Food Fight!

<p> Whether served in a lunch pail on a cafeteria plate from a fast food restaurant or with two martinis lunch is an important historical and sociological indicator of American culture. Although the modern three-meal-a-day pattern may seem divinely ordained it has undergone profound changes in the last century. Prior to the American industrial revolution an agrarian society necessitated a hearty breakfast a large noon meal called dinner and a light evening repast known as supper. As the nineteenth century came to a close and factories increasingly replaced farms as primary employers the new American lifestyle forced a change in eating patterns and a new light publicly consumed midday meal called lunch emerged.</p><p> This book studies the contentious history of the American lunch and explains how divergent forces from food processors and advertisers to social workers doctors government representatives and mothers have carved out overlapping territories in the contest to influence America's eating habits. Early chapters explore the shift from agrarianism to industrialization and the pursuant lunch revolution and cover early reform efforts to improve lunch in schools and workplaces. Several chapters describe World War II as a watershed event for the American lunch covering lunchtime militarization and government intrusion into daily nutrition changing attitudes toward traditional women's roles in food preparation and the resulting postwar meal. Final chapters cover the colonization of school lunch by agribusiness government and media and explain how magazine and advertising treatments of lunch provision have constructed new models of femininity.</p>