'What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?' exhibit serves up America's food history

ShareThis

WASHINGTON - A dozen volunteers swallowed foods laced with sulfuric acid and formaldehyde, reporting their reactions to a government chemist obsessed with food purity and convinced that such preservatives endangered human health.

The sometimes-queasy Poison Squad, which Harvey W. Wiley organized in 1902 at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry, confirmed his suspicions and helped goad passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act.

That's among the more colorful examples of government influence on how and what we eat, showcased in the new National Archives exhibit, "What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?" More than 100 documents, photos, posters and other artifacts explore his hand in the nation's food production, manufacturing, regulation, distribution, research, consumer education and protection.

They touch on issues that have consumed generations of Americans: food safety and chemical preservatives, agricultural subsidies and market controls, shifting dietary guidelines and questionable nutrition claims.

Take a 1940s ad proposed by the Doughnut Corp. of America. The firm tried pushing "Vitamin Donuts -- for pep and vigor." The government's Nutrition Division said no, allowing only the description of "enriched flour donuts."

"What's Cooking" is the archives' first food exhibit since the institution's 1934 start. Christina Ruby Smith, head of exhibits, said it was "an idea I kept in the back of my mind for years and years," ever since discovering a Revolutionary War handbill promising Continental Army recruits generous rations including "a pound of beef a day" and a quart of "Spruce Beer or Cyder."

Now, "there's so much interest in food, the time seemed right" for a food-focused show, curator Alice Kamps said.

She has organized the artifacts around four overlapping themes: farm, on agriculture; factory, on food processing and regulation; kitchen, on nutrition research and consumer education; and table, on school, military and White House influence on dining habits.

Farm: Agricultural posters and photos abound. "The government's first official effort to improve American agriculture was through seed distribution," Kamps writes in the exhibit's accompanying catalog. In 1839, to encourage plant diversity, the Patent Office began distributing free seeds to farmers. The government doled out 1.1 billion free packets in 1897, the peak year. But in 1924, the fledgling commercial seed industry successfully lobbied to squelch the giveaways.

Uncle Sam also sent out plant explorers such as Frank Meyer, who in the early 1900s trekked throughout Asia in search of new species to broaden crop diversity. Among the many plants he introduced to America was the lemon variety that bears his name. He's photographed in the field. "He braved animals and outlaws," Kamps said. Meyer drowned in the Yangtze River in 1918, plant samples in tow.

While the government began paying farmers to let fields lie fallow in the 1930s, with World War II it did an about-face and encouraged production. "Grow more sugar beets in 1945: Meet wartime need for sugar," a colorful poster urges. Not just a sweetener, it was used to make liquor and industrial alcohol for explosives.

Factory: The industrial age drew people to cities and away from farms, with food shipment and mass production bringing the convenience of, say, canned or frozen foods. A drawing illustrates Clarence Birdseye's design for a machine to freeze produce.

But the shift increased consumers' vulnerability to mishandled, contaminated or deliberately adulterated foods, Kamps observed. A 1906 letter from muckraker Upton Sinclair to President Theodore Roosevelt -- just after publication of "The Jungle," his expose of immigrant labor exploitation and horrendous meatpacking practices -- warns that smooth slaughterhouse personnel could easily mislead government inspectors.

Roosevelt had just signed two critical consumer-protection laws on June 30, 1906: the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drugs Act.

But unscrupulous practices continued. A photo collection features products such as Bred-Spread, a mixture of pectin, coal tar and grass seed marketed during the Depression.

Some food scares retain an eerie freshness. A 1908 photo shows inspectors seizing crates of contaminated eggs -- a precursor to contemporary recalls of tainted bean sprouts, ground beef and peanuts.

Kitchen: New dietary guidelines symbolized by MyPlate -- an icon that the USDA introduced in early June -- take aim at an obesity epidemic. But the government had a different mission decades earlier.

"In the 1930s, some nutritionists believed ... that one-third of Americans were malnourished," one display reads.

So maybe it's not surprising that butter shows up as its own food group in a 1945 poster showing nutrition guidelines as a wheel of seven food groups, with a smiling family of four at its hub. It counsels: "U.S. Needs Us Strong -- eat the basic 7 every day."

Pamphlets, radio programming and 4-H all provided outreach for the government's consumer-education efforts.

