The cultural habits of a food committee

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The cultural habits of a food committeeRebecca L. Spang aa Department of History , Cornell University , Ithaca, New York, 14853, U.S.A.Published online: 30 Apr 2010.

To cite this article: Rebecca L. Spang (1987) The cultural habits of a food committee, Food and Foodways: Explorations in theHistory and Culture of Human Nourishment, 2:1, 359-391, DOI: 10.1080/07409710.1987.9961927

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Food and Foodways, 1988, Vol. 2, pp. 359-391Reprints available directly from the publisherPhotocopying permitted by license only© 1988 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbHPrinted in Great Britain

THE CULTURAL HABITS OF AFOOD COMMITTEE

Rebecca L. SpangDepartment of History

Cornell UniversityIthaca, New York 14853

U.S.A.

For any country at war, food and feeding are crucial concerns. Duringboth world wars the U.S. government's war effort had to balance theneed to provision the armed forces against the need to satisfy civiliandemands. In World War I the battle was fought on the homefront instark terms of subsistence and "eating valiantly."1 A 1918 U.S. FoodAdministration pamphlet highlights the idea of sacrifice by placingfoods in two mutually exclusive categories, "what the soldiers need"and "what the folks at home can use."2 In contrast with this rhetoric ofpatriotic self-denial, the World War II effort was to be conducted withreliance on subtly used scientific knowledge and democratic coopera-tion. In the words of a 1943 Department of Agriculture booklet:"Economizing can be fun. Every woman likes to, once she knows how.. . . Helpful Hint: Dip scissors in flour when cutting marshmallows."3

Civilian instruction in eating was no longer centered on a privation thatwould be alleviated by war's end. Instead, it was hoped, constantimprovements in diet, always based on "the newest scientific findings,could be made permanent characteristics of American food use.

Rather than attempt to ascertain what people ate during the early1940s, this article focuses on the ways in which the U.S. governmenttried to instruct its civilian population in eating. Between 1941 and1945 the war effort received advice on the teaching of new food habits

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360 REBECCA L. SPANG

from the Committee on Food Habits of the National Research Council(NRC). Organized, it was stated at the time, "to mobilize insights fromthe areas of anthropology and psychology," this committee countedsome of the best-known figures of American anthropology among itsmembers.4 Yet surprisingly little has been written about either the com-mittee or its predecessors in government and private industry. Here Iexplore the institutionalization of research on, and intervention in,personal habits and nutritional concerns. At the same time I focus onthe interaction between applications of "academic" expertise and thegoal of rationalized human food use, particularly in wartime.Although a more exhaustive examination of the CFH's methods iscertainly needed, I suggest ways in which the committee's claimsrelated to those made by earlier experts in several related fields, govern-ment agencies, and social science movements. Certain precursors havedirect institutional links with the CFH, whereas others share a vocabu-lary and intellectual presumptions. Finally, I also indicate some of theways in which food habit research reinforces the distinction betweenbiological and social sciences, between "nature" and "culture." Thisseparation is demonstrated dramatically by the CFH and its muchlonger-lived counterpart, the Food and Nutrition Board.

There had been indications since the turn of the century thatbiochemical concerns were not the only issues involved in solving nutri-tional problems. In the excitement about the emerging science of nutri-tion it had briefly seemed that a few men in medical school laboratorieswould be able to guarantee that everybody would be well fed.5 Butrelief workers and welfare administrators had soon discovered that themalnourished, primarily immigrant, poor had little interest in effi-ciently managed food budgets or "properly" cooked cabbage. Indeed,some groups even refused milk, chicken, and American cheese.6

Biological fact alone did not ensure that people ate approved diets;rather, they stubbornly clung to "outmoded" food behavior.7 Suchproblems were to be the main concern of the CFH, whose stated pur-pose was to "get people to wish what they need."8

From its inception, the CFH assumed that the definition of "need"was the task of another, simultaneously established committee—theFood and Nutrition Board (FNB), known as the Scientific Food Com-mittee in memoranda of 1941.9 This original name is important, forit suggests the extent to which the federal government associated"science" with the hard science practiced by the medical doctors andbiochemists who dominated the FNB. It was the task of these experts to

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THE CULTURAL HABITS OF A FOOD COMMITTEE 361

ascertain the body's objective physical requirements for certain nutri-ents. In contrast, the CFH, with only one-quarter the budget, wassupposed to explain why past advances in nutrition knowledge had notled to a proportionally better nourished populace. A specific concernwas that twenty years of scientific discovery between the world warshad not led to noticeably healthier draftees.10 An apparent imbalanceexisted between the level of laboratory knowledge and the quality ofthe average American diet. The need to address nutritional questionsoutside the laboratory had been clear from the early stages of New Dealfood policy. In 1932 and 1933 the imbalance between expertise andapplication had been formulated in a deceptively simple fashion as"the paradox of want among plenty." Why were farmers dumpingmilk and slaughtering piglets when urban victims of the Depressionwere going hungry?" The CFH's mission included describing andexplaining such contradictory elements within U.S. production andconsumption of nutrients and, to a much lesser extent, experimentingwith methods of organized change.

Chaired by a past president of the American Anthropological Asso-ciation, Carl Guthe, and with Margaret Mead as executive secretary,the Committee on Food Habits was dedicated to applied social scienceand supplied a systematic evaluation of possible ways to change foodhabits.12 In Mead's words, the war brought home the realization thatman did not behave as simple "homo dieteticus."13 CFH studiesentwined analysis and description with assertions about the necessityof directing change within an "anthropological" frame of reference.The claims of the committee were bolstered by an acceptance of theseparation of "need" from "want" and by idealized images of theAmerican way of life. CFH studies had been preceded by a half-century of frenetic development in the fields of nutrition andanthropology, a period in which business and government had alsoused the positivistic and data-collecting methods of science. It had longbeen suggested that eating habits could have an effect on social andmoral behavior. While such claims were limited to vegetarianism or thewater cure, they inspired small, intense followings but no govern-mental support.1* In the late 19th century, however, chemists andphysiologists, some employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA), proved that food habits affected a worker's efficiency.15 Eat-ing was then subjected to the full gamut of management schemes,which ranged from controlled laboratory experiments to home eco-nomics textbooks and the Hollywood diet.16 Bad eating habits eventhreatened an individual's psychosocial development, it was claimed.

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Researchers asserted that a child's refusal to eat, "with the tempera-mental and environmental forces that surround it, is easily one of themajor factors, if not the greatest factor, in the pathogenesis of thefull-blown psychiatric problem."17

Broadening interest in "scientific" food consumption was accom-panied by a parallel involvement with questions of production. In the1930s the federal government had first begun to purchase and then toredistribute farm surpluses. Proper eating became linked to the welfareof the nation's agriculture and economy, as well as to that of indivi-duals. Against such a background would the CFH conduct its studies.So varied were the uses of earlier food habit studies that the CFH wasas concerned, not surprisingly, with balanced minds and the worldbalance of power as with balanced diets.

The institutional predecessors of the CFH were not all concernedwith food habits. The committee would present much of its work asinherently anthropological and only secondarily food-related, so it isimportant to examine the federal government's earlier appeals toanthropology. In general, anthropologists had been consulted when ithad been necessary to consider seemingly foreign or un-Americanelements of the population. For example, occupants of the firstfederally funded anthropology positions in the Bureau of AmericanEthnology were meant to give advice and assistance in dealing with theNative American population.18 A more direct link, however, connectsand contrasts the World War I and World War II uses of anthropology.The National Research Council, which would establish the CFH, wasset up in 1916 as a "more muscular arm" of the National Academy ofScience, itself created during the Civil War.19 The NRC was intended tochannel academic expertise into the federal war mobilization. One ofthe first committees to be established within a specific discipline wasthat in anthropology, which was dominated by physical anthropologyand emphasized racial measurement and improvement. These concernswere sufficiently central for the committee to extend membership tononanthropologists specializing in these areas. Among them wereMadison Grant, noted "race suicide" theorist, and Charles Davenport,director of the eugenicist Station for Experimental Evolution in ColdSpring Harbor, New Jersey. The American Journal of Physical Anthro-pology was founded specifically to supplement the NRC committee'sactivities and to serve as its mouthpiece.20 This committee stressed, asthe CFH did during World War II, that it provided benefits to the fieldof anthropology and to all of American society. Among the goals ofthe World War I committee was the use of "the opportunities offered

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by the recruiting of a great army for the prosecution of certain highlydesirable researches in Physical Anthropology, especially those havinga direct bearing on the future welfare of the race; and to gather statisticswhich should be available for comparative purposes in the near and farfuture." These statistics and measurements could not be taken withoutthe guidance of trained anthropologists. It was even suggested thatsuch specialists should be present at the peace negotiations. Germany's"unjust" claims on smaller countries might succeed "unless they canbe confronted by anthropological facts and expert presentations."21

The CFH presented its goals and sense of importance in similarfashion. Like the World War I committee, the CFH was sensitive to thelong-term reverberations of its work, anticipating not improved physi-cal stature but the alteration of "American food habits so that they arebased upon tradition which embodies science and to do so in such a waythat food habits at any period are sufficiently flexible to yield readily tonew scientific findings."22 Social scientists committed to the war effortshared with their predecessors a conviction about the central role thatacademically trained experts should play within the governmentbureaucracy. During the Great War, physical anthropologists (andothers) had quantitatively measured the exteriors of draftees, expectingto find evidence that would become the "basis for legislative andeugenic measures designed to correct or improve the physical status ofthe people wherever requisite."23 World War IPs anthropologists, bycontrast, qualitatively evoked the interiors, "the attitudes," of theentire population.

