The Decade of Conformity

“The 1950s was an era of great upheaval in the United States. By the millions, Americans who had just survived two decades of economic depression and war left the cities for the greenery and open spaces of the suburbs. Suburban towns sprang up like crabgrass across the country. With these instant communities came a new American lifestyle that included suburban malls, fast-food restaurants, TV dinners, drive-in movies, and an oversized, gas-guzzling car in every garage.

“The decade was a time in which the roles within the “ideal” American family were clearly defined. The father was the breadwinner. Five days a week, fifty weeks a year, he donned his gray flannel suit, hopped into his car or on a commuter train, and headed off to earn money to support his wife, his ever-growing family, and their materialistic lifestyle. Meanwhile, his “little woman” remained home and raised the kids. Life was simple and ordered, and the cornerstone of society was authority. Teachers, police officers, politicians, and clergy were respected, and their pronouncements went unchallenged.

During previous generations, young people had been required to take jobs as soon as they were able, in order to contribute to the family income. Now, their parents indulged them with toys, games, and clothes. Girls collected dolls and stuffed animals, while boys amassed shoeboxes filled with baseball cards. The 1950s, like all other decades, saw its share of fads. In mid-decade, children wore coonskin caps. At the end, they played with hula hoops. When they became adolescents, they bought records; they also sipped malts and downed hamburgers at the local ice cream parlor. Teens and young adults dated, paired off, and “went steady,” which were preludes to becoming engaged, marrying, and beginning families of their own.

However, the decade was not without its nonconformity and rebellion. Parents were none too pleased when their adolescent children embraced rock ‘n’ roll music. Not all teens were clean-cut preppies; greasers sported longish hair and leather jackets and exuded a disdain for authority. On a more telling note, blacks, who had been systematically excluded from the burgeoning middle class, began demanding equal opportunity. But to the majority of Americans in the 1950s, adolescents with attitude and complaining minorities seemed little more than a ripple on the national landscape. There seemed to be no end to the nation’s prosperity.”

Life Was Good

If Happy Days taught us anything, it’s that life was better in the fifties. People left their door unlocked at night, kids respected their elders and a guy who lived above his best friend’s garage could still be cool so long as he owned a leather jacket. (AUTHOR UNKNOWN) – BUT TRUE!!! If you were alive, just remember Fonzy. 

Note: from SJF. Women were still thought of as “being in the kitchen” “During an interview for college, the so-called counselor said: “home Ec is always good for a girl.” Needless to say, I switched to Arts and Sciences.”

However, kitchens featured all new appliances and refrigerators loaded with convenience products from the new supermarkets. Westinghouse unveils the first fully automatic defrosting refrigerator-freezer. In Corbin, KY, Colonel Harland Sanders closes his fried chicken restaurant and goes on the road with his secret blend of 11 herbs and spices, on his way to building a new chicken global empire, designated as “finger-licking good.

Men found their cooking skills at the barbecue in the backyard, some with swimming pools at suburban ranch-style homes. In 1952, George Stephen, decided to develop a new type of BBQ grill that is not an open grill.  His sales go well and at the end of the decade, he buys out the BBQ division at Weber Brothers Metal Works and creates Weber-Stephen Products Co.  Weber grills are still popular today.

TV Dinners

After WWII, America’s economy boomed, women entered the workforce as never before and food got a little strange. Housewives spent less time in the kitchen, so food companies came to the rescue with a buffet of processed foods. Foods were purchased in a can, package or pouch. Soups were available as liquids or in dry form. Tang landed on supermarket shelves and frozen dinners laid on trays in front of TV sets. TV dinners were introduced in 1953 by Swanson and with a flick of a wrist you could turn back the foil to display turkey in gravy, dressing, sweet potatoes, and peas ready in about 30 minutes – all with no dishes to wash.

Better Living Through Chemistry

“Better Living through Chemistry” was the slogan of the times along with “I like Ike” referring to the popular Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 5-star general from WWII winning the U.S presidency from 1953 to 1961.
This change in processing came from the demand of the Army during WWII to provide needed ready-to-eat meals. The food industry responded by ramping up new technologies in canning and freeze-drying to feed the troops. The marketing of these foods presented a challenge, however. At first, many of them were less than palatable, so food companies hired home economists to develop fancy recipes and flooded magazines, newspapers and TV with ads to broadcast their virtues. Actually the first cake mix was available in 1931, but was met with disdain due to the use of dehydrated eggs, e.g. Women later would respond more favorably if they could crack their own eggs into the batter so they would feel like they were doing something positive in the kitchen.

