The Problem of Changing Food Habits Report of the Committee on Food Habits 1941-1943 (1943) / Chapter Skim
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The Problem of Changing Food Habits
The Problem of Changing Food Habits
Pages 20-32
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From page 20... ...
There is a mass of literature and recorded experimentation on many aspects of the problem, ranging from studies of soil agronomy which illuminate the question of whether the habit of eating locally grown food is or is not the most nutritionally valuable behavior, through data on the content of diets, data on the relationship between purchasing power and diet, studies of historically changing diets, animal experiments in individual taste and preference and their relation to nutrition, and records of the cultural integration of food through case histories of individuals whose gastrointestinal disorders can be shown to be systematically related to the way in which learning to eat was combined with other types of learning. As the Committee's task was to integrate existing materials and devise new ways of tapping existing knowledge on the problem of cultural change, a primary requirement was to develop a point of view, an approach which could make systematic use of additions to knowledge in all of the fields from which research results could be expected.
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From page 21... ...
For example, if we had a complete picture of the current eating habits of the members of an upstate New York community, adequate verbal accounts of the grounds upon which they rationalized their current procedures, and records of attempts to introduce new foods and alter both their meal pattern and the combinations in which foods were habitually eaten, together with verbatim records of acceptances and refusals and reasons given, it would be possible to construct an adequate description of the contemporary pattern, not only its overt content but also its deeper emotional content, of the terms in which the people of that community seek and accept food, the fears and
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From page 22... ...
Such art approach involves descriptions of the post partum procedures, breast feeding, supplementary feeding, weaning techniques, sanctions invoked to narrow the child's acceptance within socially approved limits, sanctions invoked to widen the child's acceptance to include all socially prescribed foods, and ways in which gifts of food, threats of deprivation of food, and situations involving food are integrated in the system of character formation. On the basis of such analysis, it would be possible to prescribe the lines which would have to be followed if effective change were to occur, and the implications of changed food habits for the rest of the personality.
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From page 23... ...
Contemporary cafeteria procedures in America and the large development of self-selected types of meals are an example of a social institution which is adapted to a variety of mutually incompatible food habits. It is probable that many orner cnaracteristic American atutuces toward foods, including taboos on all subjects which may arouse disgust during eating, may be referred to the experience of diiEerent mutually unacceptable food patterns.
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From page 24... ...
Shopping habits may have equally far reaching effect upon family food habits; for instance, since rationing, increased shopping by men and children of Leigh school age has been reported. In the North American food pattern, the father presides over meat and fish, the mother over milk, vegetables, fruit juices and liver, while adolescents tend to demonstrate their independence by refusing to eat what is good for them.
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From page 25... ...
Although it may be argued that such an arbitrarily balanced meal would be superior to the meals habitually eaten by the worst fed third of our population, there is a danger that the conventions of a balanced meal Elate service may become established in the higher income levels and sift down as a style to the lower income levels, without the necessary knowledge to see that the meal is really balanced. The sort of individual adjustment which human beings, as well as rats, may conceivably make to an inadequate diet, such as reduction in caloric intake when else protective foods fell below a certain minimum, would then be ruled out by a food habit which had been nutritionally meaningful at a different income level.
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From page 26... ...
" or "How can we change the food habits of southern sharecroppers whose food habits are tied into a one crop method of production, type of credit allowed by the stores, rolling stores, habits of catering, to individual preference and assist ing ill health to the effects of particular foods, who live in a caste society where there is a characteristic rejection of any food identified as 'animal,' ye., likely to lower the eater, etc.? " For such groups, definite methods can be discussed.
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From page 27... ...
Both Dr. Bruch's ~ recent researches and a cooperative project now under way with the Emotions and Food Therapy Section of the American Dietetic Association,~t in which food clinicians are making systematic observations of striking alterations in the behavior of clinic patients, are designed to tap this source of information.
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From page 28... ...
The study made by Mr. Koos at Cornell University Medical College in i942 ~ suggested that lines of friendship were not the best lines for the diffusion of nutrition ir~forn~ation, and this finding was confirmed by the studies of Cussler and de Give.5 This resistance may be systematically related to the phrasing of changes of food habits in moral terms and the objection to the exploitation of pleasant friendship relationships to pass Ott morally sanctioned information.
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From page 29... ...
Some Central European food patterns and their relationship to wartime problems of food and nutrition. Polish food patterns.
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From page 30... ...
Some Central European food patterns and their relationship to wartime programs of food and nutrition. Washington, D
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From page 31... ...
Changing food habits.
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