Examples from the history of governmental interest in food habitsshare with the CFH an appeal to a particular class of experts, a neglectof socioeconomic questions, and numerous assumptions about familystructures. Early studies were conducted by chemists and biologistswho could determine human nutrient requirements but were unable toexplain actual consumption patterns. Daily human food use could bedecried as the product of ignorance, waste, or willful debauch, butsuch dismissal did little to change the average diet. Thus the back-ground to the CFH includes both the perception of eating patterns asnonrational and the emergence of experts who could deal in a scientificfashion with this widespread, non rational behavior. The World WarII use of anthropologists to study food habit change is more readilyunderstandable in the context of previous research and polemics thatchampioned an "efficient," mechanistic human biology but failed toimprove the American diet.

Like its ethnological counterpart, early food habit research was

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directed at isolated or minority communities. Such groups were optimalfor study because of their easily perceived variation from the norm.Maine lumbermen and university boat crews both obviously expendedmore energy than the average worker and so were offered as cases ofmaximum necessary consumption. At the same time immigrant popu-lations in Chicago and New York City were studied because a"proper" diet could make them more responsible individuals andmore productive members of American society. Finally, patients in theGovernment Hospital for the Insane were easy subjects because theirlives were already highly regulated.

These studies were supervised by USD A research chemist Wilbur D.Atwater, first director of the USDA Experiment Stations and a con-firmed opponent of "waste." In his work on the "pecuniary economyof food," waste was a complicated matter divided into numerouscategories: table, plate, kitchen, and "that which we consume in excessof our need for nourishment."24 To counter the widespread ill effectsof waste, he recommended the establishment of experimental kitchensand feeding facilities to be associated with agricultural colleges.25 Atthe urging of Atwater and a supportive industrialist, EdwardAtkinson, Congress included $10,000 in the 1894-95 agriculturalappropriation for the establishment and reporting of "full wholesomeand edible rations less wasteful and more economical than those incommon use."26

Atwater and Atkinson emphasized American extravagance, particu-larly the indulgence in lavish buying which was common among theworking classes and "ignorant foreign poor."27 The point was maderepeatedly that these groups spent over half their income on foodbecause they based their purchases on whim or individual taste ratherthan on a planned balance of nutrient levels and cost. Hasty or nonexis-tent preparation was blamed for making the bottle appear more attrac-tive than the table. As Atwater noted, "One of the most commonobservations among those who are familiar with the habits of living ofthe poorer class of wage workers is to the effect that a not inconsiderableamount of the prevalent intemperance can be traced to poor food andunattractive home tables. Such cases can be cured or remedied only bya complete change in the family customs or by the education of theperson who does the marketing and housekeeping so that more judi-cious selections of foods will be made and more attractive tablesspread."28

Ill effects of the badly managed food dollar extended beyond thehome as well. "Dyspepsia or indigestion, caused by bad cooking,"

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could "impair the working capacity of the people of the United Statesand diminish their product."29 A mechanical view of the human bodywas implied by this consideration of "capacity" and "product,"which Atwater later expressed more explicitly: "The object of regula-ting the diet in training is not only to furnish the material to supply thepower, but also to put the machine in the best condition for developingas well as applying the power."30 In describing the body as a machinethat requires a certain amount of fuel to perform a given task effi-ciently, these early dietary studies led to calculations of ideal intake andoutput. Physiologists and chemists were called upon to apply theirknowledge to public education. An educated population would withtime become a better nourished and less tumultuous one, capable ofincreasing national production or even, if necessary, winning a war.31

In a country worried about the possible threat posed by large numbersof immigrants, social change and economic growth were to be effectedby routine, judicious buying and the setting of regular meal hours.32

Atwater's studies produced elaborate nutrient charts as well asimpassioned rhetoric on the importance of improved diets. But if thepolemics and calculations argued fiercely for the adjustment of eatingpatterns, they produced very few suggestions as to how to accomplishsuch changes. Instead, this element of the CFH's eventual task wasthen located in more general writing about "habit"—irrational andentrenched by repetition, but susceptible to change. "Habits" featuredprominently in turn-of-the-century writings in psychology, business,philosophy, and mental hygiene. William James, interested in the pos-sibility of overcoming habit, stressed its essentially conservativenature. Habit allowed society as a whole to move slowly forward, but itprevented individuals from doing so. For James, in the ideal situation,the conscious effort to escape habit in the sociopolitical sphere wouldbe supported by the existence of good habits in other areas. Only once"the details of our daily life" had been relegated to the automatism ofgood habits would "our higher powers of mind be set free for their ownproper works." Each individual was responsible for determining themost appropriate balance of habitual and nonhabitual behavior.33

The CFH's goal of changed food habits did not recognize this per-sonal decision making. Instead, the committee elaborated the theme ofhabit experts. The objective, observing scientist who perceived the besthabits for others was also present in the early literature, of course, butin fields that have rarely been related to historical studies of eatingand diet. Food habit research was hardly exceptional; such researchmay be linked to a more pervasive image of the modern, well-managed,

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successful worker and citizen. (Once again I concentrate on theories oftraining, not on individual conduct.)

In the field of scientific management, a movement to organize theworkplace by the use of systematic measurement and calculation,founder F. W. Taylor saw habit formation as too important to be leftto the individual worker. He divided mental from physical labor andthen allocated them to separate people. James's scheme was also basedin a distinction of the higher power of mind from rote behavior, butthese were still to be two elements of one individual. For Taylor, how-ever, the average worker was not sufficiently intelligent to perceive thebest way of performing his own task. He might have a habitual way ofdoing it, but this method was unknown to experts and had not beenscientifically approved. It consisted of little more than makeshift, a"rule of thumb" that could be of no real use to either the worker or themanager. Instead, the worker, who is "so stupid," must be "trained bya man more intelligent than himself into the habit of working in accor-dance with the laws of this science before he can be successful. "34 Taylorthus introduced the idea of the expert who scientifically determines thebest habits for others. Similar claims for expertise were made in JamesHarness's 1912 The Human Factor in Works Management, whichemphasized "the value of habit, both as a present means and as one bywhich progress can most easily be made." Good habits, scientificallydetermined by trained experts, could surpass the social conservativeforce that James found in most individual habit. No longer left tochance and early environment, the right habits were "absolutely neces-sary for success in this world today. "35

The advice literature on habits was not limited to business manage-ment. The "organization of good habits" was, for example, a corner-stone of the mental hygiene movement. The frontispiece of the NationalCommittee for Mental Hygiene's Handbook (1913) shows the buildingblocks of "The Organization of Good Habits" and "A Sound Mindand a Sound Body" jointly supporting "Personal Efficiency," uponwhich "National Efficiency" rests.36 Concerned medical doctors andclergymen at Johns Hopkins University cooperated on The Habitsof Health (1909), which gave primacy to "the unity of mind andbody. . . . What is referred to is the usual and habitual atmosphere ofyour mind."37 Massachusetts Institute of Technology chemist EllenRichards, an associate of Atwater and Atkinson, was among the firstto discuss explicitly the connections among food habits, socialadvancement, and physical well-being. "Precautions in using suitablefoods and avoiding dangerous combinations," she wrote, "guarantee

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efficiency in this world if not happiness in the next." She placed thesegoals within the reach of any determined reader by saying that appetitewas a matter of "habits and mental orientation."38 Atwater and thephysiologists had made scientific eating a complicated matter, involvinglong tables of albuminoid percentages. By Richards's definition,however, it was not necessary to consult charts that compared "foodvalue" with price per pound. Instead, good eating habits, "efficiencyin this world," and possible access to Heaven could all result fromchanged attitude and repeated behavior.

The period before World War I, then, was not lacking research onnutrition and habits. Nevertheless, the idea of regular but irrationalhabit was little considered by the U.S. Food Administration duringthe Great War. Headed by Herbert Hoover, the USFA was primarilyconcerned to provide food, not to initiate long-term change. Tempo-rary patriotic self-denial would put food on the table, even if "eatingjoyfully" was no longer possible.39 "Meat is not efficient," declaredone small book, while another asked children to solve arithmetic prob-lems that began: "Alice and Hugh refuse to eat cornbread instead ofwheatbread although neither one of them has ever tasted it. They eachuse 5 pounds of wheat flour a week."40 Participation in a food habitsurvey was described as "a real patriotic duty." The literature, bothpopular and scientific, advised milk, maple syrup, green leafy vegeta-bles, and "6 to 8 potatoes, per adult, per day."41 Chemist E. V.McCollum, who in 1916 distinguished vitamin A from B, vigorouslyproselytized for alfalfa, because it contributed to the "high ideals,ambitions and aggressiveness prompted by physical well-being."42

Here McCollum suggests a direct relation between foods eaten andsuccess in the war and the world. Such a model parallels the World WarI use of anthropometric analysis in the importance it gives to physicalmeasurement and biochemical reaction. It is in comparison with theseearlier, mechanistic views that the work of the CFH appears mostinnovative and can best be appreciated.

From the vantage point of the 1940s, the short-term changes broughtabout by World War I seemed responsible for much interwar diffi-culty. Even in the 1920s it was clear that the war to end all wars hadproduced an inflationary period in which American "waste" was againa major concern. One former military man did not think it feasible toexpect people to be "thrifty" unless they had a way of measuringthemselves against one another. He therefore suggested municipal gar-bage weighings, a prize going to the household with the least waste.43 Ina less competitive vein the Journal of Home Economics proclaimed

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that "intelligent food habits are a social obligation and every individ-ual is morally responsible for his own well-being."44 The AmericanJournal of Public Health argued instead for government supervisionof foods and diets, "for the sake of public safety and efficiency," andHenry Ford advocated that indigestion and malnutrition be madecriminal offenses.45 All of these writers expressed a desire to return toone of the exceptional situations of the war—carefully controlled fooduse—but without the war itself.

