“THE POWER OF A MAN TO DO WORK DEPENDS UPON HIS NUTRITION”: FOOD, ECONOMY, AND MORALITY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1893-1918

The history of federal dietary advice in America is over a century long, and many historians have evaluated its transformation as it relates to the economy, war, and agriculture. Academics such as Marion Nestle and Harvey Levenstein have made long careers out of analyzing the connections between food and politics over the last half-century, dissecting how profit-driven corporate food producers have influenced federally sponsored dietary tracts going all the way back to World War II. However, there is a dearth of analysis regarding these tracts in the context of ongoing cultural discourses prior to World War II. This thesis ventures farther back in time to the decades leading up to World War I, and it intends to examine some of the foundations of modern dietary advice using United States Department of Agriculture pamphlets published between 1894 and 1918. More specifically, it attempts to discern what this advice reveals about food’s popular perception and how both industry and government attempted to utilize powers of bureaucracy to moderate not only food production but also its consumption.