmers During the "Prosperity Decade"
15. The Old (Restaurant) Order Changeth
16. Too Rich and Too Thin?

Notes
Index

About the Author

Harvey Levenstein is Professor Emeritus of History at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Among his books are Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, Revised Edition (California, 2003), Seductive Journey: American Tourists in France from the Jefferson to the Jazz Age (1998), and Communism, Anticommunism and the CIO (1981).

Reviews

"One of the most interesting and informative indexes into the nature of American culture, this book opens the eyes to the pages of American cultural history which are often taken for granted: we are what we eat but we often don't try to understand why we eat what we eat....The book should be on the table of every one interested in food--gastronomically or educationally! Bon appetit!"--"Journal of American Culture"