An appeal was again made to patterned daily behavior. RaymondPearl, former statistician at the U.S. Food Administration and profes-sor of biometry and vital statistics at Johns Hopkins, suggested thatpeople must develop the "habit" of being "thriftily minded." Thestatement involves an understanding of habit more sophisticated thanTaylor's or Ellen Richard's. Earlier authors had described habitualbehavior as a type of rote, automatic action that (given price fluctua-tion and seasonal variation) could prove far from thrifty. Rather thandemand that people buy a certain economical food, Pearl instead sug-gests re-trained, habitual thinking that could support consistentlywaste-conscious behavior. In many ways, this argument for concen-trating on changed habits of thought rather than of action foreshadowslater CFH statements. There is, however, an important difference inintellectual presuppositions. As a member of the eugenicist GaltonSociety of New York (membership limited to "sound, native Ameri-cans" and dedicated to "racial anthropology"), Pearl opposed theculturalist direction in which anthropology at Columbia Universitywas moving. His antagonism encapsulates much of the differencebetween the food habit writings of the two world wars, for it was justthis culturalist perspective which would dominate the CFH in WorldWarll.46

"Culture" had largely become a special concern of anthropology afterWorld War I. The first use of the word in an anthropological context isusually attributed to the Englishman Edward B. Tylor in his PrimitiveCulture (1871),47 but Franz Boas's turn to culturalism in the early 1900smarked the real beginnings of American cultural anthropology.48

Boas, mentor of CFH members Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead,began in this period to explain the "genius of a people" not by theirbiological race but by their less tangible'' culture. "His sense of culturewas often as deterministic as many understandings of race, but it dif-fered in its emphasis on external, environmental factors, on learnedsocial behavior. Culture in this sense came very close to being the habits

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of a group of people. In one definition, culture consisted of "the wholeseries of well-established habits according to which the necessaryactions of everyday life are performed.'' Also resembling philosophicaland managerial discussions of habit was Boas's evaluation of thepossibility of escaping one's culture: "We cannot remodel withoutserious emotional resistance any of the fundamental lines of thoughtand action which are determined by our early education and whichform the subconscious basis of all our activities."49

The CFH required a combination of a Boasian sense of culture witha more managerially derived understanding of the applications ofhabitual behavior. From both sources came a conviction about thecentral role of trained expert advisers. The CFH's specialized field wasdescribed as applied social science. To establish themselves as govern-ment advisers, CFH members with personal commitments to appliedacademic learning traded plans for the drastic overhaul of Americansociety for more specific studies that reinforced their positions asexperts but obscured the presence of conflict in America.50 The "appliedanthropology" background of the committee indicates ways in whichthis use of expertise varied from that of World War I, and such aperspective also indicates possible relations between the CFH's ambi-tions and Depression-era agricultural reforms.

The Committee on Food Habits owed its existence largely to oneman, M. (Milburn) L. Wilson. Often referred to as one of appliedanthropology's staunchest supporters, this agricultural economistfrom the University of Montana was, in 1940, director of AgriculturalExtension.51 In that year Harriet Elliott, the National Defense Advi-sory Commission's consumer and civilian welfare expert, askedWilson's advice about establishing a national nutrition policy. InElliott's words: "All of us have a major defense job to do—the job ofimproving our standard of living, of keeping ourselves strong andphysically fit."52 Wilson himself voiced this sentiment as chief of theNutrition and Food Conservation Branch of the Food DistributionAdministration, War Food Administration. He cited the "widespreadacceptance of the relation between adequate nutrition and the effi-ciency of the individual worker." Not only individual workers but thecountry at large was shaped by the "important social force" of nutri-tion, which contributed to the "cultural, spiritual and moral progressof the nation."53

Wilson, with his conviction about the central place of nutrition,suggested to Elliott that the NRC be asked to establish not one but twonutrition-related committees—the Food and Nutrition Committee

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(later the FNB) in the Division of Biology and Agriculture, and theCFH in the Division of Anthropology and Psychology. The two com-mittees would approach the subject from apparently distinct points ofview, those of biochemistry and behavior. Wilson described the needfor two committees in a November 1940 letter to Ruth Benedict, one ofthe original anthropologist members of the CFH. After referring tohimself as a "missionary" for cultural anthropology, he stated:

Science has brought about almost a revolution in nutrition and has givenus a new base for diet, which is founded on the science of biochemistry.We have a very decided cultural lag between this new science of nutritionand our food habits and our ideas about food and diet as they exist in ourpresent patterns of culture. I therefore feel that when it comes to gettingactual results in bringing the diet up to a biological minimum, the lag ison the side of human behavior.

He thought this lag had been well addressed by social scientists in otherUSDA programs, most notably by anthropologist (and original CFHmember) John Provinse for the Soil Conservation Service.54

Provinse and Wilson certainly provide personal connections betweenDust Bowl-era agricultural administration and the CFH, but Wilson'sinvolvement may also signal a continuation of policy. Along with JohnD. Black, dean of American agricultural economists, and W. J.Spillman of the USDA, Wilson had worked to develop the "domesticallotment" program. Faced by problems of low agricultural prices andapparent surpluses, Wilson, Black, and Spillman had thought to adjustproduction to domestic buying power by guaranteeing farmers a pro-tected price for only a portion of their crops. In 1933 the Federal SurplusRelief Corporation was established to purchase farm surpluses andpossibly redistribute them to relief clients. Domestic allotment and thepurchase of surpluses were the foundations of New Deal agriculturalpolicy.53 According to applied anthropologist Provinse, these programshad constituted some of the "many efforts now being made to ration-alize our agricultural policy."56 Rational organization of agriculturalproduction was not, however, sufficient. Provinse and Wilson calledfor a parallel development in consumption, and Black demanded that"consumption habits" become a "comprehensive integrated pro-gram." Relief recipients were "the best channel" for government sur-pluses, and feeding with "protective" foods would provide "energyand robust health."57 Black also wrote that the policy of distributingsurpluses "owes its origins more to the desire of producers to have price

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declines checked than to have consumption increase, and it is beingthus administered. Nevertheless, there is behind it a recognition thatsurpluses are inconsistent with inadequate consumption by those onrelief."58 Out of the need to give away accumulated surpluses werelaunched the first federal school lunch and food stamp programs, andit is tempting to speculate that the CFH's purpose was, in fact, to findconsumers for surplus soybeans and cabbages.59

Provinse, Wilson, and Black link together World War IPs goal ofscientific consumption, New Deal agricultural policy, and perhaps thekey element in the CFH's self-presented mission—the applied anthro-pology movement. Both Black and Wilson were charter members ofthe Advisory Council of the Society for Applied Anthropology, anorganization that grew out of 1930s' cooperation between the HarvardBusiness School and the Anthropology Department of Harvard Uni-versity. As the American Journal of Physical Anthropology was themouthpiece of the NRC's World War I involvement in anthropology,so the Journal of Applied Anthropology was tied to the CFH. The keyindividual in Harvard's Anthropology Department had been W. LloydWarner, a member of the CFH and supervisor of John Bennett andHerbert Passin's long-range food habit studies in southern Illinois. Healso directed another anthropologist CFH member, Allison Davis, inhis community study of Natchez, Mississippi. President of the Societyfor Applied Anthropology for 1943-44 was John Provinse, who by thattime was CFH liaison member from the War Relocation Authority,responsible for the internment of Japanese-Americans.60

The individual combining the strongest commitment to the CFH andapplied anthropology was, however, Margaret Mead. Executive secre-tary of the CFH from late December 1941 and the only member of thecommittee to "stay in food" after the war, she also held multiplepositions within the Society for Applied Anthropology and was aspeaker at its first conference, as were M. L. Wilson and RuthBenedict. Mead, one of the best-known figures in 20th-century anthro-pology, had studied with Franz Boas, the "father of American anthro-pology," at Columbia University before receiving an NRC fellowshipin the biological sciences to do her research on adolescence in Samoa.At the time of her CFH appointment she was teaching at Columbia andVassar College, as well as working at the American Museum of NaturalHistory.6'

In the years before U.S. entry into World War II, Mead was one ofthe original members of the Committee for National Morale (CNM), aNew York-based group of concerned social scientists. Some members,

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like Mead, were students of emigres; many more were emigres them-selves. All believed that the American war effort, when it came, wouldbe hampered by misunderstanding of the motivations and ambitions ofenemy and ally nations, as well as of Americans themselves. As socialscientists, they had been trained to make the observations necessary forbetter understanding, but traditional methods of fieldwork were impos-sible in the case of enemy nations and time-consuming in any country.

