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Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry

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I read this several years ago in an anthropology course and it was truly enlightening. It describes how elements of the counterculture in the 60's came to view the mass production of food as the fundamental basis of industrial economy. They sought to decentralize, communalize and humanize this massive "combine." Unfortunately, they were co-opted, by the giant corporations that today continue to shovel their bitter porridge into our gaping pie holes. This book is more than about food production, but how corporate capitalism manufactures values, and disires and marginalizes those who threaten to provide viable alternatives. An excellent book.

APPETITE FOR CHANGE: HOW THE COUNTERCULTURE TOOK ON THE FOOD INDUSTRY appears in its second updated edition to appeal to college-level students of American culture, particular that of the 1960s - as well as students of culinary history. Food and eating habits changed as a result of the social revolution of the 1960s: this examination considers both sides of the health food industry's rise, charts the rise of ethnic cuisine, and establishes strong connections between social movements and eating habits. APPETITE FOR CHANGE originally appeared in 1989 and is updated here to reflect new alternative diets and organic food's rise.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

After I finished this book I finally understood the word told to Benjamin Braddock from The Graduate: "Plastics." I assumed the speaker was referring to some staid corporate job, but what I learned from this book is that the word "plastic" to the counterculture ear meant the inauthentic. Around the middle of twentieth century Americans were introduced to a whole different diet of foods. Its what we would call today processed foods but in the counterculture lexicon was dubbed plastic foods, e.g. Cheerios. The organic movement was suppose to be the antithesis of this industrial created food-like substance (to borrow a phrase from Michael Pollan's IN DEFENSE OF FOOD). It was grown on small farms and didn't use chemicals. It was suppose to be eaten in whole food form not processed, dessicated bits. The book is an eye opener on the origins of the organic movement, the consumer activism it spawned, and how corporations and their well-endowed marketing arms tried to steer consumers back to their products by mimicing organic foods, e.g. granola bars that are closer to candy than real granola. I highly recommend it.