Tag Archives: diet

Extra, Extra, Get Your New Banana!

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By Anne Garner, Curator, Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health

This is one of several posts leading up to our day-long Eating Through Time Festival on October 17, 2015, a celebration of food, cookery, and health. View the full program and register for the Festival.

Among the many attractions at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 were the bananas. Wrapped in foil and sold for a dime each, they were a novelty for many Americans who had never seen them before.1

In the decades that followed the Exposition, the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) was responsible for introducing many more Americans to the fruit, promoting the banana in their literature, and distributing them throughout the country.

The story of the UFC begins in 1871, when cattle rancher Minor C. Keith first planted bananas alongside the tracks of the national railroad in Costa Rica. By the 1880s, Keith was the dominant banana trader in Central America. In the same decade, Lorenzo Dow Baker founded Boston Fruit, the first to import bananas in the U.S. Keith’s enterprise merged with Boston Fruit in 1899 to create the United Fruit Company.

During the next decade, United Fruit Company’s Great White Fleet, painted white to reflect the intense sun, carried bananas from Central America to the U.S. An increasing number of refrigerated train cars pushed bananas further inland, to places they had never gone before.

Beginning in the early 20th century, the United Fruit Company promoted the banana in a series of pamphlets and ads, taking it from a little-known novelty to a household staple. At the heart of their campaign was an endorsement of the fruit’s healthy properties. During the 1920s, the United Fruit Company hired doctors to extol the nutritional virtues of the fruit. In 1939, they offered free textbooks—decidedly pro-banana—to schoolchildren.2

The Academy Library has a number of historical pamphlets produced by the United Fruit Company and its distribution arm, The Fruit Dispatch Company. Here, we offer a selection of images from our collection.

“The Food Value of the Banana,” 1917, page 35.

“The Food Value of the Banana,” 1917, page 35.

In 1917 the United Fruit Company published “The Food Value of the Banana,” a collection of 15 opinion pieces touting the virtues of the banana as a nutritious snack. “Points about Bananas” concluded the volume.

The United Fruit Company’s test kitchens reported in 1924 that bananas with corn flakes and milk made the best breakfast for families.3 The company’s subsequent publications emphasized that bananas were powerfully healthy, especially for the very young.

“The Food Value of the Banana,” 1928.

Cover of “The Food Value of the Banana,” 1928.

The cover of the fourth edition of “The Food Value of the Banana,” published in 1928, features a rosy-cheeked and radiant little boy, banana in hand.

“The Food Value of the Banana,” 1928, back cover.

“The Food Value of the Banana,” 1928, back cover.

The back cover of the same 1928 pamphlet explains the ideal time to consume a banana, and how it can be eaten in each phase of ripeness. Most bananas cycle from green to yellow to yellow with brown spots in seven days.4

Ad in Woman's Medical Journal, vol. 52 no. 6, June 1945.

Ad in Woman’s Medical Journal, vol. 52 no. 6, June 1945.

In the 1920s, UFC hired doctors to publicly recommend that babies should consume mashed bananas. Researcher Sidney Haas found that children diagnosed with celiac disease who had been given a diet of milk and bananas dramatically improved (of course bananas are gluten free, which may have had something to do with it).5 Here, an ad from the Women’s Medical Journal from 1945 (v.52, no.6).

“The New Banana,” 1931.

Cover of “The New Banana,” 1931.

From “The New Banana,” 1931.

From “The New Banana,” 1931. Click to enlarge.

The Fruit Dispatch Company’s 1931 newspaper-format pamphlet, “The New Banana,” tells stories in which the banana’s hero status is high. In one, a Norwegian hikes from Oslo to Christianssand. Nourished by the banana, “his strength increased from day-to-day!” In another, the banana sustains two transatlantic pilots (and fits compactly into the cockpit).

From “The New Banana,” 1931.

“The New Banana,” 1931, back cover.

The Scientific News section of “The New Banana” reminds parents of the considerable nutrients in the banana: vitamins A, B, and C, calcium, magnesium, and iron. It’s also “non-fattening” though not especially so when paired with bacon, as on the back cover.

Cover of “Serve Bananas in ‘Latest Style,’” 1940.

Cover of “Serve Bananas in ‘Latest Style,’” 1940.