The CNM stressed the critical role that highly trained specialistswould play in democratically "enhancing" morale. At the same time itexpressed concern that this expert knowledge be implemented in amanner consonant with U.S. war goals. The war was seen in terms ofdemocratic versus totalitarian regimes and of the national charactersof peoples involved in the war. At its first and perhaps only news con-ference, in June 1941, the CNM stressed these general principles:

a. Need for a morale which is based upon the total enlistment of thewhole personality of free American citizens—as contrasted with themanipulative, button pressing propaganda of the totalitarians.

b. Compatibility between the use of a trained technical staff of socialscientists and democratic society.

c. Absolute need for U.S. to use full resources of social science tomaintain maximum morale as an essential for the triumph of democraticover totalitarian government.62

Prior to this press conference the CNM had advocated eschewing pub-licity of any sort, realizing that anybody known to be a scientificobserver might not be given the same opportunity to observe. At thesame time the committee had been quietly yet vigorously lobbying inWashington for an official place in the national war effort. When amorale program was established, however, it was split among severalagencies rather than being handed over to a "group of pure and appliedsocial scientists." This fragmentation of the federal morale effort com-bined with long-standing financial difficulties to lead the CNM to con-clude that the committee's future lay in creating "general ideas" thatother institutions could then implement. In a memo dated September1941, Gregory Bateson and Mead suggested that the CNM constituteda "Research Group to Develop Machine-Tools for Morale Building."63

Like the CFH, the CNM came to concern itself not with directingchange but with creating contexts or structures within which changewould be possible. The CNM differed from the later committee, how-ever, in having no government recognition and being located in New

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York City. According to Mead, CNM members realized in mid-1941that their advisory capabilities were limited by their meager under-standing of the real workings of the federal government. Shortly afterthis conclusion had been reached, Mead became executive secretary ofthe CFH.64 In the letter offering her this position, Carl Guthe wrotethat it "would offer an opportunity for useful participation in the planfor improving our national health by means of a carefully organizednutrition program, and for practical application of the principles ofapplied anthropology."65

CFH studies did more than "practically apply the principles." Theyalso served as publicity, as a ground for polemics. The writings of thecommittee made an argument for what could most easily be called"normal" (in Thomas Kuhn's puzzle-solving sense), applied socialscience, especially anthropology.66 Committee reports all argued forthe continued presence of "disinterested" anthropologists within thefederal government. Monographs on food habits of certain subculturesand analyses of attitude surveys insisted that the anthropologicalmethods which produced these results were the best that could havebeen used. It was also pointed out that properly trained researchers inthis field worked quickly and inexpensively while making furthersuggestions for extending the committee's work to all "living habits."

An early CFH memorandum announced that the "opportunity isoffered to demonstrate that students of culture are able to furnishpractical advice upon current problems in our own culture."67 To pre-serve professional distinctions, and to operate within the financial andinstitutional strictures set upon the CFH, "culture" was loosely usedto indicate "total patterns." Supposedly all-encompassing, culturebecame anything not studied by others. Believing that a "cultural per-spective" was necessary to combat the racist biological determinismof earlier applied anthropology efforts, CFH members focused onnational character and attitude studies that continued to portraybiology, economics, and culture as distinct entities. The essentiallypleasant images of America to be found in CFH writing support theargument for on-going anthropological study by ignoring socio-economic questions that were already the province of other experts.

Within CFH writings, "culture" is used both in a vague sense, toindicate the totality of experience, and much more definitely, to namethe subject of anthropological research. The CFH was part of theNRC's Division of Anthropology and Psychology, but the methodsused and discussed in the Washington office were almost exclusivelythose claimed by anthropology and were so identified. According to a

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retrospective report on the committee's activities, it was the respon-sibility of anthropologists to perceive and describe cultural patternsand the "dynamics which lay back of them." Once they had done so,psychologists could experiment "with the way in which different cul-turally acceptable methods, lecture, group decision, group goal set-ting, etc. functioned in attaining the desired alteration in foodbehavior."68 CFH funding for experimental work was cut off inmid-1942, however, leaving only a minimal budget, which was used foroffice costs and nonexperimental research.69 Committee methods hadto be both cheap and fast.70 At the same time, to prevent the CFH andits applied anthropologists from being phased out completely, therehad to be a way to argue that these non experimental, fast, and inexpen-sive methods were also the best and most anthropological tools. Theword "culture," rarely defined but used with considerable abandon,provided a basis for just such an argument. A concise definition mightprove too rigid and limit further flexibility in a way that a simpleacceptance of cultural concerns could not.

A similar understanding supported the CFH task of creating a"climate of opinion" in which food habits would be taken as seriouslyas vitamins.71 At one of the committee's final meetings, Mead citedconsiderable success in getting the phrase "food habits" used byeconomists, nutritionists, and government planners. She admitted thatthe phrase was used casually, without understanding, but said thisdetracted little from the importance of the victory. She emphasizeda change not of national food habits but of government word habits.The idea of a climate of opinion in which future changes would bepossible also motivated the appeals to "culture." An early memo fromGuthe suggests paraphrasing anthropologist Ralph Linton's verygeneral evocation of culture by saying "that the food folkways of anysociety consist of the sum total of ideas, conditioned emotionalresponses and patterns of habitual behavior toward food which themembers of that society have acquired through instruction or imitationand which they share to a greater or less degree."72 Totals, ideas,responses, and patterns were all significant elements of the CFH'sconcept of culture, but the reasons for their interweaving and thedistinctions between culture and society were never articulated.

Statements that food habits are part of the "total complex ofbehaviors" warned against the possible consequences of change insti-gated by nonexperts.73 All CFH writings, as well as unofficial articlesby Mead and home economist member Mary Sweeney, emphasizedthat changes during World War II should not be allowed to be as

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temporary as those of World War I. Rather, by taking advantage of awartime ethos of total involvement and sudden change, food habitscould be permanently bettered.74 To reach this goal, American foodpatterns would have to become characterized by a culturally patternedexpectation of change.75 Nutritional science had made great advancesin the previous forty years and would probably continue to do so. Whylet American food habits rigidify when science could continually dis-cover new elements missing from the diet? A cycling of scientificknowledge and changed habits was described in CFH writings, inwhich children trained in new habits would become new kinds of scien-tists. Because food habits were part of the "web of life,"76 changingthem in accord with nutritional science might have unlooked-foreffects. Mead argued that "only by putting each recommended innova-tion and the methods suggested for bringing it about against the totalcultural picture, is it possible to guard against initiating changes which,while nutritionally desirable in the narrower sense, may be sociallyundesirable in a wider sense."77 Mead elaborated on this dark hint inone of her innumerable unofficial articles, to the effect that aninappropriate change of food habits could "destroy the sanctions uponwhich parental authority is based or alter a capacity for co-operativebehavior."78 Worse still, a "disruption of the cultural balance" mightoccur in "those societies where the mother is accustomed to suckle herchild until it is four or five years old." Insistence upon feeding animproved diet "to raise the level of nutrition will cause psychologicaldistress in both the mother and child, will alter family organization,and will influence the child's status in the community, as well as haveother results which cannot be foreseen."79 To prevent constant repeti-tion of such a scenario in an ever-changing world, cultural experts hadto make their knowledge available to social planners.

The general nature of culture did not mean that it was accessible toany interested individual. Instead, the CFH claimed, "students of cul-ture" must have a specific scientific training to separate them fromother government employees. Carl Guthe quite bluntly stated that itwas' 'vitally necessary to recognize that the professional students of thesocial sciences follow scientific procedures, and through the use ofcontrolled imagination and judgment based upon experience, obtainobjective points of view and formulate fundamental principles andconcepts which will be of great value in the study of the critical situa-tion which lies before us."80

Along with straightforward statements of this kind came commen-tary on the simple and pragmatic benefits to be had from

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anthropologists and their methods. The employment of any scientist ina "relatively independent advisory committee" had several advan-tages. A November 1944 memo suggested reminding M. L. Wilsonthat "genuinely disinterested scientific advice" might appeal to"administrators with rather broad, humanistic views or to adminis-trators who are breaking new ground and are anxious for all the helpthey can get" but that "advice which can officially be labeled 'dis-interested' " would be "convenient" for administrators "under eitherintra-agency or intra-departmental or extra-governmental pressure."81

The key concern is that advice be received from a body of scientists—that such advisers may not necessarily be disinterested but can alwaysbe labeled as such indicates a willingness to compromise the supposedscientific goal of objectivity for the opportunity to work within thefederal power system.

Specific benefits were to be had from the anthropological method asdefined by the CFH, especially from the notion of a "culture pat-tern."82 Where an untrained observer would see either "uniformity"or its absence, a student of patterns would observe "regularities."83

Responses to sugar rationing or soybean consumption, it was argued,did not take a simple yes/no form. "Counting noses" was not the goalof any of the CFH's attitude studies. Pollsters who compiled largenumbers of "agrees" and "disagrees" could address "sociological"questions if they divided their samples along economic or regionallines, but every time they began a new survey, they would need toredivide their sample.84 Nose counters such as George Gallup weremaligned by committee reports for not learning from previous studies:rather than provide information about the American character or wayof life, nonanthropological methods yielded only numbers.85

The CFH method of analysis, developed primarily by technical assis-tant Rhoda Metraux, was much faster, cheaper, and more completethan that of other poll-takers. Anthropologists had been speciallytrained to make observations, to discover underlying attitudes, and thepattern they observed was all-encompassing.86 There was no reason toredivide the population for each attitude survey, which was tanta-mount to "starting your field work all over again."87 The opinions ofindividuals might change, but new opinions indicated only a moving toanother interpretation or connotation of the underlying attitude.88

Deeper, culturally patterned consistencies within the American charac-ter meant that all Americans had "organized character structures,organized attitudes toward certain sorts of things, attitudes towardproperty, attitudes toward restrictions, attitudes toward Government,

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and so forth." The committee's underlying belief in consistencies innational character made it possible to use the Metraux method, the"most purely anthropological method,"89 to compile, quickly and"cheaply,"90 composite statements of American attitudes on certainaspects of the war effort. Most studies provided both a positive and anegative composite statement, which were "potential responses of thesame people." Mead claimed that this technique differed from those ofa political campaign, in which only the noncommitted percentage ofthe electorate can be reached. By this rather forced comparison, sheasserts that the changing of food habits is not a matter for the mereparty politics of advertising slogans and mild propaganda.91

Development of these composite statements was based on interviewsconducted by "trained squads of researchers" across the country. Atti-tudes and cultural patterns could do little to propel research without ameans of access to them provided by a particular understanding of therelation between verbal utterances and other forms of behavior. Meaddrew satisfaction from use of the phrase "food habits," and similarlythe words chosen by respondents were believed to be directly related toactions. "Studies of verbal behavior are valuable, not because one canpredict that, having said something a person will merely say somethingelse, but rather because it is likely that having said something, a personwill do something. And the two, saying and doing, are related actions.Words have here, in part an initiatory force, a directive power. For thisreason, it is essential to the success of any co-operative enterprise thatthe participants 'speak the language.' "92

Attempts were made to put government demands in the language ofthose upon whom demands were being made, often dialect. Many ofthe composite statements were non grammatical: "It don't make anydifference to us. We get plenty of what we need. I like the rationing ofbutter. We didn't used to be able to get it and now we can. Rationing isgood for poor people. We get a fowl occasionally from the egg man,who comes in from the country. It helps on points."93 This is the"positive" composite response from "Attitudes toward the Effect ofPoint Rationing on the Choice of Food." Its implication, that the poorbenefit in times of crisis, is one factor creating a pleasant image of anAmerica that will emerge stronger after the war. The presentation ofthis suggestion in "spoken" form makes it seem a sample of people's"real" attitudes, made available to policy planners by the Metrauxmethod.