People rushed to buy appliances, houses, cars, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers and backyard barbecue grills and new home freezers.  They also bought television sets in record numbers and watched shows that represented their new idealized lives like Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver. Beaver’s mother, June Cleaver was depicted as a housewife freed from household chores and often was serene and perfectly dressed with pearls and high heels pushing a vacuum cleaner and putting meals on the family table, all before solving the family problems.

Fast Food Nation

The birth rate soared and created what is known as the Baby Boomer Generation. Fifty million babies were born from 1945 to 1960. Food marketing shifted to kids with Tony the Tiger and fish sticks leading the campaign. Fast food had its beginnings strengthened in 1955 when Ray Kroc bought a hamburger stand from the McDonald’s brothers in San Bernadino, California. Disneyland opened in 1955 and was so popular they ran out of food on the first day.

The Seven Countries Study

In 1958, the American scientist, Ancel Keys started a study called the Seven Countries Study, which attempted to establish the association between diet and cardiovascular disease in different countries. The study results indicated that in the countries where fat consumption was the highest also had the most heart disease. This suggested the idea that dietary fat caused heart disease. He initially studied 22 countries, but reported on only seven: Finland, Greece, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, United States, and Yugoslavia.

The problem was that he left out:

• Countries where people eat a lot of fat but have little heart disease, such as Holland and Norway and France.
• Countries where fat consumption is low but the rate of heart disease is high, such as Chile.

Basically, he only used data from the countries that supported his theory. This flawed observational study gained massive media attention and had a major influence on the dietary guidelines of the next few decades, i.e. cut the fat out of our diets.

The First Artificial Sweetener

In the diet world, Saccharin was manufactured in granules and became a popular sugar substitute for dieters. It was first produced in 1878 by a chemist at Johns Hopkins University, but became popular after sugar shortages in WWI and WWII. In the United States, saccharin is often found in restaurants in pink packets as “Sweet’n Low”. It was banned later but it remains on the market today. The basis for the proposed ban was a study that documented an increase in cancer in rats being fed saccharin. The “Delaney clause” of the Food Additive Amendments to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act states that no substance can be deemed safe if it causes cancer in humans or animals. In suspending the proposed saccharin ban, Congress ordered that products containing the popular sweetener must carry a warning about its potential to cause cancer. The FDA formally lifted its proposal to ban the sweetener in 1991 based on new studies, and the requirement for a label warning was eliminated by the Saccharin Notice Repeal Act in 1996.

1954 Employee Gerry Thomas from the C.A. Swanson Co, has an idea (although fellow workers nearly laughed him out of the Omaha  plant): package the left-over turkey, along with some dressing, gravy, cornbread, peas and sweet potatoes into a partitioned metal tray, sell it frozen, and consumers could heat it up for dinner. His name for the leftover meal: TV Dinner.

1955 Milkshake-machine salesman, Roy Kroc tries to persuade Dick and Mac McDonald (owner of the original McDonald’s in California) to franchise their concept.  They aren’t interested but  tell Kroc to go ahead and try his hand. Kroc opens his first restaurant in Des Plains, ILL., and eventually buys out the McDonald’s.

1958 Eighteen- year-old Frank Carney sees a story in the Saturday Evening Post about the pizza fad among teenagers and college students. With $600 borrowed from his mother, he and his fellow Wichita State classmate, opens the first Pizza Hut in Wichita, KS.

Nutrition was beginning to gain some attention as healthy eating became new a topic of discussion. Gaylord Hauser. Author of Look Younger, Live Longer, who promoted such “wonder” foods as yogurt, wheat germ and brewer’s yeast… Adelle Davis and her book Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit but claims she can cure cancer – she died of bone cancer at age 70.

1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower had a heart attack. His doctor suggests he follow a low fat diet.

Citations:

Bon Appetit. September 1999.  America’s Food and Entertaining Magazine, Text by Katie O’Kennedy.

The Century in Food: America’s Fads and Favorites, Beverly Bundy, 2002.

The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Edited by Andrew F. Smith Oxford University Press, 2007.