Science History Institute

What are the different kinds of concerns that shaped U.S. policies about nutrition, for example, school lunch programs? Who got to make decisions in this history? Who would you like to learn more about? We will work on these questions in this annotation activity. 

Read through the list of people who attended the 1971 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health in Appendix F (linked below as additional resources). What groups of stakeholders stand out on this list? Are there any surprises? What people or organizations would you like to learn more about? Write down your groups, surprises, and questions to this cover image using the text tool below. You can use different color highlights to indicate your groupings.

Identifying a Cast of Characters

In Super Sandwich, players buy foods with different nutritional values. The goal is to buy enough foods to provide the Recommend Dietary Allowance (RDA) of protein; calcium; iron; and vitamins A, B, and C, as set by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1973. The first player to hit those RDAs, without going over the recommended daily calories, wins. As you explore the game's actions and rules, what do you think they tell you about the ways in which "health advice" was communicated to the public, especially to younger people, at this time? What is important about food and activity, according to this game? Are there ways you think about food and activity that aren't represented by this game? 

Super Sandwich

“Results of an Experiment to Determine If Corn Can Use Ammonia Nitrogen,” July 26, 1927. Travis P. Hignett Collection of Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory Photographs, Box 2. Science History Institute. Philadelphia. https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/pg15bd92c.

Vitamins, Pesticides, and Fertilizers

This slideshow is about childhood nutritional concerns. Pages from the 1916 USDA Farmers' Bulletin explored in this activity show how children came to be defined nutritionally—therefore, biologically—as a special category of human beings.

Food for Young Children

An observer and operator outside a human calorimeter, ca. 1910 (Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library) 

Thinking About Food

Who has made decisions about the way people eat in the United States? Do they reflect different levels of economic or governmental power? Who would you like to know more about?

School Lunches

By 1943, nutrition scientists were talking about seven food groups. This poster was produced by the War Food Administration at the height of U.S. involvement in World War II. Its purpose? To make U.S. civilians, soldiers, and future soldiers strong by helping them mix and match foods to meet nutritional guidelines. For this annotation activity, think about the War Food Administration tried to communicate cutting-edge research to the U.S. public. Using the paint tool, circle the words or images that make an argument for why the country's residents should eat in a particular way. What research, do you think, might have given government officials these ideas? Who do you think the War Food Administration was targeting with this poster, and why? (Courtesy of UNT Libraries Government Documents Department, 

The Basic 7

In the 1700s and 1800s, scientists in Europe and the United States were using new laboratory practices to understand food. The goal was to understand how to efficiently feed large numbers of armed forces and growing populations of people living in cities and working in new factories. The title page of this 1821 British book captures the scientific spirit of the time. Using the highlight tool, choose a color (by clicking on the white square) and underline the words on this page that seem like they come out of the laboratory. Using a different color, underline the words that sound like they belong in the kitchen. Why do you associate some words with science, and others with cooking? How do you define "science"? How do you define "cooking"? Does your thinking about these categories change when you relate them to one another? 

A New Scientific Approach to Food 

. "Mrs. Brown," the narrator says here, "learns how to prepare meals from reading, and from television, and the radio. There is a great deal to learn." 

As you watch this short film, focus on the media being used to communicate federal nutritional standards to U.S. citizens. Why bother making a film if people like Mrs. Brown already had the Basic 7 diagram (literally) in their hands? What additional messages is this film trying to get across? For example, why do you think the clock is shown so often?

Foundation Foods

In 1980, the U.S. government issued its first Dietary Guidelines for Americans. They reflected growing concern over the 1970s not only of people having enough food to eat, but about people having too much of the "wrong" foods to eat, like fats, sugars, and salts. Across this resource kit, we've examined similar ways in which scientists and the government communicated recommendations for how U.S. residents should eat.  

Food packaging is another way in which messages about food are communicated to eaters. In this reflection, we'll bring together everything we've learned about food science, nutritional policy, feeding kids, and communicating with the public.  Your job: find a food package somewhere in your place of learning and analyze it. Places to look include your lunchbox, a friend's lunchbox, a vending machine, your cupboards, your classroom snack stash, and/or the school cafeteria. Once you've found a package to analyze, do your best to answer the questions on the handout below. 

Food Packaging Project 

How have food policy decisions been made throughout U.S. history? When has the federal government taken responsibility for nutritional health and why? How has nutrition science benefitted from such interest, and what have scientists contributed to the public understanding of food and health in return? This resource kit explores these questions, offers a unique perspective on twentieth-century U.S. history, and introduces audiences to the history of science.