The same perception of a direct relation between what people sayand what they do informs the other major category of CFH mono-

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graphs, Natalie Joffe's reports on the food habits of various subcul-tures. Mimeographed copies were made available of her reports onCentral European and black American food habits, whereas those onother countries (including Greece, Japan, and the Netherlands) wereapparently for government use only. These studies had several pur-poses. If large groups of Italian-Americans or Polish-Americans hadto be relocated, those behind the relocation had to know how to feedthem.94 Outside the United States, there was the problem of feedingliberated countries after the war. Clearly, exported foods had to beacceptable to recipients, to avoid repeating the World War I debacle inwhich Belgians refused relief corn (i.e., maize) because it was not"food for humans."95 Mead, always stressing the economic soundnessof food habit research, reminded administrators to "consider all theway through that by meeting these social and psychological aspects youcan get by with less food or less desirable food if you don't happen tohave it."9*

No fieldwork was done for any of Joffe's studies. Instead, shescanned existing literature on the subject and then consulted an expertwho was both a member of the ethnic or racial group being studied andtrained in either nutrition or a social science. According a central placeto such an interview followed from the CFH commitment to employexperts and from informant-centered anthropological field method.97

It may also have contributed to the elevation of informant expertise inthe CFH canon of acceptable research methods, for it was cheap andfast. A memorandum to Margaret Mead jubilantly announced that allthe "data" for the monograph on Japanese food habits had beengathered in one day.98

Earlier methods of food habit research, it was rightly pointed out,yielded no insights on many aspects of food use. Weighing the food in ahome at two different times and recording exact amounts purchased inthe interim did not reveal to whom the food had gone, or when, or how.By contrast, Joffe's monographs pointedly mention timing and num-ber of meals, as well as foods reserved for children, sick people, ormen. Such references make her reports more broadly descriptive yetlittle more accurate. Food habits of each group are plugged into thesame standard form—simple, neatly labeled, and easily "used" butinvolving a priori categories. At times the inclusion of a categoryprompts oddly detailed bits of information; it is as though Joffe isstraining to fill the space on the page. "Necessary Changes in thePolish-American Diet," for example, includes a recommendation that"raw radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, scallions etc. be wrapped in wax

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paper" for lunches away from home. In a report that deals in a verygeneral way with "the role that her sex and attractiveness plays in thelife of the Polish working girl," the specificity of wax paper seems outof place." This is not to suggest that wax paper (or Tupperware, oraluminum foil) is not a part of food habits, but it is noteworthy thatJoffe's broad generalizations and paragraph headings sometimes pro-voke this sort of detail.

The idea that words and actions are narrowly predicated upon eachother is repeated in the assumption that proverbial sayings providedirect evidence of behavior and hence a basis for policy recommenda-tions. Polish folk wisdom says that eating a green apple before Mid-summer's Night "would cause a frog to grow in the stomach of theculprit." Among suggestions for group feeding in emergency situa-tions is "no fresh apples of the new crop should be served before June24>> 100 An alertness to folkloric sanctions in the absence of observa-tions of those sanctions at work trivializes these reports.

Taken as literal statements of belief and practice, proverbial sayingsare presented as curiosity items. The judgmental condemnation char-acteristic of Atwater has gone, but the treatment of stated beliefs asartifacts of easily discernible meaning contributes little more. As withthe insertion in attitude surveys of nongrammatical, verbatim state-ments, the placement of an untranslated word or phrase in Joffe's dry,simple, and topically outlined prose has the effect of presenting it asuninterpreted, unselected reality. These ten-to-twenty-page mono-graphs are divided and subdivided. In the report on Polish food habits,"A III" is food habits "background," which provides information onfood use in Poland itself. Under this rubric are five named, topicalsections, one of which, "The Etiquette of Drinking," contains thestatement: "Wodka, it was as binding as an oath."101 So presented, this"thin" description of a food habit has all the qualities of a shelved,neatly labeled Eastern European curio. The item is located not onlywithin a certain labeled paragraph but within "A III" as well. By suchtreatment of verbatim responses and untranslatable words, the CFHstudies attempted to support claims of objectivity.

This quick examination of the attitude surveys and subculture mono-graphs is far from complete. An anthropologist or sociologist interestedin doing food habits-related fieldwork or surveys would clearly con-centrate on different passages within these studies. The CFH wasintended to be a forum for the interaction of a variety of specialists; socan analysis of the committee be conducted from numerous points of

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view. The CFH was meant to remedy earlier failures, chief among themthe limited duration of any food habit change. Did the committee'srecommendations in fact have a long-term effect on the American diet?According to Margaret Mead, the CFH's effect was not to change foodhabits but to create an institutional context, and she believed that thecommittee was a direct precursor of UNESCO.102 Indeed, its examplemay have shaped international relief efforts since World War II. Oneaim of the CFH was to avoid what followed World War I, when wide-spread shortages provoked riot and unrest in Europe.'03 Although thesubstance of relief efforts has not changed appreciably, their represen-tation may have done so. The CFH suggested that Americans wouldsupport foreign aid if it seemed to "help others to get on their feetagain" or was believed to be a personal action "in terms of averageindividual consumption."104 Both perceptions were later used by thePeace Corps and some private, nonprofit relief organizations.

Yet if points made in CFH writings sound familiar, the committeeitself had only the most limited postwar existence. Lawrence Frank andMargaret Mead strongly supported a Committee on Living Habits thatwould apply the methods used in their food habit research to questionsof clothing, housing, and transportation. In that committee's onlyrecorded meeting, an attempt was made to demonstrate the usefulnessof determining the wardrobe equivalents of the Recommended DailyAllowances—if every worker needed five shirts and two pairs of pants,then the minimum wage could be set to permit their purchase.105 Inpeacetime, however, the federal government had no questions to posesuch a committee, which was officially dissolved in 1948. The CFH aimof permanent "applied anthropological" government advisers appar-ently had not been achieved. Interest in practical applications and infood habit research decreased in the discipline after the war as well.10S

Practitioners in the recently emergent field of nutritionalanthropology might consider the history of this earlier foray into aculturally based food anthropology. As presently construed, nutri-tional anthropology is much more influenced by biology than were thestudies of the 1940s. Does this influence indicate a more thoroughinterdisciplinary background or a realization that the charts andgraphs of biological measurement are more easily marketed than arepronouncements of attitude patterns? The academic division of thephysical and social sciences is still in place, and studies of laboratoryrats' riboflavin metabolism are housed in a different library from theone that holds descriptions of food preparation and analyses of reli-gious proscriptions.107

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APPENDIX

Members of the Committee on Food Habits

Margaret Mead. Executive Secretary. See body of article.Ruth Benedict. Boas-trained anthropologist. Of her earlier works,

Patterns of Culture (1934) was the most influential.John Cooper. See note 10 below.Allison Davis. Black anthropologist who had studied with

Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. He and Benedict were both advisersto the Carnegie Foundation's 1944 study of American blacks, AnAmerican Dilemma.

Joseph K. Folsom. Columbia-trained social psychologist. His 1917Ph.D. diss. was "The Statistical Study of Character." Associated withthe Vassar Summer Institute of Euthenics, he published The Familyand Democratic Society in 1943.

Lawrence K. Frank. Sociologist. Credited by Mead (in Problems ofthe 1960s) with creating the field of child development.

Mark May. Social psychologist and director of the Institute ofHuman Relations at Yale University.

Curt Richter. Johns Hopkins-based specialist in rodent appetite. Heresigned from the CFH in summer 1942.

Nathan Sinai. Public health administrator.Mary Sweeny. Seventh president of the American Home Economics

Association and assistant director of the Merrill-Palmer School inDetroit.

Warren T. Vaughan. A medical doctor specializing in public healthquestions. Replaced Richter in 1942.

W. Lloyd Warner. See section on Society for AppliedAnthropology.

WRITING AND REPORTS

Research directed by the CFH falls into two categories, the Metrauxattitude study and the Joffe subcultural habit monograph. Summariesof other food habit studies of the period are included in The Problemof Changing Food Habits (1944), and a November 18-19,1944, memo-randum lists several of these studies as having especially close con-nections with the CFH. These other studies, not based in Washington,do not all share the CFH emphasis on vaguely "cultural" questions.

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Some, such as those directed by Kurt Lewin at Iowa State University,are much more heavily quantified, to the point of determining theHomogeneity Index of breakfast foods. Quantification that madethe subject more accessible would certainly have been a strength, butthe Homogeneity Index and the convoluted description of its deriva-tion are more in the realm of mystification.

