Listener Calls

NOTE: The following transcript corresponds to an earlier version of this show. Some passages may not match the rebroadcast audio above.

ED AYERS: If you’re just joining us, this is BackStory, and we’re talking today about the history of American meal habits.

As we do each week, we’ve been fielding questions from listeners on backstoryradio.org and on Facebook. Today, we’ve invited a few of those questioners to join us on the phone. Our first question comes from Mike in Washington, DC. Mike, we’re talking about meals and eating today. You have something to put on the menu?

MIKE: I do indeed. My question is when and why in American eating culture did we switch from having the major meal of the day in the afternoon to having the major meal of the day as dinner?

ED: Good question. It’s a very gradual change. It begins in the 19th century, but it would have persisted, really, into the 20th century, depending on what kind of work people are doing. Historians make a distinction between two basic kinds of work– task-oriented and time-oriented. Task-oriented, you do the work. When you’re done, you’re finished. Time-oriented, you just keep working as long as the clock is running, right? And so on the farm it’s task-oriented, which means it’s highly variable across the year. And it means also you would start very early, because the livestock need to be fed or milked early on. So it’s because of the task.

As a result of that, very often you would get as much of the work done as you could while you were into it, and then have your main meal of the day after that. There would still be chores to do after a meal, and I’m talking mainly about a family-owned farm. You move to town, either into an office or to a factory, it’s a different animal. You are judged by the clock, and you are not going to be able to determine when you eat, and you’re not going to be able to determine how long you eat. You are fitting into a larger machine.

BRIAN: And you’re going to have your family around you, right, Ed?

ED: Exactly. And you’re not going to have access to a kitchen, so you’re going to be bringing your food with you, and it might be something you could fit into, say, a lunch pail. It would be something that you can bring with you, that you could be relatively quickly, and then get back to work. Now, that’s a kind of very logical and unromanticized interpretation. What would you think of that, Mike?

MIKE: Actually, yeah, that makes a lot of friends. The change of demographic.

BRIAN: When do you eat your– do you have a major meal today? And if you have one, when do you eat it?

SUSAN LEVINE: I actually eat mine in the afternoon, just because of how my work schedule works. It’s actually easy for me just to eat it in the middle of the day, because my nights are pretty crazy.

ED: So what is your work, if I may ask?

MIKE: I work for Voice of America. I actually work in the Mandarin department, so my day starts pretty early when things are closing down in China, and then I spent a lot of the night trying to keep up on stories, so when I come in the next morning, I know what’s going on.

ED: What you’re doing is– it’s funny. You’re so cosmopolitan that your old fashioned. This is what we call task-oriented rather than time-oriented organization of your day, right? Because you’re living in two different time zones, you’re actually structuring your consumption of food around the work that you need to do. And throughout human history, this is the way things would have been done. We eat when it’s appropriate to eat. We don’t eat when it’s your lunch break, when it’s been orchestrated.

BRIAN: And what’s more, Mike, you’ve proven that radio is a pre-industrial technology.

ED: We really appreciate you calling us, Mike.

BRIAN: Thank you, Mike.

MIKE: Hey, my pleasure. Thank you guys.

ED: Bye-bye.

MIKE: Bye-bye.

BRIAN: Our next question comes from Brooke in Chicago.

BROOKE: Hi. So my question is I feel like industrialization, and globalization, of information age have all collided to make eating vastly more complicated than it used to be for my grandma’s generation, and for generations before that. When I’m going to the grocery store, I’m thinking about so many different things. BPAs, factory farms, pesticides, is it locally grown, does it contain whole grains, does being certified organic really make a difference. And I’m wondering if all those sort of ethical and political implications are a new thing.

ED: I certainly think in the way that you described them, Brooke, they are. So let’s think about it. Did it used to be simpler to consider what we ate? What do you think, Brian? How recent is this that we’ve considered the sort of things that Brooke’s asking about?

BRIAN: I think we’ve been worrying about our food and its sources for at least a century, Brooke. And I hate to tell you, but I think about your hometown, Chicago, Illinois, when I think about people worrying about the food. The whole movement for pure food centered, in many ways, in Chicago. Why? Because that was the heart of the meat packing industry.

That novel by Upton Sinclair, “The Jungle,” during what was known as the Progressive Era in the first decade of the 20th century, those folks were very worried about what people were eating, and what corporate America was trying to do to cut corners, save money. And you know, the verb they used was “adulterate.” They were worried about adulterated food.

It wasn’t just– I don’t mean to pick on the meat packers. It was people who sold margarines. What was this kind of artificial product– the Velveeta of its time. Margarine, oleomargarine, was that really healthy?

ED: Yeah, and that resulting act from that fear of adulteration, Brian, is called the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

BRIAN: That’s right.

ED: Which, by its very nature, suggest there was a time when food was pure. Let’s think about when that might’ve been. It was any time that you could basically look the food you’re ready to eat in the eye before you slaughtered it, because as soon as it starts being remote, who knows where that food has been. So in many ways, the evolution of transportation went hand in hand with the distribution, and a little suspicion, about food.

Even before this in the antebellum period, before the Civil War, they’re worried not so much about unpure food as unhealthy food. When you can eat as much as you can in this country, and we’ve been virtually unique in world history in having so much to eat, you begin to worry– are becoming indolent? Are we becoming corpulent? Are we becoming really just sort of clogged up with all this meat that we could be eating?

And so the idea comes. You what we really need to really turn things around? Graham crackers. That’s one of the early great health foods is the graham cracker. I don’t know if it’s the kind with the sparkly sugar on it. I’m guessing it was a more standardized sort of thing.

So it’s ironic that as soon as we have the technology to bring ourselves other kinds of food, we start worrying about it.

BRIAN: So Brooke, why do you worry about food? What actually brings you to this question?

BROOKE: You know, it actually stemmed in part– and I think you sort of answered my other question– was that my grandma passed away earlier this year. And we all gathered over the summer to celebrate her life, and we were going through her recipe book. And my grandma grew up in Nebraska during the Great Depression. So casseroles where essentially 90% of what they were cooking at that time, and her recipe books definitely reflected that. And at some point, we noted that every single recipe seemed to involve a can of mushroom soup.

And we came across a recipe for something called China burger. And I thought, here at last is a recipe that won’t involve a cream of mushroom soup. China burger. But even this one was ground beef, onions, celery, mushroom soup, rice, soy sauce, put Chinese noodles over the top.

ED: I love that dish.

BROOKE: And that was as complicated as it got.

BRIAN: So Brooke, I’m guessing that cream of mushroom didn’t play a role in desserts, I hope.

BROOKE: No, no. That was Jell-o.

BRIAN: Describe some of those Jell-o molds for us.

BROOKE: I don’t recall the molds, but I do recall, from my childhood, grandma making something that we called Midwestern salad. I don’t know if that’s what she called it. And it was green Jell-o which cheddar cheese shredded on top.

BRIAN: Oh, my god. I’m sorry, that sounds really terrible. Are we allowed to say that on radio, Ed? Green Jell-o with cheddar cheese? I’m afraid we’re going to have to edit that out.

ED: So I hope that this has given you some sense that we’re going to always be worrying about this in different kinds of ways, and there are worse things than worrying about what’s on the back of a label. Other part might be on how do you actually snap the neck of that chicken. So this is a product of our own time.

BRIAN: Brooke, you can rest easy knowing that I will be worrying about green Jell-o and cheddar cheese for the rest of the day. Thank you so much.

BROOKE: I’m glad I’ve given you that image to grapple with.

ED: Thank you so much, Brooke.

BRIAN: Bye-bye.

BROOKE: Thank you. Bye.