While the government urged home canning to conserve, it had to make sure that the ammo didn't backfire. Cooperative extension offices shared tips to guard against botulism and to prevent first-time canners from unwittingly turning jars into explosive devices. A cartoon shows a Victorian belle spattered with tomato.

Table: Uncle Sam's hand on wartime tables gets plenty of coverage here.

In a colorful 1917 poster, the iconic character -- hoe in hand -- prods city and farm folks to "garden to cut food costs." Businesses picked up the tone. A World War I storefront diorama introduced humble potatoes as "The Newest Fighting Corps: The Potatriots," urging consumers to eat up and "spud the Kaiser."

A 1942 poster advises Army cooks to "use leftovers -- mark of a good cook." ("World War II-era soldiers gained an average of 10-20 pounds during their tours of duty," the catalog says.)

The government plays a significant role in shaping our notions about food, sometimes literally. "Beginning in the 1940s, dietitians standardized military menus" and soldiers "became accustomed to 'square meals' served on divided trays," Kamps writes in the catalog.

But Uncle Sam has made an even bigger mark through school food -- a program developed as an outlet for farmers' excess yields after public outcry over commodity dumping, Kamps says. "Every Child Needs a Good School Lunch," proclaims a 1944 poster of a boy and girl playing baseball, with a boy tackling a full plate in an inset photo. The National School Lunch Program formally began two years later with 7.1 million children; by fiscal year 2009, it had served more than 31.3 million kids.

Debates still rage -- over milk and other commodities, and sugary or salty processed foods. But most kids are united in their complaints about school foods. They'd probably object to soy vegetable chowder, liver loaf and creamed vegetables, represented by recipes from the Bureau of Human Nutrition in 1946.

"I looked for extremes," Kamps acknowledged.

White House influence: A photo of first lady Michelle Obama with youngsters in the White House vegetable garden highlights the current campaign to promote healthful eating and fight childhood obesity.

Jackie Kennedy set off a craze for rarefied French cuisine, overseeing menus such as one featured at a 1961 state dinner: fillet of sole, foie gras in jelly and a bombe glace dessert. But the next White House occupants favored down-home entertaining, with President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texas native, practicing "barbecue diplomacy." President Ronald Reagan's penchant for jellybeans -- captured in a photo -- gave that candy a new cachet. (Sweet tooth aside, Reagan presided over big cuts in food-stamp allocations as part of his effort to rein in government spending.)

"As a whole, U.S. food policy is about ... making hard choices," says Parke Wilde, an associate professor at Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. "Nobody would want the government to leave pesticides on produce," nor would they want to pay exorbitant prices or have narrow food choices, he adds. "What's the reasonable approach? The decisions are all nuanced."

The exhibit underscores that.

"What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?" runs through Jan. 3 at the National Archives Building, on Constitution Avenue NW between Seventh and Ninth streets. Hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Labor Day, with a 5 p.m. closing thereafter. Admission is free.

For a preview, see http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/whats-cooking/preview/index.html.

As an extension of the exhibit, chief culinary adviser Jose Andres' ThinkFoodGroup will open America Eats Tavern, a temporary restaurant near the archives at 405 Eighth St. NW. Its menu will feature American ingredients and reinterpretations of classic dishes such as oysters Rockefeller. It's scheduled to open July 4 for six months.

NEW ENGLAND FISH CHOWDER

Chowder was a favorite of President John F. Kennedy, who grew up in Massachusetts. Substitute other fin fish, if you like, in this recipe adapted from the National Archives.

2 pounds haddock fillets

2 ounces salt pork, diced

2 onions, sliced

4 large potatoes, diced

1 cup chopped celery

1 bay leaf, crumbled

1 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 quart milk

2 tablespoons butter

In large saucepan or stockpot, bring 2 cups water to a boil. Add haddock; reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Drain, reserving broth. Add enough boiling water to the broth to make 3 cups of liquid. Set aside.

Remove bones from fish; discard bones and set fish aside.

Saute diced pork in large skillet until crisp; remove pork crisps and set aside.

Add onions to pork fat and saute until golden brown.

Return fish to stockpot; add sauteed onions, potatoes, celery, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Pour in fish broth and simmer for 30 minutes over low to medium heat.

Add milk and butter and simmer 5 minutes more.

Serve chowder sprinkled with pork crisps. Makes 6 servings.

(Email Carol Guensburg at guensburgc(at)shns.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)