Attitude Studies Conducted by the Committee on Food Habits

Qualitative Study of Current Attitudes on Food Problems. August1942.

Rationing and Morale. September 1942.Some Suggestions about Attitudes in Defense Towns toward Food,

Housing and Transportation. September 1942.Current Attitudes toward the Meat Rationing Program. November

1942.Popular Beliefs about the Relationship between Specific Foods and

Morale. December 1942.Housewives' Awareness of Current Food Problems. April 1943.Attitudes toward Increased Consumption of Bread. August 1943.Attitudes toward Dividing the American Food Supply with Our

Allies. August 1943.Current Attitudes toward the Point Rationing Program. August

1943.The Role of Milk in American Culture. October 1943.Attitudes toward the Use of Soybeans as Food. October 1943. [With

the cooperation of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the AmericanRed Cross, an experiment was set up in Pentagon cafeterias regardinghuman soybean consumption. Written up as Patricia Woodward,"The Relative Effectiveness of Various Combinations of Appeal inPresenting a New Food: Soya," American Journal of Psychology 58(1945), 301-23.]

Attitudes toward the Effect of Point Rationing on the Choice ofFood. February 1944.

Attitudes toward Sending Food Abroad after the War. April 1944.Attitudes toward the Desire for Further Nutrition Information.

August 1944.Attitude studies were based on interviews conducted by "trained

squads of researchers," generally upper-class or graduate students inanthropology. Student squads were based, for at least one study, at:

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University of AlabamaAmerican UniversityUniversity of ArizonaUniversity of CaliforniaUniversity of CincinnatiCity College of New YorkCulver-Stockton CollegeDuke UniversityFort Valley State CollegeHarvard UniversityIowa State UniversityState University of LouisianaTexas State Teachers' CollegeTulane UniversityVassar CollegeState College of WashingtonWayne UniversityUniversity of MichiganMichigan State College

University of MinnesotaWomen's College, University of

North CarolinaNew Jersey College for WomenNew York School of Social

WorkUniversity of PennsylvaniaQueens CollegeRandolph-Macon Women's

CollegeSan Diego State CollegeUniversity of South DakotaStanford UniversityTemple UniversityUniversity of WashingtonWellesley CollegeWells CollegeWheaton College

Studies of Subcultural Food Habits

Those listed here were all conducted by Natalie Joffe, with the help of"native" informants also listed, and were the only ones available inmimeograph to other researchers and libraries. A summary of theCentral European studies appears in The Problem of Changing FoodHabits.

Italian Food Patterns and Their Relationship to Wartime Problemsof Food and Nutrition. GenoeffaNizzardini. 1942.

Czech and Slovak Food Patterns. Svetava Pirkova-Jakobson. 1943.Hungarian Food Patterns. No informant. 1943.Polish Food Patterns. Sula Benet. 1943.Some Food Patterns of Negroes in the United States of America and

Their Relationship to Wartime Problems of Food and Nutrition.Tomannie T. Walker. 1944.

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Studies Not Directly Conducted by the Committee on Food Habits

Most of these studies were summarized or reproduced in The Problemof Changing Food Habits. Individual researches, rather than institu-tions or disciplines (and their subdivisions), seem to be the source ofmost interest in and commitment to this field.

John W. Bennett and Herbert Passin. University of Chicago-basedstudy of southern Illinois partially supported by the Social ScienceResearch Council. Much of the analysis was based on perceived move-ment of certain socioeconomic groups along a rural-urban axis. Pub-lished reports include: Bennett, "Food and Social Status in a RuralSociety," American Sociological Review 8 (1943), 561-69; Passin,"Culture Change in Southern Illinois," Rural Sociology 7 (1942),303-17; Bennett and Passin, "Changing Agricultural Magic in South-ern Illinois," Social Forces 22 (1943), 98-106; Bennett, Passin, andH. Smith, "Food and Culture in Southern Illinois," American Socio-logical Review 7 (1942), 645-60. In 1946, Bennett reviewed recent foodhabit research, pointing out the CFH's neglect of socioeconomic fac-tors: Bennett, "An Interpretation of the Scope and Implication ofSocial Science Research in Human Subsistence," AmericanAnthropology AS (1946), 553-73.

Dr. Hilde Bruch, later famous for a classic on anorexia nervosa, TheGilded Cage, also researched areas of interest to the CFH. Insight intothe reactions of "normal" Americans was supposed to come fromstudies of the "abnormal," such as the obese children with whomBruch was then working. Her analysis appears in Problems of Chang-ing Food Habits, pp. 66-73.

Margaret Cussler and Mary DeGive received doctorates fromRadcliffe College in 1943 for their work on food habits in the ruralSoutheast. See Twlxt the Cup and the Lip (New York: Twayne, 1952).Summarized in Problem of Changing Food Habits, their work was alsopublished in "The Effect of Human Relations on Food Habits in theRural Southeast," Journal of Applied Anthropology 1 (1942), 13-18;"Foods and Nutrition in Our Rural Southeast," Journal of HomeEconomics 35 (1943), 280-82; "Interrelations between the CulturalPattern and Nutrition," USDA Extension Service Circular no. 366,August 1941; and "Let's Look It in the Eye," USDA Consumers'Guide, March 15, 1942.

Dorothy Dickens, a home economics Ph.D., conducted studies forthe Mississippi State Agricultural Extension Office. Her study ofgeophagy does not address the possibility of redressing a mineral defi-

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ciency and terms eating dirt to calm hunger pangs "highly unlikely."She concludes that dirt eating is "culturally" patterned. Publishedworks include "Food Preparation of Owner and Cropper FarmFamilies in the Shortleaf Pine Area of Mississippi," Social Forces 22(1943), 56-63; "Geophagy among Mississippi Negro School Chil-dren," American Sociological Review 7 (1942), 59-65; and "SomeEffects of a White Cornmeal Shortage," Mississippi AgriculturalExperiment Station Paper no. 88, 1944.

Kurt Lewin, emigre Gestalt psychologist and a major contributor tothe field of group dynamics, directed psychological studies from theChild Welfare Research Station of Iowa State University that cameclosest to testing possible ways actually to change eating habits. Peopleof all socioeconomic backgrounds were studied, but background wasnot taken into account in explaining behavior. Instead, subculturaldivisions were understood as occurring along economic lines. Thesestudies contributed the important idea of "food channels" (how fooditems entered the home). They also introduced the idea of "groupdecision," which in effect was the subtle manipulation of a groupdiscussion so that participants would agree with the leader/expert. InLewin's vague description, the main function of the group decisionseems to be to manipulate the manipulator to feel not manipulative.These studies all appeared in Problem of Changing Food Habits or inCFH mimeograph form: Lewin, "A Group Test for Determining theAnchorage Points of Food Habits," mimeo, June 1942; "Forces behindFood Habits and Methods of Change," in Problem of Changing FoodHabits, pp. 35-66; "The Relative Effectiveness of a Lecture Methodand a Method of Group Decision for Changing Food Habits," mimeo,June 1942; Leon Festinger, "Effect of Container on Food Prefer-ences," mimeo, February 1944; and Ben Willerman, "Group Decisionand Request as Means of Changing Food Habits," mimeo, April 1943.

Hortense Powdermaker, student of Edward Sapir (another ofBoas's students) and an anthropology professor at Queens College,wrote a summary of the fieldwork methods used by her "squad" ofstudents. It appeared in Problem of Changing Food Habits,pp. 95-96.

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NOTES

1. Mary S. Rose, Everyday Foods in War Time (New York: Macmillan, 1918), p. 31.2. U.S. Food Administration, War Economy (Washington, D.C.:GPO, 1918), p. 11.3. Marion Ulmer, Feeding Four on a Dollar a Day (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1942),

p. 34.4. Mary E. Sweeney, "Changing Food Habits," Journal of Home Economics (JHE)

34 (1942), p. 457.5 Cf. Carl Alsberg, "Effects of Scientific Food Consumption in Increasing Wealth,"

A nnals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences (AAAP&SS) 115(1924), p. 57.

6. See Alberta Childs, "Some Dietary Studies of Poles, Mexicans, Italians andNegroes," Child Health Bulletin 9 (1933), p. 85; Natalie Joffe and G. Nizzardini,"Italian Food Patterns," mimeo (Washington, D.C.: Committee on Food Habits,1943), p. 8; H. R. M. Landis, "Dietary Habits and Their Improvement,"AAAP&SS 54 (1917), p. 103; and Bertha Woods, Foods of the Foreign Born(Boston: M. Barrows, 1929), p. viii.

7. "Minutes of Executive Session, Nov. 18-19, 1944," p. 12, National Academy ofScience archives: National Research Council, Division of Anthropology and Psy-chology, Committee on Food Habits (NAS. CFH), Meetings 1944.

8. "Provisional Program of Action, Feb. 28, 1941," p. 1, NAS. CFH. Activities,1941-5. In a 1943 memorandum to M. L. Wilson, Carl Guthe wrote of the U.N.Conference "Freedom from Want," "it is first necessary to establish the want,freedom from which may then be offered." See "Memorandum prepared by Dr.Carl E. Guthe at Mr. & M. L. Wilson's Request for Use of the Scientific Panel ofthe Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture," p. 1, NAS. CFH. ReportsGeneral, 1943.

