A Brief History of Food

Since we require food to survive, the quest for a steady supply that is safe and nourishing has always been a part of daily life. In the United States, it’s easy for many of us to take food for granted. For the most part, we’re surrounded by supermarkets with overflowing shelves, coolers, and produce bins. The government actually pays some farmers subsidies to keep their production down to stabilize national and global commodities markets. We eat as much for pleasure as we do to fuel our bodies.

Not that long ago, circumstances were very different. Let’s take a stroll down the historical garden path to explore a bit about what's brought us to our present state of plenty.

Eating on the Go

Up until about 10,000 years ago, all human beings were hunter-gatherers. Our ancient ancestors traveled to where the food was, and dug, picked, fished, and scavenged to fulfill their bodies’ needs for proteins, fats, carbohydrates, water, minerals, and vitamins. Back then if people came across unfamiliar food, the only way to find out if it was edible was through trial and error: tasting and seeing how their bodies reacted, which might result in sickness or even death! Because diets were based on available resources and very much dependent on the seasons and environmental conditions, people had to keep risking these experiments to find enough to eat. What a balance to strike: hunger or poisoning!

As people developed food storage vessels (dried gourds, clay bowls, baskets, etc.) and other tools and methods for cooking and food preservation, they were able carry healthful food along with them, reducing the risks of scarcity and of having to taste potentially dangerous foods.

Around 10,000 years ago people started to develop agricultural practices, which led to permanent settlement. Some scientists think that the inspiration for growing food was serendipitous. As people discarded remnants of fruits and vegetables outside their temporary shelters, the piles decomposed, the seeds sprouted, and the idea of collecting and planting seeds sprouted, too.

The Road Paved by Agriculture

The practice of agriculture sparked a dynamic revolution in human culture that has led the way to today’s high-tech existence. The social and technological changes that came with settling down were enormous, and led to larger populations; tangible wealth and the emergence of social classes; skill specialization; and the development of written language, formal education, the sciences, the arts, and politics. New technology emerged as people developed better tools to increase their efficiency.

Agricultural advancements have continually increased per-unit production and efficiency, so fewer farmers are needed to feed the population, freeing people to pursue other ventures. Unfortunately, this means that most of us have become disconnected from the source of our food, and fewer and fewer people, young and old, recognize where food comes from, how it grows, or even that our survival depends entirely on plants and a healthy environment. That’s just one great reason to grow school and youth gardens!

Reconnecting with Food

If you already garden with kids, you’ve seen the “ah-ha” moments they experience when they pull up their first carrot, pick a strawberry, or open a pea pod. Preparing fresh produce forges yet another link in the chain that reconnects kids to the environment as their source of sustenance. Our activity, Eat a Rainbow: The Autumn Harvest, guides you in two simple recipes made from the season’s bounty.

The evolution of cooking and food preservation parallels the history recounted above: people used trial and error and stuck with what worked best, and the food supply became more reliable and safer as technology advanced. It’s only over the last few centuries that we’ve developed the science to a level where we understand why food products behave the way they do when preserved and prepared, and this has generally been a benefit to public health. For instance, according to the Centers for Disease Control, in 1900, the number 3 cause of death in the United States was related to food-borne illness. By 1932, this number had decreased to the point where food-related deaths dropped off the top 10 list. (To help keep it that way, we cover basic classroom food safety in our Eat a Rainbow activity!)

Before There Was a Food Network…

Originally, cooking and preservation methods were passed down through oral instruction, demonstration, and practice. As early as 1500 BCE, Babylonians and Egyptians recorded information about food and food preparation on clay tablets, but cookbooks as we know them today were rare and reserved for the literate upper class until the 1700s.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, cookbooks became more common. In 1796, Amelia Simmons was the first American to publish one, titled American Cookery. Visit the Feeding America Project with your class to view a fascinating collection of 75 historic American cookbooks.

Read a recipe from one of these books to your students and ask them how it varies from a modern one. Do students have the tools and ingredients at home to make it? One of the biggest differences is how we measure ingredients. Depending on the availability of tools, ingredients in the past may have been measured by weight (ounces, pounds), through approximate sizes (a pinch, a handful), or standard sizes (pints, cups, teaspoons). Standard measuring tools were especially scarce for early settlers and frontier travelers.

Have students compare a colonial or frontier kitchen to their own at home. What tools did the first Americans have to work with, and what appliances and implements have taken their place? How about ingredients? We have a dizzying array of processed and enriched foods that weren’t available to our ancestors -- they ate fresh food or processed it themselves! For more information on America’s culinary history, see Not by Bread Alone.

Build on your discussions of food preparation in the past by encouraging students to think about their eating habits today. Use the lesson, What do Americans Eat?, as a guide.

Resource Links

Recipes
Munch Crunch Bunch
Recipes from the CDC
Spatulatta: Cooking 4 Kids Online (kid-friendly cooking demos)

Additional Links
The Science of Cooking (recipes, activities and video clips to increase students' understanding of the chemistry behind cooking)
My Pyramid
Harvest of the Month
Harvest of History