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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #133: Home cooking as a survival skill

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This week's "food for thought" excerpt is from Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America (2004), by Laura Shapiro.

"There's no question . . . that the food industry has exerted profound and far-reaching influence on every aspect of American eating habits, from our palates to our family lives. By now, the steady accumulation of packaged grease, salt, and artificial flavors in the American diet constitutes a genuine threat to health and culture. Back at the turn of the twentieth century, we began the long process of turning over to the food industry many of the decisions about what to eat, in the name of habit or convenience or taste. Today our staggering rates of obesity and diabetes are testimony to the faith we put in corporations to feed us well. But the food industry is a business, not a parent; it doesn't care what we eat as long we're willing to pay for it. Although some people think of cooking as a choice now, no more necessary to learn than sewing or shoemaking, that perspective holds up poorly when we gaze around a mall or an airport at Americans en masse. Home cooking these days has far more than sentimental value; it's a survival skill."