9. Ross G. Harrison (chairman, NRC) to Guthe, November 15, 1940, NAS. CFH.General, 1940-1.

10. "Chairman's Memo, Nov. 21, 1941," NAS. CFH. General, 1940-1.11. See Janet Poppendieck, Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat (New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press, 1986).12. Guthe had also been chairman of the NRC's Division of Anthropology and Psy-

chology from 1938 to 1940. He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1917 and spentmost of his academic career at the University of Michigan. An expert on Pueblopottery and museum management, Guthe had little background in food habits, likethe two men who preceded him as CFH chairman. Anthropologist John Cooperwas a specialist in South American Indians, and psychologist Rensis Likert workedon the development of management and leadership skills. Both quit as chairmanbecause of "serious illness." Shortly after he became chairman, Guthe wrote tochild psychologist Leonard Carmichael, chairman of the Division of Anthropologyand Psychology, "Frankly the cultural phenomena affecting food habits seem sooverwhelmingly complex that I am completely baffled by them. In light of what hasalready been accomplished by the governmental and civil agencies interested in thenutrition problem, I am not at all sure that a group of scientists interested in thegeneral subject can render any appreciable aid. I sincerely hope that this conclusionis due entirely to my own lack of knowledge upon the subject." Guthe toCarmichael, September 27, 1941, NAS. CFH. Liaison Members Meetings, 1941-5.

13. Margaret Mead, "The Question of Food Habits," in Malnutrition and FoodHabits, ed. Anne Burgess and R. F. A. Dean (London: Tavistock, 1962), p. 50.

14. See, for example, Stephen Nissenbaum, Sex, Diet and Debility in JacksonianAmerica (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1980), and James Whorten, Crusaders forFitness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).

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15. See Edward Atkinson, The Industrial Progress of the Nation: ConsumptionLimited, Production Unlimited (New York: Putnam's, 1889), p. 238, and WilburO. Atwater, "Methods and Results of Investigations on the Chemistry and Economyof Food," USDA Office of Experiment Stations Bulletin no. 21 (Washington,D.C.:GPO, 1895), p. 7.

16. See Atwater, "Methods and Results," pp. 53-80. One textbook caption of aphotograph of a small child being fed reads: "If properly managed, the baby canlearn to like all foods which are good for him." Faith R. Lanman, H. McKay, andF. Zwill, The Family's Food (Chicago: Lippincott, 1931), p. 34. See also "TheWonders of Diet," Fortune 13 (1936), p. 86-91.

17. Joseph Brenneman, "Psychological Aspects of Nutrition in Childhood," Journalof Pediatrics 1 (1932), p. 159.

18. See Curtis M. Hinslay, Jr., "Anthropology as Science and Politics," in The Uses ofAnthropology, ed. W. Goldschmidt (Washington, D.C.: American Anthropo-logical Association, 1979), p. 2.

19. See Phillip M. Boffey, The Brain Bank of America (New York: McGraw-Hill,1975), pp. 2-8, and Richard D. Cummings, The American and His Food (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1940), p. 232.

20. Ale! Hrdliika, "Preface," American Journal of Physical Anthropology(AJPA) 1 (1918), p. 1.

21. W. H. Holmes, "Organization of the Committee on Anthropology of the NRCand Its Activities for the Year 1917," AJPA 1 (1918), pp. 77-79, 89. On thiscommittee see also George W. Stocking, Jr., Race, Culture and Evolution (NewYork: Macmillan, 1968), particularly pp. 270-309.

22. Margaret Mead, "The Problem of Changing Food Habits," in The Problems ofChanging Food Habits, NRC Bulletin no. 108 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1944),p. 29.

23. Holmes, "Organization of the Committee," p. 79.24. Atwater, "Methods and Results," p. 219, and A. A. Pratt and R. D. Milner,

"Dietary Studies at the Government Hospital for the Insane," USDA Office ofExperiment Stations Bulletin no. 150 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1903), pp. 82-90.

25. Edward Atkinson, "Suggestions for the Establishment of Food Laboratories,"USDA Office of Experiment Stations Bulletin no. 17 (Washington, D.C.: GPO,1893).

26. Cummings, American and His Food, pp. 127-30.27. Atwater, "Methods and Results," pp. 215-22; Atkinson, Industrial Progress,

p. 39; W. O. Atwater and A. P. Bryant, "Dietary Studies in Chicago," USDAOffice of Experiment Stations Bulletin no. 55 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1898),p. 10.

28. W. O. Atwater and Charles D. Woods, "Dietary Studies in New York City,"USDA Office of Experiment Stations Bulletin no. 48 (Washington, D.C.: GPO,1898), p. 64. See also Atwater, "Methods and Results," pp. 214-17, and Atwaterand Bryant, "Chicago," p. 7.

29 Atkinson, Industrial Progress, pp. 239, 243.30. W. O. Atwater and A. P. Bryant, "Dietary Studies of University Boat Crews,"

USDA Office of Experiment Stations Bulletin no. 75 (Washington, D.C.: GPO,1900), p. 72.

31. Atwater, "Methods and Results," p. 212. Atkinson asked "why has the govern-ment of Germany undertaken to instruct the people in the art of nutrition, lest thesordid condition of great districts should end in socialism, nihilism and violentrevolution? . . . As war becomes more scientific, it becomes yet more costly. Vic-tory rests not only on powder and iron, but yet on bread and beef. It may have beenthe German sausage by which France was beaten, quite as much as by the Germanrifle" (Industrial Progress, pp. 39, 49). Admiration of the Germans was quite

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common among Atwater's coterie. For more about French and German calcula-tions about the mechanical human body see Anson Rabinbach, "The EuropeanScience of Work: The Economy of the Body at the End of the Nineteenth Cen-tury," in Work in France, ed. S. L. Kaplan and C. Koepp (Ithaca: Cornell Univer-sity Press, 1986), pp. 473-513.

32. Atwater and Woods, "New York City," p. 65. On the self-important position of"scientist-entrepreneurs" in the early agricultural experiment stations, see CharlesE. Rosenberg, "Rationalization and Reality in Shaping American AgriculturalResearch, 1875-1914," in The Sciences in the American Context, ed. N. Reingold(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1979), pp. 143-64.

33. William James, Habit (New York: Holt, 1890), pp. 8, 33, 59.34. Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911; New York:

Norton, 1967), pp. 31-35,59.35. James Hartness, The Human Factor in Works Management (Nevi York: McGraw-

Hill, 1912), pp. 23, v.36. National Committee for Mental Hygiene, Handbook for the Mental Hygiene

Movement and Exhibit (New York: National Committee for Mental Hygiene,1913).

37. Oliver Huckel, The Habit of Health (New York: Crowell, 1909), p . 6.38. Ellen Richards, The Cost of Food (New York: Wiley, 1902), p. 17.39. U.S. Food Administration, War Economy, p. 12.40. Graham Lusk. Foodin War Time (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1918), p. 18,andA. N.

Farmer and J. R. Huntington, Food Problems (Boston: Ginn, 1918), p . 12.41. See Helen Atwater, "A Guide to the Nation's Dietary Needs," AAAP&SS 54

(1917), p . 115; U.S. Food Administration, Food Saving and Sharing (Wash-ington, D.C.: GPO, 1918), pp. 26, 36; and Wartime Conservation (Albany, N.Y.,1918), circulars 2, 3, 8,11.

42. E. V. McCollum, "Some Essentials to a Safe Diet," AAAP&SS 54 (1917), p. 101.43. H. L. Baldensperger, "The Garbage Pail, a National Thrift Barometer,"

AAAP&SS 57 (1920), p. 327.44. Florence E. Ward, "A Program for Nutrition in Co-operative Extension Work,"

JHE 17 (1925), p. 237. The same point was made during the war by the USFA'sWar Economy: "It is not a government responsibility, it is the responsibility of eachindividual" (p. 8).

45. Peter H. Byce, "The Year's Change in Food Habits," American Journal of PublicHealth 9 (1919), p . 113, and Henry Ford, "Diet and Morals," New York StateJournal of Medicine 29 (1929), quoted in Louis Berman, Food and Character(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932), p . xx.

46. Raymond Pearl, "Food Thrift," AAAP&SS 87 (1920), p. 127; AJPA 1 (1918),p. 263. For more on the Galton Society see Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolu-tion, pp. 289-307.

47. "That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customand any other capabilities and habits acquired by a man as a member of society"—E. B. Taylor, Primitive Culture (Boston, 1871), p. 1, quoted in A. L.KroeberandC. Kluckhorn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, Papers ofthe Peabody Museum, Harvard, 47, 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1952), p. 43.

48. Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, pp. 202-20, 231.49 F. Boas, "Some Traits of Primitive Culture," Journal of American Folklore 17

(1904), quoted in Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, pp. 226-27.50. "While it is clear that any final adjustment of the food habits of a nation to the

current findings of nutrition can best be established by a basic alteration in theculturally defined style of what is a meal and what is food, exigencies of wartimeconditions have made it necessary to resort to special measures to accomplish

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immediate changes and adjustments to shortages and substitutes." Mead, "Prob-lem," in Problems of Changing Food Habits, p. 27.

51. See John W. Bennett, H. L. Smith, and H. Passin, "Food and Culture in SouthernIllinois," American Sociological Review 7 (1943), p. 645, and "The Committee onFood Habits, 1940-5," p. 5, NAS. CFH. General, 1944-7.

52. Elliott had formerly been dean of women at the Women's College of the Universityof North Carolina. See M. L. Wilson, "Nutrition and Defense," JADA 12 (1941),pp. 12-14.

53. M. L. Wilson, "Nutrition, Food Attitudes and Food Supply," in Postwar Eco-nomic Problems, ed. S. E. Harris (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1943), pp. 284, 289.

54. M. L. Wilson to Ruth Benedict, November 6, 1940, Library of Congress, Manu-script Division, Margaret Mead's Papers, (LC) F6, General Correspondence,1940-42.