The Fruit Dispatch Company published “Serve Bananas in ‘Latest Style’” in 1940 to introduce new banana recipes to American households. Recipes included “ham banana rolls with cheese sauce” and “banana fritters” as well as a “banana sweet potato casserole.” We’re charmed by the lady banana with the Elizabethan collar waving her napkin. She predates the United Fruit Company’s Chiquita Banana by four years.

Cover of

Cover of “Banana Salad Bazaar,”1940

“Banana Salad Bazaar,”1940, pages 2 and 3. Click to enlarge.

“Banana Salad Bazaar,” produced by the United Fruit Company’s Home Economics Department in 1940, is introduced by a sign-waving banana-man announcing “This Way to the Salad Bazaar.” Salad makers are encouraged to use fully ripe bananas (yellow peel flecked with brown). Recipes include banana gelatin salad and banana sardine boats.

From “Nutritive and Therapeutic Values of the Banana,” 1941.

From “Nutritive and Therapeutic Values of the Banana,” 1941.

1941 was a busy year for the UFC’s presses. Here, a chart from the second addendum to “Nutritive and Therapeutic Values of the Banana,” an annotated bibliography of recent research devoted to the fruit. The forward tells us that the banana pictured is a Gros Michel, or “Big Mike” banana, imported to the U.S. since the late 1890s. The “Big Mike” was larger, with a sturdier peel, and anecdotally more flavorful. By 1960 “Big Mikes” had been almost entirely eradicated by Panama disease. On American tables it was replaced by the Cavendish.6

From “Bananas...How to Serve Them,” 1941.

From “Bananas…How to Serve Them,” 1941.

This inset from “Bananas…How to Serve Them” (1941) illustrates the health benefits of bananas at every age. We learn that the Dionne quintuplets (b. 1934), the earliest quints to survive their infancy, ate bananas. Bananas are a “training table favorite” for athletes, and they appeal to the elderly as well because they are easy to chew and digest.

From “Bananas...How to Serve Them,” 1941.

From “Bananas…How to Serve Them,” 1941.

On the left, a sweet banana artist paints bananas at three stages of ripeness and explains how to prepare bananas for meals at each phase. On the right, encouragement for the housewife, with a promise of new banana recipes on the pages that followed. A monocled banana with a cane and top-hat below rips off Mr. Peanut, well-known to Americans since the early 1930s.

From “Chiquita Banana's Cookbook,

From “Chiquita Banana’s Cookbook,” 1960, page 2.

Inspired by Carmen Miranda’s character in Busby Berkeley’s The Gang’s All Here, United Fruit Company introduced Chiquita Banana in 1944 (Miranda herself was frequently called, “chiquita” in her films). Dik Brown, creator of Hagar the Horrible, drew the first Chiquita; advertising execs composed her famous song.7 Here, a 1960 iteration of Chiquita graces “Chiquita Banana’s Cookbook.”

Detail in “Chiquita Banana's Cookbook,

Detail in “Chiquita Banana’s Cookbook,” 1960, page 3.

In “Chiquita Banana’s Cookbook,” Chiquita offers ideas for decorating with bananas. Here, “fruit in a scoop” and a banana bouquet, in a pressed-glass stand.

From “Chiquita Banana's Cookbook,” 1960.

From “Chiquita Banana’s Cookbook,” 1960, page 12.

Under consideration by Betty Draper and the Mad Men set: a triptych of bananas in “Chiquita Banana’s Cookbook,” prepared with three different garnishes: a currant jelly, a curry sauce, and mint jelly.

From “Chiquita Banana's Cookbook,” 1960. Click to enlarge.

“Chiquita Banana’s Cookbook,” 1960, pages 4-5. Click to enlarge.

“Chiquita Banana's Cookbook,” 1960, pages 6-7. Click to enlarge.

“Chiquita Banana’s Cookbook,” 1960, pages 6-7. Click to enlarge.

“Chiquita Banana’s Cookbook” offers an adorable banana bunny and a banana skillet breakfast, as well as new recipes for shakes. “Drink a banana and feel better for it,” says Chiquita, and we believe her because she’s wearing that amazing hat.

