How the Great Depression Still Shapes the Way Americans Eat

The Faro Caudill [family] eating dinner in their dugout, Pie Town, New Mexico.
Russell Lee, 1940 (FSA/Library of Congress)

(The Atlantic) It’s difficult to imagine that modern Americans, at the zenith of an era of self-styled gastronomy and rampant food waste, could have much in common with their Depression-era forebears who subsisted (barely) on utilitarian liver loaves and creamed lima beans. But trendy excess notwithstanding, the legacy of the 1929 financial crisis lives on: From the way that ingredients and produce wend their paths to American kitchens year-round, to the tone taken by public intellectuals and elected officials about food consumption and diet. Continued