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107 reviews for:
A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression
Andrew Coe, Jane Ziegelman
3.66 AVERAGE
107 reviews for:
A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression
Andrew Coe, Jane Ziegelman
3.66 AVERAGE
"A Square Meal" explores the food and the food culture during the Great Depression in the United States. The Great Depression fundamentally changed the way that Americans thought about and interacted with food. Food was, of course, rationed and individuals didn't have control over what kind of food they got many times. People were expected to do more with less and turn food that may not have been the best into meals for their family.
This book doesn't only explore what kind of food people made but the chain reaction set off by food scarcity. It was the Great Depression that first got the government involved in food relief for its own people. Prior to that, local communities were left to care for their own with what they had. The Great Depression was so wide ranging and hurt communities far and wide that first states started to step in and then the federal government. There were all sorts of logistics that various organizations and levels of government had to grapple with in order to make sure that people were able to get some sort of relief.
In times of food scarcity, you make do with what you get. The book explores a lot of what housewives did in order to stretch their rations. Let's just say that creativity was key! One of my favorite parts of the book was the recipes included and those talked about. There were tons of cookbooks created during this time period in order to cater to the home economist who was charged with feeding and nourishing their family.
In this day and age, I am lucky enough to be able to go to the grocery store, buy whatever I want, cook it, and feed my family. We have tons of choices. This book made me appreciate that so much more! This is a quirky look at an interesting history and it's definitely off the beaten path!
This book doesn't only explore what kind of food people made but the chain reaction set off by food scarcity. It was the Great Depression that first got the government involved in food relief for its own people. Prior to that, local communities were left to care for their own with what they had. The Great Depression was so wide ranging and hurt communities far and wide that first states started to step in and then the federal government. There were all sorts of logistics that various organizations and levels of government had to grapple with in order to make sure that people were able to get some sort of relief.
In times of food scarcity, you make do with what you get. The book explores a lot of what housewives did in order to stretch their rations. Let's just say that creativity was key! One of my favorite parts of the book was the recipes included and those talked about. There were tons of cookbooks created during this time period in order to cater to the home economist who was charged with feeding and nourishing their family.
In this day and age, I am lucky enough to be able to go to the grocery store, buy whatever I want, cook it, and feed my family. We have tons of choices. This book made me appreciate that so much more! This is a quirky look at an interesting history and it's definitely off the beaten path!
Notes:
- The dairy industry has a bad reputation in 2017, but adding milk to the diet of a child in the poverty class in the 20s & 30s was a significant nutritional step up.
- However broke people were during the GD, they always seemed to have coffee.
- The capitalist experiment has failed multiple times, but never more (yet) than when crops were burned or deliberately spoiled during a time of widespread starvation because the farmers would lose more if they sold or tried to distribute the food.
- Americans are weirdly attached to bland white food.
- The dairy industry has a bad reputation in 2017, but adding milk to the diet of a child in the poverty class in the 20s & 30s was a significant nutritional step up.
- However broke people were during the GD, they always seemed to have coffee.
- The capitalist experiment has failed multiple times, but never more (yet) than when crops were burned or deliberately spoiled during a time of widespread starvation because the farmers would lose more if they sold or tried to distribute the food.
- Americans are weirdly attached to bland white food.
Review: 3.5 stars
I chose this book for my Book Riot Read Harder challenge category "a book about politics." I wasn't sure if it was really qualify as politics before I started but I just couldn't find one I wanted to read. However, once I got in to it, there were a lot of discussions about politics and how the government played a pretty large role in influence our diet.
This book captures the culinary history of the Great Depression, starting with World War I, and taking us through the start of World War II. I'll admit, it was pretty fascinating. I did not know a lot about our food culture during this time and honestly how the Great Depression sort of started a lot of the food stamp and other welfare programs we have today. It was interesting to read about how vastly different these programs were than they are today. This book also included a lot of recipes, photos, and real accounts from that time that added a lot of realness to the book.
Though I found a lot of the book interesting, it was pretty dry and somewhat unorganized. It was twelve chapters long that sort of had a chronology to it but a lot of times it jumped back and forth to a lot of different topics and didn't quite follow a straight line. It had a lot to say and a lot to cover and I feel like it could have been packaged better than it was.
Overall, 3.5/5. Interesting read with a ton of facts with semi-decent execution. Worth a read though if you're interested in food or the Great Depression.
I chose this book for my Book Riot Read Harder challenge category "a book about politics." I wasn't sure if it was really qualify as politics before I started but I just couldn't find one I wanted to read. However, once I got in to it, there were a lot of discussions about politics and how the government played a pretty large role in influence our diet.
This book captures the culinary history of the Great Depression, starting with World War I, and taking us through the start of World War II. I'll admit, it was pretty fascinating. I did not know a lot about our food culture during this time and honestly how the Great Depression sort of started a lot of the food stamp and other welfare programs we have today. It was interesting to read about how vastly different these programs were than they are today. This book also included a lot of recipes, photos, and real accounts from that time that added a lot of realness to the book.
Though I found a lot of the book interesting, it was pretty dry and somewhat unorganized. It was twelve chapters long that sort of had a chronology to it but a lot of times it jumped back and forth to a lot of different topics and didn't quite follow a straight line. It had a lot to say and a lot to cover and I feel like it could have been packaged better than it was.
Overall, 3.5/5. Interesting read with a ton of facts with semi-decent execution. Worth a read though if you're interested in food or the Great Depression.
Fascinating information that had me gulping chapters, but struggled with cohesive narration and structure. Worth a read if you're interested in food, agriculture, the Great Depression, or seeing how economic/social programs and attitudes have changed (and, even more so, stayed the same) over the years.