55. See Poppendieck, Breadlines, pp. 13, 130; Richard S. Kirkendall, Social Scientistsand Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt (Ames: Iowa State University Press,1982), p. 24; and William D. Rowley, M. L. Wilson and the Campaign for theDomestic Allotment (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), pp. 197-98.

56. Memorandum, John Cooper to members of the CFH, December 27, 1940, p. 1,NAS. CFH. General, 1940-1.

57. John D. Black, "Agriculture Problems," in Harris, Postwar Economic Problems,p. 299.

58. Warren Waite and J. D. Black, "Nutrition and Agricultural Policy," AAAP&SS188 (1936), p. 255. Waite was the Provincial Marketing Specialist at the Agricul-tural Adjustment Administration.

59. Poppendieck, Breadlines, p. 241. The permanent school lunch program was estab-lished in 1946 by an Act of Congress which called it "a measure of national securityto safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's children and to encourage thedomestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities." See KennethSchlossberg, "Nutrition and Government Policy in the U.S.," in Nutrition andNational Policy, ed. B. Winikoff (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978), pp. 326-59.

60. See F. L. W. Richardson, "Social Interaction and Industrial Productivity," inGoldschmidt, Uses of Anthropology, pp. 82-83; John F. Szwed, "TheEthnography of Ethnic Groups in the U.S." in ibid., p. 101; and William Par-tridge and E. Eddy, "The Development of Applied Anthropology in America," inApplied Anthropology in America, ed. Eddy and Partridge (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1978), p. 32. See also Journal of Applied Anthropology 3 (1943),p. 1.

61. George W. Stocking, "Anthropology as Kulturkampf,"in Goldschmidt, Uses ofAnthropology, pp. 42; and Mead to Guthe, December 12, 1941, NAS. CFH.Executive Secretary, 1941-5.

62. "Points to be decided by Publicity Committee, June 14, 1941," p. 2, LC. Fl,Minutes & Agendas, 1940-2.

63. Bateson and Mead to Executive Members of CNM, September 5, 1941, LC. Fl,Correspondence and Memos, July-Dec, 1941.

64. Margaret Mead Food Habits Research: Problems of the 1960s, NAS Publicationno. 1225 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1964), pp. 1-2.

65. Guthe to Mead, December 10, 1941, p. 2, NAS. CFH. Executive Secretary.66. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1970), especially pp. 23-42.67. "Chairman's Memorandum, Nov. 21, 1941," p. 3, NAS. CFH. General, 1940-1.68. "The Committee on Food Habits, 1940-5," p. 7, NAS. CFH. General 1944-7.69. Ibid., p. 4.70. See Mead, "Problem," p. 23, and NRC, Manual for the Study of Food Habits,

NRC Bulletin no. 111 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1945), p. 18.

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71. Describing this process, Mead said: "But the job was gradually, in a great manydifferent ways and at a great many different levels, to increase acceptance on theparts of a great many different kinds of people of these socio-psychological culturalfactors which had to be taken into account when government and science attemptedto introduce changes or conserve values, and unless this was taken into account, onecouldn't hope for the same sort of success.

"It is rather a new thing in a way, for science to take responsibility for creatingthe climate of opinion within which it, itself, can operate. It is a kind of third leveloperation, but I believe it is going to be an increasingly important one in thenational capital as the years go on; unless we have a mechanism by which ideas asthey come in from those who are experimenting with different forms of humanbetterment have a chance to be thrashed out in groups of people in Washington andgradually accepted, gradually built up. We aren't going to be able to go very far.""Translating Scientific Findings into Living Habits, May 19, 1945," p. 8, NAS.CFH. Liaison Members Meetings, 1942-5.

72. The definition of culture as "the sum total of ideas, conditioned emotionalresponses and patterns of habitual behavior which the members of that society haveacquired through instruction or imitation and which they share to a greater or lessdegree," is from Linton's The Study of Man (1936), p. 288, quoted in Kroeber andKluckhorn, Culture, pp. 43,45. See "Chairman's Memorandum, Nov. 31, 1941,"p. 2, NAS. CFH. General, 1940-1.

73. Joffe and Nizzardini, "Italian Food Patterns," p. 37.74. Margaret Mead, "The Factor of Food Habits," AAAP&SS 225 (1943), p. 140;

Mead, "Problem," p. 29; "Minutes of Executive Session, Nov. 18-19, 1944,"p. 9, NAS. CFH. Meetings, 1944; and Sweeney, "Changing Food Habits," p. 462.

75. NRC, Manual for the Study of Food Habits, NRC Bulletin no. 111 (Washington,D.C.: GPO, 1945), p. 45; Mead, "Problem," p. 29; and Mead, "Problem ofTraining the Volunteer in Community War Work," School and Society 56 (1942),p. 21.

76. Mead, "Problem," p. 21.77. Ibid., p. 22.78. Margaret Mead, "Anthropological Approach to Dietary Problems," Transactions

of the New York Academy of Science, 2d ser., 5 (1943), p. 181.79. "Memorandum prepared by Dr. Carl Guthe at Mr. M. L. Wilson's Request for

Use of the Scientific Panel of the Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture,Dec. 11-12,1943," p. 2, NAS. CFH. Reports General, 1943.

80. "Translating Scientific Findings into Living Habits, May 19, 1945," p. 2, NAS.CFH. Liaison Members Meetings, 1942-5.

81. Margaret Mead to Executive Members of CFH, November 8, 1944, p. 8, NAS.CFH. Meetings, 1944.

82. Kroeber and Kluckhorn suggest that the success of Ruth Benedict's book Patternsof Culture (1935) "almost certainly furthered use of the word 'pattern.' . . . At thesame time, pattern is conceptually not very far from way, just as this overlaps withcustom. Part of the recent drift toward pattern appears to be linguistic fashion"(p. 5).

83. "Small Conference on Methodological Problems in Attitude Studies, Feb. 29,1944," p. 5, NAS. CFH. Conferences, 1942-5, and "Translating Scientific Find-ings into Living Habits, May 19, 1945," p. 3, NAS. CFH. Liaison MembersMeetings, 1942-5.

84. Rhoda Metraux, "Qualitative Attitude Analysis," in Problem of Changing FoodHabits, p. 87, and "Small Conference on Methodological Problems in AttitudeStudies, Feb. 29, 1944," pp. 6-12, NAS. CFH. Conferences, 1942-5.

85. It has been suggested that Gallup's surveys, begun in the 1930s, were conducted todemonstrate empirically the base of the "American way of life." See Warren

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Susman, Culture as History (New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 155-70.86. "Translating Scientific Findings into Living Habits, May 19, 1945," p. 9, NAS.

CFH. Liaison Members Meetings, 1942-5.87. "Small Conference on Methodological Problem in Attitude Studies, Feb. 29,

1944," p. 11, NAS. CFH. Conferences, 1942-5.88. Metraux, "Qualitative Analysis," p. 87, and "Small Conference on Method-

ological Problem in Attitude Studies, Feb. 29, 1944," p. 11, NAS. CFH, Confer-ences, 1942-5.

89. M. Mead to Elliott Chappie, February, 19, 1944, LC. E 118, Society for AppliedAnthropology, 1942-6.

90. M. Mead to Harold Lasswell, June 28, 1942, LC. F8, Attitude Sampling Corre-spondence, Jan.-Sept. 1942.

91. Margaret Mead, Preface, "Attitudes toward Increased Consumption of Bread,"mimeo (Washington: NRC, CFH, 1943), p. 1.

92. Metraux, "Qualitative Analysis," pp. 86-87.93. Patricia Woodward, "Attitude toward the Effect of Point Rationing on the Choice

of Food," mimeo (Washington: NRC, CFH, 1944), p. 5.94. Joffe and Nizzardini, "Italian Food Patterns," pp. 17-19.95. Margaret Mead, "Food and Feeding in Occupied Territory," Public Opinion

Quarterly 7 (Winter 1943), pp. 619-22.96. "Problems of Food Distribution in Countries Differently Affected by the War,

Dec. 11, 1943," p. 7, NAS. CFH. Liaison Members Meetings, 1942-5.97. "Possible Contribution of CFH to Problems of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation,

May 14, 1943," p. 1, NAS. CFH. Projects.98. R. Metraux to M. Mead, August 14, 1942, p. 2, LC. F6 General Correspondence

Nov. 1940-Aug. 1942.99. Natalie Joffe and Sula Benet, "Polish Food Patterns," mimeo (Washington: NRC,

CFH, 1943), pp. 10, 12.100. Ibid., pp. 4, 14.101. Ibid., p. 5.102. Jane Howard, Margaret Mead (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 233.103. John D. Black, "Food: War and Postwar," AAAP&SS 225 (1943), pp. 1-5, and

Margaret Mead, "On Methods of Implementing a National Morale Program,"Applied Anthropology 1 (1941), p. 24.

104. Patricia Woodward and Eva Shippee, "Attitudes toward Dividing the AmericanFood Supply with Our Allies," mimeo (Washington: NRC, CFH, 1943), pp. 1-5.

105. "Translating Scientific Findings into Living Habits, May 19, 1945," pp. 1-18,NAS. CFH. Liaison Members Meetings, 1942-5.

106. John W. Bennett and E. Montgomery, "Anthropological Studies of Food andNutrition: The 1940s and the 1970s," in Goldschmidt, Uses of Anthropology,pp. 125-49.

107. I would like to thank those people who took the time to read and comment on myessay: Steven L. Kaplan, R. Lawrence Moore, Carole Counihan, Claude Grignon,Manuel Calvo, Claude Fischler, and three anonymous referees. 1 also thank theLibrary of Congress and Dr. Mary Catherine Bateson for permitting me to useitems in the Margaret Mead Papers in the library's Manuscript Division.

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Documents

The cultural habits of a food committee