References

1. Hooker, Richard J. Food and Drink in America. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1981.

2. Koeppel, Dan. Banana. The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. New York: Hudson Press, 2008.

3. Koeppel, 75.

4. Koeppel, xv.

5. Levinovitz, Alan. “The First Superfood.” Accessed September 1, 2015 at http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/04/the_first_superfood_doctors_believed_bananas_could_cure_celiac_disease.html

6. Koeppel, Dan. Banana. The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. New York: Hudson Street, 2008. xiv.

7. Koeppel, 117; 253.

Why the Beef? Empire and Cuisine

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Today’s guest blogger is Dr. Rachel Laudan. Originally trained as a historian of science, Dr. Laudan has taken her historical research into food history. This blog post is inspired by Dr. Laudan’s most recent work, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (University of California Press, 2013), focusing on the movers of gastronomic change from pre-history to the present.

Dr. Laudan will discuss her work on April 12 at the Food Book Fair at Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel. The Fair will include two panels presented by the New York Academy of Medicine, Food and Empire and Cookbooks and History. For more information and for tickets, visit foodbookfair.com.

“Where’s the beef?” asked actress Clara Peller of a rival burger in a 1984 Wendy’s advertisement. Within a matter of weeks, her words had become an American catchphrase.

 

Curious, though, when you think about it, that Americans were so enamored of beef. Through most of history, beef was low on the hierarchy of meats. Chinese preferred pork or fish; people in the Middle East and the Mediterranean relished lamb and goat; and Indians created cuisines in which meat played a secondary role if not avoided altogether. Most people stayed away from the tough stringy meat from old work animals or worn out dairy cattle.

Northwestern Europe and its former colonies are the exceptions. For Americans, for example, not only is beef delicious, but they and others see it as a symbol of American power, particularly when combined with white bread to make a hamburger. On January 31, 1990, 5,000 people waited in the chilly Moscow dawn for the first McDonald’s in the USSR to open its doors; by nightfall, 30,000 had been served. Many commented that the opening of McDonald’s foreshadowed the fall of the USSR.

Because McDonald’s was so symptomatic of American strength, no one took it lightly, whether they liked it or not. The Economist used the price of a Big Mac to value the world’s currencies; the sociologist George Ritzer coined the term McDonaldization to mean efficiency, predictability, and mechanization. In the 1980s, the Slow Food movement took its name as it opposed the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome. In 1999, the French farmer José Bové dismantled a McDonald’s under construction in France, rallying supporters with the call McMerde (McShit).

Beef recipes from pages 38-39 of Ann Peckham's The Complete English Cook, Leeds, 179?. Click to enlarge.

Beef recipes from pages 38-39 of Ann Peckham’s The Complete English Cook, fourth edition, Leeds, 179?. Click to enlarge.

Beef as the symbol of American power was a natural successor to beef as the symbol of British power. Beef, the flesh of the most powerful domesticated animal, its bright red color suggesting strength and masculinity, had been hallowed by the English since at least the 17th century. In song, in quips such as the “roast beef of Old England,” in clubs centered around eating steaks, and in ox roasts distributed to the poor on political occasions, beef became synonymous with Englishness. When Justus Liebig, the leading chemist of the first half of the 19th century, declared that proteins were the crucial nutrients, essential to the building and maintenance of the body, English faith in beef was confirmed.

In fact, steaks and roasts were beyond the means of most English in the 19th century. Sticky brown essence of beef provided, as hamburger offered later, an affordable alternative. Meat extract, according to Liebig, was as nutritious as beef itself. He offered to provide it neatly bottled from his factory in distant Uruguay, which extracted beef essence from cattle carcasses hitherto valuable only for their fat and hides.

Calendar blotter for December 1928 and January 1929 issued by Fairchild Brothers and Foster and their UK agents, Burroughs, Wellcome and Co. advertising 'Panopepton' beef extract, "the pure nutritious substance of beef and wheat in perfect solution". This would have been one of a series of blotters sent out to members of the medical profession every 2 months. Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London.

Calendar blotter for December 1928 and January 1929 issued by Fairchild Brothers and Foster and their UK agents, Burroughs, Wellcome and Co. advertising ‘Panopepton’ beef extract, “the pure nutritious substance of beef and wheat in perfect solution”. This would have been one of a series of blotters sent out to members of the medical profession every 2 months. Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London.

Beef essence was one of the fastest growing areas of the food-processing industry in the 19th century, with entrepreneurs from the American meat packer Armour to the chef Escoffier investing their reputation and money in extracts.

"I hear they want more Bovril. My place is at the front." 1915 advertisement. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, WWI Posters.

“I hear they want more Bovril. My place is at the front.” 1915 advertisement. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, WWI Posters.