The Great Depression was one of the greatest food crises America has ever faced, a time when farm yields and food output were higher than ever and yet thousands upon thousands of people were starving, a time of 'want amid plenty' as Walter Lippmann famously put it. It was also a time of great change in the world of food production, preparation, storage and nutrition - and the two things are not unconnected.
Prior to the Great Depression most people thought about food much as they had always done - those on farms grew and produced themselves most of what they ate, those in towns and cities bought fresh ingredients produced locally from grocery stores and markets. There was no real means of storing ingredients long-term, so meals were dictated by seasonal availability. Processed or commercially frozen foods were unheard of, canning was mainly for pickles and preserves, and few people had heard of vitamins or calories or had any concept of a 'balanced diet'.
The Great Depression changed all that, largely because the idea of feeding one's family was no longer a matter merely for the woman of the house. Ensuring a healthy population became a matter of state and federal policy at a time when millions of people were unemployed and destitute. When welfare agencies, governmental organisations and charities became by necessity involved in keeping the people fed, the bottom line was always a consideration and diets became a matter of maximum bang for the buck. It was no longer possible for people to eat the way they always had, with nutritional balance being ensured more by accident than design. Menus were rigorously scrutinised and tested, recipes designed to ensure the maximum nutritional benefit for minimal cost, calorie levels calculated for the first time by age, sex, activity levels, the long-term impacts of malnutrition on children beginning to be understood. New technologies were researched and developed to ship food to where it was needed, to store it long-term, to preserve it at its freshest point.
The 1930s was really the era when the modern concept of food began to emerge as we now understand it - freezers and refrigerators, processed food, frozen food, nutritional pyramids, calories and vitamins. It also gave rise to an issue which is still hotly debated today - processed versus fresh, organic versus chemical, slow food versus fast food, regional variety versus homogeneity. Today we are so accustomed to all of these issues that we scarcely think about how they crystallised into issues in the first place.
I would never have thought a book on this topic would have been such interesting reading, and yet I found I could hardly put it down. I've read histories of the Depression before, but never from such a specific angle - and yet to most of those suffering through it the issue of food would have been the most paramount, the central dilemma around which everything else swirled. Homes, jobs, dignity, self-respect, all stemmed from the central inability of parents to feed their children, husbands to keep their families from want and starvation. Food was the issue of the Depression, so it's only right that it should have a history all of its own. I'm only surprised it's taken this long for anyone to write a book from that perspective.
Prior to the Great Depression most people thought about food much as they had always done - those on farms grew and produced themselves most of what they ate, those in towns and cities bought fresh ingredients produced locally from grocery stores and markets. There was no real means of storing ingredients long-term, so meals were dictated by seasonal availability. Processed or commercially frozen foods were unheard of, canning was mainly for pickles and preserves, and few people had heard of vitamins or calories or had any concept of a 'balanced diet'.
The Great Depression changed all that, largely because the idea of feeding one's family was no longer a matter merely for the woman of the house. Ensuring a healthy population became a matter of state and federal policy at a time when millions of people were unemployed and destitute. When welfare agencies, governmental organisations and charities became by necessity involved in keeping the people fed, the bottom line was always a consideration and diets became a matter of maximum bang for the buck. It was no longer possible for people to eat the way they always had, with nutritional balance being ensured more by accident than design. Menus were rigorously scrutinised and tested, recipes designed to ensure the maximum nutritional benefit for minimal cost, calorie levels calculated for the first time by age, sex, activity levels, the long-term impacts of malnutrition on children beginning to be understood. New technologies were researched and developed to ship food to where it was needed, to store it long-term, to preserve it at its freshest point.
The 1930s was really the era when the modern concept of food began to emerge as we now understand it - freezers and refrigerators, processed food, frozen food, nutritional pyramids, calories and vitamins. It also gave rise to an issue which is still hotly debated today - processed versus fresh, organic versus chemical, slow food versus fast food, regional variety versus homogeneity. Today we are so accustomed to all of these issues that we scarcely think about how they crystallised into issues in the first place.
I would never have thought a book on this topic would have been such interesting reading, and yet I found I could hardly put it down. I've read histories of the Depression before, but never from such a specific angle - and yet to most of those suffering through it the issue of food would have been the most paramount, the central dilemma around which everything else swirled. Homes, jobs, dignity, self-respect, all stemmed from the central inability of parents to feed their children, husbands to keep their families from want and starvation. Food was the issue of the Depression, so it's only right that it should have a history all of its own. I'm only surprised it's taken this long for anyone to write a book from that perspective.
informative
sad
medium-paced
I finished this and sort of enjoyed reading it, but it was really, really infuriating. This is definitely the book to read if you want to have extensive, rage-driven fantasies about traveling back in time and punching certain presidents in the face, and it's also the book to read if you want to be depressed about how little has changed and how we're making the same damn mistakes all over again 100 years later. I definitely did not want either of those things, but I found the book interesting enough to deal with them.
(But, UGH. So much leftover rage. SO MUCH.)
(But, UGH. So much leftover rage. SO MUCH.)
This book looks at both the food relief offered during the Depression and the changing foodways of the 1930s (new nutritional guidelines, food innovations, etc). There are interesting overlaps with [b:Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century|164459|Perfection Salad Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (California Studies in Food and Culture, 24)|Laura Shapiro|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387712276s/164459.jpg|158776] and [b:Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man|13152473|Birdseye The Adventures of a Curious Man|Mark Kurlansky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1333578244s/13152473.jpg|25524035], and [b:The Food of a Younger Land: The WPA's Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II America|5070865|The Food of a Younger Land The WPA's Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II America|Mark Kurlansky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348901595s/5070865.jpg|5137531] collects the WPA food articles mentioned in the last chapter, for those who are curious.