January’s Adventure in the Global Kitchen Highlights Historical Diets
Tuesday, January 17 2:22 pm
Food blogger Sarah Lohman sheds light on dieting techniques that Americans of another era used to shed a few pounds. © Will Heath
This New Year’s, millions of Americans resolved to shed a few pounds throughout the coming year. Americans have always been attentive to their waistlines, but their “ideal” weight has changed over time. On January 24, food blogger Sarah Lohman will lead Tonics and Tinctures: Historic Remedies for Your Expanding Waistline, this month’s Adventures in the Global Kitchen event. As part of her talk, Loham will give an overview of how and why Americans historically lost weight, the psychology of body image, and the birth of food science and home economics. Lohman recently took us through a few of the dieting techniques and food items that she’ll discuss—and even encourage audience members to try—next week.
Diet Trend: Fletcherizing
Lohman: Fletcherizing is a technique in which you chew every bite of food until it disintegrates. Even soup and water had to be chewed before swallowing. This technique was named for its inventor, Horace Fletcher, who created the trick in response to Americans’ longstanding reputation for eating too quickly. If you read accounts of English travelers that came to the United States as early as the 1830s, one thing they remark on is how quickly Americans wolf down food. Fletcher’s point was to slow down, which we now know gives your stomach time to send your brain signals that it’s full. Fletcher’s followers chomped between 30 to 300 times for every morsel of food. We’ll be giving this technique a try at the event.
Diet Food: Protose
Lohman: Protose is a meat substitute made of wheat gluten and peanuts invented by John Harvey Kellogg. Kellogg was a vegetarian and founder of The Sanitarium, a health spa in Battle Creek, Michigan. He realized that in order to convert Victorians to vegetarian principles, he had to provide an option of something like meat to satisfy their appetites. He also invented the breakfast cereal: Kellogg’s corn flakes. At that time, people were eating three-meat breakfasts with eggs on top, so this was a huge cultural revolution. He brought yogurt, seaweed, and soy into our diets and gave a menu with printed calories to his Sanitarium patients. I’ll be providing protose meatballs at the event for sampling.
Diet Education: Home Economics
Lohman: Around the turn of the century, we discovered the calorie. You couldn’t count calories before you knew what a calorie was. We also figured out vitamins, and became obsessed with the science of food. These discoveries gave birth to home economics classes, which served the dual role of educating the public about nutrition, but also elevated the work of women in the home. On farms, men and women were two different parts—one growing crops, one processing food—working toward the same goal. After industrialization, men went to the factories and women were relegated to the “domestic sphere.” Home economics classes, with their foundation in science, turned the tables by showing that what women were doing in the home was as important as what men were doing in the factory.
To buy tickets to this program, click here.
