The Problem of Changing Food Habits Report of the Committee on Food Habits 1941-1943 (1943) / Chapter Skim
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Social Process and Dietary Change
Social Process and Dietary Change
Pages 113-123
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From page 113... ...
From a practical point of view, the distinctions seem of considerable value for they enable us to state that greatest emotional resistance to dietary change is encountered in reference to the core items, less in the secondary core, and the greatest ease and fluidity of change in the peripheral zone.
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From page 114... ...
Where urbanization is low and economic conditions favorable, the diet tends to be traditional, resistant to change, and fairly ample with new items as a secondary core or periphery. Finally, with low urbanization and poor economic conditions, the diet is resistant to change, meager, and virtually without in~ovation.
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From page 115... ...
Third, we can distinguish a preparation core, composed of a series of recipes and dishes, like stews, roasts, use of pork fat for cooking vegetables, extensive use of grease gravy, fruit preserves, and several others. The most consistent elements of the preparation core were those involving foods in the staple core.
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From page 116... ...
The core of these was the same pork-bears-potatoes triad found among the Americans, but the characteristic preparations varied considerably. Concordance with environmental availability was extensive enough to enable them to carry over much of the traditional elements into the new situation.
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From page 117... ...
In general, the historic core contains most of the traditional elements plus accretions of related American elements that were easily adoptable. The secondary core is much smaller and contains elements that were employed by a large number of persons but were not universal: Cheeses.
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From page 118... ...
The originally homogeneous farmer community became transformed into a segmented community where, while there is still considerable uniformity in foodways, significant differences of emphasis, aspiration, and actual diet can be found. We may describe these groups and their characteristic dietary patterns as briefly as possible.
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From page 119... ...
B Dietary Change in the Bottoms We will analyze changes in the Bottoms in terms of alterations in the historic core diet down to the present.
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From page 120... ...
Between the early periods and the present, arbors foods svere continually entering the diet, and the old staple core became merged with some of the old secondary core foods to produce a traditional, "old-time farm-grub" concept. For our analysis of the contemporary period, we will call this new type of core, the "traditional core;" the new foods plus the older foods which are no longer in the core, the "secondary core," or the "peripheral diet," depending upon their type of integration within the diet.
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From page 121... ...
to "eat like the tenants" means that the diet is held to a conservative level because they wish to achieve the traditional core goal; on the other hand, this desire promotes change in that the sharecropper also wishes to secure the newer urban foods associated with the tenant diet. Riverbank-FarYn Laborer Diet; This is an attenuation of the sharecropper type, expectable from the lower economic status, but it also contains some urban exotics, like oysters, cake, and wieners, that reflect the wishful thinking, urban aspirations of these highly mobile.
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From page 122... ...
Fundamentally, the changes may be attributed to the differentiating social processes which have acted upon the community. In summary form, these are three: commercialization, contact with Old American culture and partial acculturation to American culture modes, and urbanization.
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From page 123... ...
Most traditional foods have been dropped, especially those with low-prestige, like blood pudding and head cheese. This group still lives "out of the farm," rather than "out of the store," exceeding in this respect most of the American groups, save possibly the Lower Hills people with whom they associate.
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