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The Eating Habit
Early spam spokescouple
Steinbeck’s description of the children watching hungrily as the tractor driver ate his spam sandwich (page 36) prompted me to research the eating habit of the Great Depression. When I think of spam, and its uncouth color/shape, I can’t imagine myself longingly watching someone eat it. In many cultures, times of economic strife force people to be creative in adapting to new eating habits. As I began my research, I came across The Food Timeline Organization which provided a myriad of information and further research on the history of food.
The Great Depression left many people too poor to afford everyday foods such as meat, vegetables, and fruit. Those who could afford certain food luxuries made their rations last longer than they were accustomed to. Many people turned to bread and soup, hence the bread lines and soup kitchens. The Food Timeline Organization describes this trend by saying, “throughout time, in almost every culture and cuisine, soups and have been the primary foods consumed by people with not much money. It is economical […], simple to cook […], easy to serve […] and requires minimal clean-up. Bread also has a long history of filling empty bellies during the worst of times.” Soup is also logical in times of economic turmoil because the poor can make use of all scraps and leftovers. Upon further research I came across a NYTimes article in which Thomas Moon, a man who endured the Great Depression, remembers his families eating habits during the 1930’s. He recalls, “there was nothing thrown away. We’d make soup out of the feet that was delicious. The gizzard, oh, man, that was choice meat, everybody loved the gizzard.”
Although the poor were frequenting bread lines, penny restaurants, and soup kitchens, others in the country were able to occasionally treat themselves to a variety of new mass production food brands introduced during the Depression. Some of the more notable and popular food brands introduced in the 1930’s were Wonder Bread (sliced), Snickers, Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup, Ritz Crackers, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, and Hormel Spam. With the introduction of the New Deal, food programs were offered to those in the worker relief program, the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC camps created menus that could feed the men that worked in the camps. In one menu I looked at, the camp fed 115 men for a little over one dollar a person. The carefully thought-out menus provided each man 4 meals throughout the day.
So, I’ve learned that if your diet consists of stale bread and watery soup, spam can be considered a rare treat.
My grandmother once made me
My grandmother once made me eat SPAM. It was gross. That same grandmother also once tried to force a gizzard on me, but my mother stepped in, because she loves me.
It's interesting to me that mass produced foods such as Wonder Bread and Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup and Ritz Crackers have held on for so long. I wonder how much their lists of ingredients have mutated since their inceptions, particularly since introduction of high fructose corn syrup to America's fat cells and the growth in popularity of artificial food additives.
The idea for this post is
The idea for this post is actually very clever. I wish I had thought of it. It is interesting to think of the dichotomy of food in relation to wealth during this era. Someone had to be eating the Snickers bars and the Ritz crackers and macaroni and cheese. But when you think of the 1930's and the Great Depression, the first image you actually think of is the soup kitchens and bread lines. I don't necessarily associate the 1930's with Wonder Bread, while I would associate the 1930's with disparity and those soup kitchens. But someone had to be eating the new food items - those who weren't hit as badly by the depression. I also thought incorporating the spam into your post was quite funny.
I think it's incredibly
I think it's incredibly interesting to note the difference between the way the poor ate during the time of the great depression and the way those living below the poverty margin in America eat today. Basic foods that were consider a luxury in the 1930's, such as meat, fruits and fresh vegetables, are in this day in age, affordable in some form or another to struggling Americans. The difference is in the quality...Now that we put preservatives and all kinds of other crap in our food, the real luxury becomes not eating meat, but eating nutritious, non-genetically modified meat! Imagine what the Joad's would've done for a McDonald's cheeseburger!