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Industrialization and Urbanization
95% of Americans lived in rural area's so the demand in jobs increased.So to meet this high demand, food producers increased output, often using industrialized methods of mass production, which radically transformed the food system. -
Canning foods
Englishman Peter Durand had introduced a method for sealing food in "unbreakable" tin cans. -
Commercial caning
Robert Ayars introduced the United States to canning the same year as Donkin began experimenting with tin cans. He began with preserving oysters, meats, fruits, and vegetables and in 1812 opened the first American canning factory in New York City, using tin-plated wrought-iron cans. -
World War I
The World Wars required people to temporarily modify how they at. During WW I, the US government encouraged civilians to consume more fresh foods, such as produce, eggs, and dairy products. -
The Great Depression
In 1930 the stock market crashed due to Smoot-Hawley Tariff; government policies; bank failures and panics; and the collapse of the money supply. This caused many to go hungry because towns people couldn't produce their own food. -
World war ll
During WW II, the military food machine developed new foods for soldiers, such as Spam, dehydrated potatoes, and powdered orange juice. When the war ended, with no more troops to feed, the food industry sought new markets, taking aim at the American housewife. -
The Counterculture
Motivated by a perfect storm of political, social, and environmental strife in the late 1960s, the counterculture took on the food industry, bringing the movement’s broader political and ecological agenda to the dinner table. The hippie foods of the countercuisine—characterized by “the oppositional language of…natural vs. plastic, white vs. brown, process vs. processed, fast vs. slow, light vs. heavy, eventually went mainstream. -
Healthism
Food, nutrients, and health became fused in the American consciousness when the US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services published the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans. These seven guideline statements contributed to growing public awareness of the connections between consuming foods high in fat, sodium, and cholesterol and disease, from strokes to diabetes
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