Introduction: Nutrition Reforms
In 1859, Ellen , a bright and opinionated seventeen year old, stoically stood behind the counter of her father’s general store. Her perch behind the register provided a vantage point to observe and assess her customers’ knowledge of the food items they purchased. More often than not, she saw that her clientele were blissfully ignorant of the most elementary nutrition related information (14, 20). On one occasion, there were two women in the store, one who wished to purchase “saleratus, because she never could cook with soda,” and a second who wished to buy “soda because saleratus did not make good biscuits” (20). Ellen, who knew that saleratus and soda were synonyms, held her tongue. As she listened to the customers’ mindless banter, she developed her belief that the majority of adults, regardless of class, “had…little knowledge of what they put into their bodies” (10). And, while she filled their orders, her fear that this blatant ignorance would undoubtedly have a harmful impact on every aspect of these individuals’ lives increased (14).
A poor understanding of nutrition demonstrated to Ellen that people were not only ignorant of what constituted a healthy diet, but they were more than likely incapable of purchasing the most nutritious and economical food, sanitizing their groceries, and or using their purchases to create a proper meal. Consuming non-nutritious and ill-cooked meals made people sick. Unhealthy men, women, and children were less efficient students, workers, and housewives. Poorly fed and unhealthy students could not focus on their studies. Incompetent workers cost their employers money. Inept housewives kept a dirty house, which meant that on top of serving their family inadequate meals, housewives forced their husbands and children to dwell in a harmful environment. Therefore, ignorant housewives were not just negatively affecting their own lives, but the lives of family members who were digressing into feeble-minded societal undesirables as a result of living in unsanitary environments. In order to reverse the damage that polluted and filthy homes were having on families, people needed to strive to fix their environments. Before people could improve their environments, they needed to improve their health. Improved health would allow them to become more efficient housekeepers, workers, and students. However, if these people wished to recover their health, they first had to recognize and overcome that which had caused the deterioration of their bodies and environments: their ignorance of nutrition (9). This dizzying and complex train of thought ran through Richards’s mind. The only remedy she ever found for her anxiety was activism.
As an adult, she transferred the energy she once devoted to worrying about nutritionally ignorant people to developing reforms to break this wretched cycle and save these uneducated individuals from their nutritional illiteracy. From 1892 to 1910 Richards established three social reforms, which were also scientific and or professional fields: oekology was established in 1892, home economics in 1899, and euthenics was first launched in 1904 and was later re-launched in 1910. Within each of these fields were smaller nutrition reforms, such as the adulteration detection campaign, the New England Kitchen, and the Boston School Lunch Program.
Nurturing a Passion for Nutrition