Home Work: Seven food groups?
I’ve got … a lot going on here. The Secret History of Home Economics comes out in less than two weeks! But I wanted to answer a question from a friend who read the New Yorker review, which notes that home economics created the seven food groups. Seven? Aren’t there just five? Or maybe six?
In fact, the number of food groups has changed multiple times.
From the start, home economists both made nutritional discoveries and worked to popularize them, focusing on putting information into practical use. All the way back in 1916, one of my favorite home economists, Caroline Hunt, recommended five food groups for children aged three to six:
Milk/dairy products, meat, fish, poultry, eggs and “meat substitutes” (but emphasis on dairy)
Bread and other grains
Butter “and other wholesome fats”
Vegetables and fruits
“Simple sweets”
Alas for the cheesecake lovers among us, that didn’t catch on. Work on nutrition continued. After Congress authorized a military draft in the fall of 1940, experts’ worst fears about the American diet proved true: one-third of the men called up for service failed their physicals due to nutrition-related factors. FDR swiftly convened a Food and Nutrition Board and charged it with figuring out what people should eat. The book has a fun anecdote about the proceedings, but for here I’ll just say that they landed on first a set of RDAs for various nutrients, and then this:
Green and yellow vegetables
Tomatoes and citrus
Potatoes and other vegetables and fruits
Dairy
Meat, poultry, fish, eggs
Whole grains and whole/enriched breads
Butter and fortified margarine
The weird-to-us division of vegetables and fruits into three groups is a clear sign that this came from nutrient guidelines. (Group 3, “other vegetables,” includes the inarguably green celery, cucumbers, fresh lima beans and leeks. Group 6 did not include “milled cereals” such as pasta, non-enriched white flour, grits or white rice.) In 1956, the USDA consolidated to the Basic Four:
Milk
Meat
Vegetable/fruit
Bread/cereal
The fruit/veg subdivisions have continued to fluctuate. Children of the ‘80s like myself may remember five food groups, which seems to have come from the USDA’s short-lived “Hassle-Free” plan. That was quickly followed by a wheel chart and then the six-group Food Pyramid. Now we have MyPlate, with five food groups—fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, dairy.
If you want more details, the latest version of the government’s dietary guidelines came out last year. The report features adorably up-to-date photos depicting multiracial families, tofu, a tattooed chef and a dad feeding his baby.
Book Update
The Secret History of Home Economics is almost officially here! You can preorder from anywhere you buy books, request it from your library or sign up for a virtual book talk. I had a swell time talking about it for Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history, and am pretty darn thrilled to get a four-page review from Margaret Talbot at The New Yorker. All three of these women totally got it.
Recipe of the Month
I’m pretty hungry after reading about nutrition guidelines. In my current rush, and given that I can’t make TikTok pasta every night, couldn’t I use some Quick and Easy Dishes from the “Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers” series? (Revised edition, 1978.) Welp, as it turns out, I kind of can’t … I don’t eat a ton of meat and I can’t wait for a Jell-O salad to gel … but perhaps you can. Here’s one of the simplest, Steak Dieter, contributed by Etna Gaskin of Wewahitchka in the Florida panhandle.
1 steak
1 large onion, chopped
2 beef bouillon cubes
1–2 cups hot water
Oil as needed
Brown steak in small amount of cooking oil with chopped onion. Dissolve bouillon cubes in hot water. Pour over steak. Simmer until tender. Yield: four servings, unless Herr Dieter is particularly hungry.
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You can preorder my book The Secret History of Home Economics, out May 4, just in time for Mother’s Day presents! If someone forwarded this email to you, you can subscribe to it here.
Sources include: Recommended Dietary Allowances, National Research Council Committee on Food and Nutrition, 1941; National Wartime Nutrition Guide, USDA, 1943; Food for Youth: Study Guide, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, 1975; “Dietary Recommendations and How They Have Changed Over Time,” USDA Economic Research Service, 1999; School Lunch Politics, 2008; Free for All, 2010; “The History and Future of Dietary Guidance in America,” Advances in Nutrition, 2018; “Eat Your Vegetables: Nutrition and the NC Extension Service,” NC Eats, n.d.
Copyright 2021 Danielle Dreilinger/DreiGoods LLC