Cheated Not Poisoned

This book provides the first comprehensive evaluation of Britain’s food laws from the 1860s to 1930s and the first analysis of the Victorian anti-adulteration legislation in 25 years. The book brings important historical perspectives to the pressing contemporary debate about food safety and the most appropriate forms of regulation by indicating that government policy historically has been shaped by competing business and consumer-protectionist pressures.

This highly topical book offers a comprehensive study of the interaction of food, politics and science over the last hundred years. A range of important case studies, from pasteurisation in Britain to the E coli outbreak offers new material for those interested in science policy and the role of expertise in modern political culture.

Study of the 1963/4 typhoid outbreak, highlighting issues and debates which are strikingly relevant today. The problem of food poisoning and food-borne infections is currently one of vigorous debate, highlighted since the 1980s by numerous outbreaks and scares involving salmonella in lettuce and eggs, listeria in cheese, the links between vCJD and BSE, E.Coli 0157 in cooked meats, and foot and mouth disease. Yet, as this book shows, the various issues involved were important as early as 1963/4, when there were serious typhoid outbreaks in Harlow, South Shields, Bedford, and Aberdeen, traced to contaminated corned beef imported from Argentina. Based upon extensive research, using archives which have only recently become available, private papers, and interviews as well as secondary literature, the book analyses the course of the outbreak and looks at the responses of politicians, officials, health professionals, business interests, the media and the public. It also considers the difficult issue of the weighing offood safety against international trade and other business and economic interests; conflicts between government departments; rivalry between professionals such as doctors and veterinarians; the effects upon and influence of victims and local communities; and the conduct of and responses to an official enquiry. Overall, it draws out generic lessons for how such epidemics should be handled, adding an historical perspective to contemporary debates.

A history of the unsustainable modern diet—heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar—that requires more land and resources than the planet is able to support. We are facing a world food crisis of unparalleled proportions. Our reliance on unsustainable dietary choices and agricultural systems is causing problems both for human health and the health of our planet. Solutions from lab-grown food to vegan diets to strictly local food consumption are often discussed, but a central question remains: how did we get to this point? In Diet for a Large Planet, Chris Otter goes back to the late eighteenth century in Britain, where the diet heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar was developing. As Britain underwent steady growth, urbanization, industrialization, and economic expansion, the nation altered its food choices, shifting away from locally produced plant-based nutrition. This new diet, rich in animal proteins and refined carbohydrates, made people taller and stronger, but it led to new types of health problems. Its production also relied on far greater acreage than Britain itself, forcing the nation to become more dependent on global resources. Otter shows how this issue expands beyond Britain, looking at the global effects of large agro-food systems that require more resources than our planet can sustain. This comprehensive history helps us understand how the British played a significant role in making red meat, white bread, and sugar the diet of choice—linked to wealth, luxury, and power—and shows how dietary choices connect to the pressing issues of climate change and food supply.

This book looks at how the workplace was transformed through a greater awareness of the roles that germs played in English working lives from c.1880 to 1945. Cutting across a diverse array of occupational settings – such as the domestic kitchen, the milking shed, the factory, and the Post Office – it offers new perspectives on the history of the germ sciences. It brings to light the ways in which germ scientists sought to transform English working lives through new types of technical and educational interventions that sought to both eradicate and instrumentalise germs. It then asks how we can measure and judge the success of such interventions by tracing how workers responded to the potential applications of the germ sciences through their participation in friendly societies, trade unions, colleges, and volunteer organisations. Throughout the book, close attention is paid to reconstructing vernacular traditions of working with invisible life in order to better understand both the successes and failures of the germ sciences to transform the working practices and material conditions of different workplaces. The result is a more diverse history of the peoples, politics, and practices that went into shaping the germ sciences in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England.

A topical and richly entertaining history of food preservation and food waste in Britain from the sixteenth-century kitchen to the present day. In Leftovers, Eleanor Barnett explores the many ingenious ways in which our ancestors sought to extend the life of food through preservation, the culinary reuse of leftovers and the recycling of food scraps. Embracing a broad historical lens, the book spans Tudor household management; the world-changing inventions in food preservation of the Industrial Revolution from the tin can to artificial refrigeration; the growth of public health initiatives and organised food waste collection in the Victorian era; state promotion of thrifty eating during the two World Wars; and the politics of food and packaging waste in the modern era of sustainability. Opening a window on the everyday experiences of ordinary people in the past, Leftovers reveals how factors such as religious belief, class identities and gender have historically shaped attitudes towards food waste. At a time when a third of the food we produce globally is wasted, Leftovers links its central historical focus to humanitarian and environmental issues of urgent contemporary interest - including climate change, globalisation, scientific advancement, poverty and inequality.

This book is the first comprehensive history of consumerism as an organised social and political movement. Matthew Hilton offers a groundbreaking account of consumer movements, ideologies and organisations in twentieth-century Britain. He argues that in organisations such as the Co-operative movement and the Consumers' Association individual concern with what and how we spend our wages led to forms of political engagement too often overlooked in existing accounts of twentieth-century history. He explores how the consumer and consumerism came to be regarded by many as a third force in society with the potential to free politics from the perceived stranglehold of the self-interested actions of employers and trade unions. Finally he recovers the visions of countless consumer activists who saw in consumption a genuine force for liberation for women, the working class and new social movements as well as a set of ideas often deliberately excluded from more established political organisations.

Ai Hisano exposes how corporations, the American government, and consumers shaped the colors of what we eat and even the colors of what we consider “natural,” “fresh,” and “wholesome.” The yellow of margarine, the red of meat, the bright orange of “natural” oranges—we live in the modern world of the senses created by business. Ai Hisano reveals how the food industry capitalized on color, and how the creation of a new visual vocabulary has shaped what we think of the food we eat. Constructing standards for the colors of food and the meanings we associate with them—wholesome, fresh, uniform—has been a business practice since the late nineteenth century, though one invisible to consumers. Under the growing influences of corporate profit and consumer expectations, firms have sought to control our sensory experiences ever since. Visualizing Taste explores how our perceptions of what food should look like have changed over the course of more than a century. By examining the development of color-controlling technology, government regulation, and consumer expectations, Hisano demonstrates that scientists, farmers, food processors, dye manufacturers, government officials, and intermediate suppliers have created a version of “natural” that is, in fact, highly engineered. Retailers and marketers have used scientific data about color to stimulate and influence consumers’—and especially female consumers’—sensory desires, triggering our appetites and cravings. Grasping this pivotal transformation in how we see, and how we consume, is critical to understanding the business of food.