A Matter of Convenience: The Food Industry in Postwar America

方便问题：战后美国的食品工业

• 批准号: 0450229
• 负责人: Deborah Fitzgerald
• 金额: $ 7.46万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-02-15 至 2007-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0450229&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Matter; Convenience; Food; Industry; Postwar

PROJECT SUMMARY The extraordinary growth and development of the American processed food industry in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the most stunning and important transformations in this century. This industry changed fundamentally what, how, and where Americans eat, shifting people's habits from buying raw, unprocessed foods to be prepared at home, towards buying precooked, pre-packaged foods. Most of what grocery stores carry, including fresh produce, is highly processed "convenience" food, a sharp change in just fifty years. As several recent books have emphasized, the diets of Americans have never been so concentrated with sugars, "bad" fats, and fast food. Despite all this, there is little scholarship on the origins of the food industry in America, and the ways in which modern science and technology have fundamentally reshaped its mission. This project will explore those issues by examining the synergistic role of the federal government, food processors, and university departments of food science and technology in defining and forming the post-war food industry. The project will employ the notion of "convenience," an idea that the food industry attached to the marketing of processed foods in the post-war era, as a vehicle for exploring those organizations, strategies and goals. Opening the black box of convenience reveals a great deal about how the technologies of mass-production,mass-marketing, and mass consumption have standardized not only the tools of production, but also the daily routines of people worldwide. The project calls for a two-year course of research to examine materials in government, university, and business archives, and to read the vast amount of popular and trade literature on the subject. INTELLECTUAL MERIT This project will draw together scholarship in military history, gender studies, consumer studies, business history, and the history of technology and science to answer questions about the nature of the modern food production system: what problems were processed foods designed to solve,and how did this change over time? what has been the role of the federal government and commercial firms in shaping the American diet? in what ways is the food industry similar to, and in what ways different from, other industries? how has a desire for "convenience," however defined, led the industry and the public to embrace industrial foods? BROADER IMPACTS A historical study such as this will put in perspective both the alarmist outcries and the glib reassurances of the industry that are issued when trouble appears in the food sector. In addition, the project will open up a new set of scholarly as well as popular concerns around the issue of "convenience" and progress, and may encourage other scholars to look to the mundane for answers to the larger, entrenched questions regarding modernity and its ramifications.

项目概述美国加工食品工业在20世纪50年代和60年代的非凡增长和发展是本世纪最令人震惊和最重要的变革之一。这个行业从根本上改变了美国人吃什么、怎么吃以及在哪里吃，改变了人们的习惯，从购买生的、未经加工的食物在家里准备，转向购买预先煮熟、预先包装的食物。杂货店出售的大部分食品，包括新鲜农产品，都是经过高度加工的“方便”食品，这在短短50年里发生了急剧的变化。正如最近的几本书所强调的那样，美国人的饮食从来没有像现在这样集中在糖、“坏”脂肪和快餐上。尽管如此，几乎没有学者研究美国食品工业的起源，以及现代科学技术如何从根本上重塑了它的使命。这个项目将通过研究联邦政府、食品加工商和大学食品科学与技术部门在定义和形成战后食品工业方面的协同作用来探讨这些问题。该项目将使用“便利”的概念，作为探索这些组织、战略和目标的工具，这是食品行业在战后时代对加工食品营销的一种依附。打开便利的黑匣子，揭示了大规模生产、大规模营销和大规模消费的技术如何不仅标准化了生产工具，而且标准化了世界各地人们的日常生活。该项目需要两年的研究课程来研究政府、大学和商业档案中的材料，并阅读大量关于这一主题的流行和贸易文献。智力价值这个项目将汇集军事史、性别研究、消费者研究、商业史和技术科学史的学术知识，回答有关现代食品生产体系的性质的问题：加工食品旨在解决哪些问题，以及这种变化是如何随着时间的推移而发生的？联邦政府和商业公司在塑造美国人饮食方面扮演了什么角色？食品行业与其他行业有哪些相似之处，又有哪些不同之处？对“便利”的渴望，无论如何定义，是如何引导行业和公众接受工业食品的？更广泛的影响像这样的历史研究将正确看待当食品行业出现麻烦时，该行业发出的危言耸听和圆滑的保证。此外，该项目将开启一套新的学术和大众关注的“便利”和进步的问题，并可能鼓励其他学者从世俗中寻找关于现代性及其分支的更大、根深蒂固的问题的答案。