One of the most successful companies was Bovril. Its name combined modern theories of race embodied in the bestselling novel The Coming of the Master Race (1871) by the politician Edward Bulwer Lytton, and classical antecedents of empire. The first provided “Vril,” the name for all-penetrating energy harnessed by a subterranean race of super men, and the second “bovis,” Latin for “of the ox.” According to a series of stunning advertisements, this small jar of brown syrupy stuff strengthened men at the front, built up children bursting with health, and averted influenza, no small matter when the 1918 pandemic killed three to five percent of the world’s population.

Meat extract, like hamburgers later, depended on an infrastructure that stretched from the advertising and retailing industries, through the steamships and trains that shipped carcasses to factories and gleaming bottles of extract around the world, to vast areas of land. In 1932, Bovril ran cattle on 1.3 million acres in Argentina and 9 million acres in Canada, over ten times the acreage of the King Ranch in Texas, which claimed to be the biggest in the United States.

Inevitably, the power of beef came to be seen as underpinning the expanding British Empire. To mark the coronation of Edward VII, the major British weekly The Illustrated London News ran an advertisement on February 2, 1902. Titled “How the British Empire Spells Bovril,” it illustrated “the close association of this Imperial British Nourishment with the whole of King Edward’s Dominions at Home and Beyond the Seas” by fitting the national outlines (reduced or expanded as necessary) into the letters of the word Bovril.

Bovril advertisement in The Illustrated London News, February 2, 1902. Courtesy of Rachel Laudan.

Bovril advertisement in The Illustrated London News, February 2, 1902. Courtesy of Rachel Laudan.

Today, although English soccer fans still take hot Bovril broth to games, the idea that it is nourishment for Empire builders is long gone. And even McDonald’s is not the power it was a decade ago. Consumers go instead to Chipotle, Panera, and Starbucks, which offer the promise of healthier, tastier, less mass-market foods. Is this the end of empire? Or a change of direction?

Brighten the Visit With Pepsi

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By Johanna Goldberg, Information Services Librarian, with Jarlin Espinal, Technical Services Assistant

This is part of an intermittent series of blogs featuring advertisements from medical journals. You can find the entire series here.

From JAMA, volume 182, number 8, November 24, 1962.

From JAMA, volume 182, number 8, November 24, 1962.

Advertisements in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), have reflected food and diet trends from the start.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the journal normally had two pages of ads an issue, often related to food. By the late 1940s, advertising exploded. The May 3, 1947 issue of JAMA has 130 pages of ads, with food-related items amidst the publishers, medical devices, cigarettes, cosmetics, sanitariums, hospitals, and pharmaceuticals.

The advertising boom only increased—“In 1958 the industry estimated that it had turned out 3,790,809,000 pages of paid advertising in medical journals.”1 By this time, ads for pharmaceuticals far surpassed those for food- and diet-related items, a fitting trend as “between 1939 and 1959, drug sales rose from $300 million to $2.3 billion”1

The food- and diet-related advertisements presented here fall into several categories. There are promotions from industry groups—including my favorite, in which the National Confectioners’ Association attempts to convince doctors that candy has health benefits. There are beverages, ranging from baby formula to ovaltine to soft drinks. There are items that remain familiar today and items that seem totally foreign—if someone out there has tried Embo, please let us know. And of course, there’s the intersection of pharmaceuticals and diet, as claims of appetite suppression move from ads for apples and citrus to drugs like Desoxyn.

From JAMA, volume 106, number 20, May 16, 1936.

From JAMA, volume 106, number 20, May 16, 1936. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 134, number 1, May 3, 1947.

From JAMA, volume 134, number 1, May 3, 1947. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 134, number 2, May 10, 1947. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 134, number 2, May 10, 1947. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 154, number 3, January 16, 1954. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 154, number 3, January 16, 1954. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 154, number 5, January 30, 1954. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 154, number 5, January 30, 1954. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 154, number 6, February 6, 1954. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 154, number 6, February 6, 1954. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 154, number 9, February 27, 1954. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 154, number 9, February 27, 1954. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 182, number 7, November 17, 1962. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 182, number 7, November 17, 1962. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 182, number 7, November 17, 1962. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 182, number 7, November 17, 1962. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 234, number 2, October 13, 1975. Click to enlarge.

From JAMA, volume 234, number 2, October 13, 1975. Click to enlarge.