Educator Resources Supplement I (Timeline).pdf

Educator Overview Template_The Science and Politics of Food.pdf

The Science and Politics of Food

Civics and Government

Social Studies

U.S. History

This is a picture of a daily sales record for school lunches. It reflects ideas that adults had about what kids 

eat. Americans have not always thought about childhood as a distinct time of life, and they have not always viewed children as a specific group of people. These ideas first took shape during the late 1800s and early 1900s and, in part, they come from nutrition science. This slideshow shows how nutrition scientists helped define childhood in biological terms. It points to how these ideas found their way onto kids' plates through compulsory education laws and school lunch programs.

"Daily sales record of school lunches," in Louise Stevens Bryant, School feeding: Its history and practice at home and abroad, Philadelphia ; London : J.B. Lippincott Company, 1913.

Contains an introduction by P.P. Claxton, 16 full-page illustrations, and 6 charts in text.

School Feeding Daily Sales Records.jpg

"Daily sales record of school lunches"

Caroline Hunt defines "young children" in this article as people who are between three and six years old. She acknowledges that they have specific "bodily needs." 

Her note at the bottom contains important historical clues. Her words suggest that attitudes were changing during the 1910s: "This bulletin is in accordance with the  principles 

 generally accepted by the best authorities..." Who were these authorities? They were scientists! We know this because she emphasizes laboratory research and because she indicates that complicated research here has been translated into "housekeepers' terms." Finally, she tells us something about who those housekeepers, her audience, might have been: she makes the straightforward assumption that they are "mothers." 

As you look through the following pages from "Food for Young Children," ask yourself: what ideas about health and family have changed since 1916 and what has stayed the same?

Five basic food groups are identified in the introduction to this article.

1. Milk, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, meat substitutes

Which of these food groups does the author say is most important for young children and why? What (if anything) surprises you about these categories?

On this page, Hunt says that “dinner” (what we would call “lunch”) should be the main meal of the day for children. The picture—which shows a meal of lamb, potatoes, spinach, buttered bread, and milk—reinforces this idea.

But Hunt isn’t only concerned with nutritional content here, she also writes about how food looks. She writes: “As all the pictures show, the service is orderly and neat in every way. This is important because it helps to form neat and orderly habits.” 

What do you think about these two sentences? Is the way food looks important? Should it be? What guesses do you have about why Hunt might have cared? 

This page shows menu themes and variations. Think about the following questions while you look at the “suggested fare”:

1. What assumptions are made here about the specific needs of children?

2. How much time do you think it would take to make these meals? 

3. Who would be responsible for making these meals?

4. How do these menus differ from what kids generally eat today?

Pay careful attention to the way Hunt introduces 

. She makes two key claims here. First, she says that milk, fish, poultry, eggs, and meat substitutes have “enough in common to warrant bringing them together.” Does this grouping make sense to you? Why or why not? Second, she says that milk is an “especially important food for children,” defining children as a biologically distinct group. What evidence would help convince you that milk is, in fact, especially important for children?

Here, Hunt digs into the science of food. She talks, for instance, about eliminating the water content of different beverages to compare nutritive content ("If all the water were to be driven off from a quart of coffee or tea, almost nothing would be left, and the little that remained would have little or no value as food.") What other reflections of laboratory research do see on this page? 

This is an example of a laboratory tool that may have been used to determine and separate the fat content of milk, similar to the work Hunt describes in her article.

A metal, hand-crank centrifuge with a three-pronged metal base. The base is painted a rusty red color and has been attached to a wooden board for stability. A long metal crank on the side of the base bends at a 90-degree angle and ends in a wooden handle. Four arms extend from the column of the apparatus, each ending in a tube mount. The four arms spin when the crank is turned. Four bronze sample containers fit into the centrifuge arms. Glass test bottles may be inserted into these metal holders for experimentation.

This is an example of an apparatus that may have been used for a Babcock test. The Babcock test, developed by agricultural chemist Stephen M. Babcock (1843–1931), is an inexpensive and practical procedure to determine and separate the fat content of milk.

hand_crank_centrifuge_x4jopzp_1_4xitm7q_download_medium (1).jpeg

Hand-crank Centrifuge, Babcock Milk Tester

Massachusetts passed the first compulsory education law in the United States in 1852. By 1918, two years after Hunt's article for the USDA was published, compulsory education laws had been passed in all 50 states. This meant that "dinner," the meal that nutrition scientists like Hunt said was most important for kids, was increasingly eaten outside of the home. With this shift, which further marked childhood as a distinct time of life, the question of who was responsible for school lunch—individuals, local communities, states, or the federal government—became hotly debated.

(Farmville High School Cafeteria; ca. 1951; Civil Action No. 1333; Dorothy E. Davis, et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County et al.; Civil Case Files, 1938 - 12/31/1990; Courtesy of the Records of District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21; National Archives at Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA.)

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

The Science and Politics of Food

Food for Young Children

Guiding Question

Childhood and nutrition