Reference

1. Donohue J. A history of drug advertising: the evolving roles of consumers and consumer protection. Milbank Q. 2006;84(4):659–699. Available at: http://facultynh.syr.edu/bjsheeha/ADV 604/History of Drug.pdf. Accessed May 30, 2014.

School Breakfast Week: “Take Time for School Breakfast”

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By Danielle Aloia, Special Projects Librarian

Starting the day with a hearty, healthy breakfast allows your body to maintain the physical and mental agility needed to function without fatigue during the course of the day. Today, the Food Research and Action Center recognizes that “school breakfast participation is linked with increased food security, improved health outcomes, and numerous educational benefits, particularly for low-income children.”1

In 1790, Germany began the first school feeding program on record. In the early 1900s, the U.K. and several other European countries passed bills to enact school lunch programs. The following table shows the nutrition requirements for school children in Switzerland, Germany, and England circa 1900:2

Recommended nutritional requirements.2 Click to enlarge.

Recommended nutritional requirements.2 Click to enlarge.

The U.S. was late to follow, not passing legislation for a school lunch program until the 1940s. However, U.S. researchers had previously looked at the nutrition status of school aged children. In 1906, a Dr. Lechstecker in New York City examined 10,707 children and found that 439 had no breakfast and 998 had just coffee or coffee and bread. In 1908, of 10,090 children studied in Chicago, 825 suffered from malnutrition.2

In the 1940s, West Virginia surveyed students from various cities about their eating habits. They found that poor breakfasts were the biggest problem. By 1947 the state established the Good Breakfast for Every Man, Woman, and Child program with the slogan “Start the Day the Good Breakfast Way.”3

Some of the findings reported by West Virginia School Children’s Diet Study.3 Click to enlarge.

Some of the findings reported by West Virginia State Nutrition Committee.3 Click to enlarge.

In 1966, the Child Nutrition Act enacted The School Breakfast Program (SBP) as a pilot project. “During the first year of operation, the SBP served about 80,000 children at a federal cost of $573,000.”4 In fiscal year 2007, “the participating schools served . . . 1.7 billion breakfasts at a federal cost of $2.2 billion.”5 Current research shows that “10.8 million low-income children participated in the School Breakfast Program on an average day in school year 2012-2013, an increase of more than 310,000 children from the previous year.”6 And “for Fiscal Year 2012, the School Breakfast Program cost $3.3 billion, up from $1.9 billion in Fiscal Year 2005.”1

Today’s programs must meet the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010, which provide evidence-based nutrition standards. The government will implement new guidelines in 2015 under the Federal Rule Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Program. “This rule requires most schools to increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat- free and low-fat fluid milk in school meals; reduce the levels of sodium, saturated fat and trans-fat in meals; and meet the nutrition needs of school children within their calorie requirements.”7

ChooseMyPlateChoose MyPlate is an easy way for people to adhere to the dietary guidelines set out by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services and the Dept. of Agriculture.

Breakfast is not just for school children. Remember to take time for breakfast no matter your age.

References

1. Hewins J, Burke, Mike. School Breakfast Scorecard: 2012-2013 School Year. Washington, DC: Food Research and Action Center (FRAC); 2014. http://frac.org/pdf/School_Breakfast_Scorecard_SY_2012_2013.pdf. Accessed January 31, 2014.

2. Bryant, Louise Stevens. School Feeding; Its History and Practice at Home and Abroad. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company; 1913. Access at: https://ia700505.us.archive.org/3/items/schoolfeedingits01brya/schoolfeedingits01brya.pdf

3. State of West Virginia. Start the Day the Good Breakfast Way: A Statewide Nutrition Program Sponsored by The West Virginia State Nutrition Committee September 1947-August 1948. State of West Virginia; 1948.

4. USDA Food and Nutrition Service website. http://www.fns.usda.gov/sbp/school-breakfast-program. Accessed February 10, 2014.

5. National Research Council. School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press; 2010. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12751&page=1. Accessed on: January 31, 2014.

6. The School Breakfast Program:  Fact Sheet. Washington, DC:  USDA Food and Nutrition Service; http://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/SBPfactsheet.pdf. Accessed February 11, 2014.

7. Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. Fed Regist. 2012;77(17):4088-4167. To be codified at 7 CFR §210 and 220. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-01-26/pdf/2012-1010.pdf. Accessed on: January 31, 2014.