Adrian Bresler

Abstract

Historical menus represent a snapshot in time, informing us of the meals that were available, and the prices charged to customers. By taking a closer look, today’s reader can use the menus’ artwork, tone, written descriptions, and layout to interpret other, more nuanced communication that may not only influence diners’ food choices but also reflect on the wider societal issues of the era.

Using menus dating from the 1980s, this paper focuses on the effect of the US federal government’s recommendation to reduce fat in American diets on restaurants and their offerings. The menus used in this paper were found in Boston University’s John Mariani Menu Collection. By noting the numbers and types of establishments that promoted low-fat meals and the language used by restaurateurs to convince consumers of the value of compliance, this research shows that few restaurants in this sample appear to have incorporated contemporary government guidelines into their cuisine. The few that did were primarily high-end restaurants catering to an elite clientele. Further research using other menu collections and an expanded time frame may provide data that can help identify and explain food trends and fads in the restaurant industry while considering the time needed to affect change in the pre-internet era.

Introduction

Eight years after the enactment of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, its regulations were finalized, and they became law. The rules required chain restaurants to post the nutrient and caloric content of their menu items. Since then, studies evaluated the impact of this legislation on customer behavior and the obesity rate in the US. The results have been mixed at best. This is not the first time the government has attempted to influence the American diet.  

Earlier efforts were made in the 1980s. While notable work has been conducted by fat studies scholars regarding the obesity epidemic, my research focuses on the impact of voluntary, low-fat dietary recommendations, originating from the federal government and researchers and promulgated by the media, on restaurant menus in the 1980s. I used a collection of menus compiled by John Mariani, a well-known restaurant critic and author. After reading Alison Pearlman’s analysis of the competitive need of mid-range restaurants to quickly respond to customer needs in May We Suggest and the Affordable Care Act mandate to fast food chains to post calorie counts, my initial assumption was that those types of establishments would be the early adopters of the 1980s low-fat dietary recommendations. My hypothesis, leveraging personal experience of perusing the oftentimes extensive menus in casual restaurants, was that the imperative to reduce fat in the diet to combat heart disease, cancer, and obesity, and to promote general good health, was mostly directed towards restaurants in this sample that catered to lower and middle socioeconomic classes. Conversely, high-end restaurants (defined for the purpose of this study as establishments that offered entrees priced at twenty dollars or more in 1980s dollars), influenced by the cuisines of Europe and catering to wealthy patrons, expense account-driven executives, and high-flying revelers, would reject attempts to shape their menus unless those changes were specifically driven by their customer base. In addition, my second hypothesis, based on Andrew Friedman’s Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll and David Kamp’s United States of Arugula discussions of historical food tendencies at this period, was that any compliance with government recommendations would be regional, with the east and west coasts and major cities adhering to trends before the rest of the country.

Background

Many American baby-boomers may remember the 1980s as the decade of Ronald Reagan, Chernobyl, Tiananmen Square, the AIDS epidemic, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. But it was also a time when dietary habits in the US changed forever. As a result of scientific studies connecting all dietary fats to heart disease and cancer, despite the lack of definitive proof and the skepticism of some nutritional experts, federal government agencies and highly respected medical organizations (such as the American Heart Association and the American Dietetic Association) recommended the reduction of all fats in the diet for the US population, except for babies.[1] Widespread media coverage of these studies and recommendations by newspapers, magazines, and television talk shows fueled a sense of urgency. It fostered the misconception that the underlying science was proven and that all Americans needed to adjust their eating habits to lose weight and prevent disease. Public response to the government’s call to action prompted food manufacturers and supermarkets to offer a wide variety of new low-fat products.

The 1980s was not only a time of self-imposed dietary restrictions as the American food scene was undergoing other changes as well. In The United States of Arugula, author David Kamp argues that the mid-twentieth century American food revolution that brought great improvements to the variety and quality of food available to the upper middle class involved a myriad of chefs, writers, and restaurateurs.[2] The enhancements can largely be traced to the ‘big three’ food writers/celebrities, James Beard, Julia Child and Craig Claiborne on the East Coast.[3] Their efforts to upgrade the American diet were aided by the arrival of Nouvelle Cuisine to US restaurants, a concept introduced by a group of chefs in France in the 1970s that emphasized a lighter version of old French recipes. Assistance also came from the Slow Food movement from Italy that started in the 1980s as a protest against fast food but whose mission remains the preservation of the food traditions of the past, like the family meal, and the education of consumers about the harm done by agribusiness and processed foods.[4] The food of Alice Waters and California Cuisine on the West Coast in the middle to late 1970s focused on local, seasonal, and fresh ingredients available at farmers’ markets and became known as New American Cuisine in the 1980s.[5] 

However, Andrew Friedman asserts in Chefs Drugs and Rock & Roll that the rise of cooking as a serious career in the 1970s and the establishment of celebrity chefs in the 1980s and 1990s began as a reaction to the political, economic, and social strife in the US in the turbulent 1960s.[6] The ‘outsiders’ who escaped to Europe brought back local and regional cooking styles, deemed to offer authentic, real food that jumpstarted the food revolution in the US.[7] While Friedman’s focus is strictly on chefs during this time, Kamp touches on the desire of food activists to bring healthy food awareness to a larger audience and argues that this new US food scene became dominated by ‘foodies’ who had the budget and knowledge to select the finest food this country had to offer while the majority were left to eat a diet of mainly processed and fast foods.[8] In Foodies, authors Josée Johnston and Shyon Baumann further argue that while ‘foodies’ rejected elitist haute cuisine in favor of new, multi-ethnic foods which became available as the result of globalization, a new type of exclusivity in the food world replaced the old.[9] The foodie movement widened the social divide between those in the upper middle class, with the means to seek out local, organic, exotic and authentic food experiences, and lower income classes without these resources.[10]

Evidence of increased disease, stemming partly from poor food choices, led the US Senate’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs to propose a solution to US nutrition problems when it issued its findings in 1977. The Committee’s Dietary Goals for the United States encouraged the consumption of more carbohydrates and less fat to combat heart disease and obesity.[11] According to Anne La Berge in How the Ideology of Low-Fat Conquered America, the federal government’s new diet policies gave a seal of approval to the Committee’s theory. This collaboration between the federal government and the Senate Committee was the impetus behind the full-on push for low-fat diets by the medical profession and the media.[12]

One example was the Food Pyramid, introduced in 1992 by the US Department of Agriculture. Its purpose was to educate Americans about making healthy food choices. The design placed all fats and oils (and candy) at the top of the pyramid, indicating the smallest portion of a balanced diet, with instructions to ‘use sparingly’. Growing evidence in the scientific community, beginning in the 1960s, claiming that replacing fats with refined sugars in processed foods and recipes might be a mistake and could exacerbate certain diseases was virtually ignored.[13] Even today, this science is not settled and continues to evolve.

Indeed, diet issues are not new in the US. In The One Hundred Year Diet, author Susan Yager argues that Americans have been trying to lose weight for over a hundred years using various schemes based on science, religious practices, personal experiences, and even pure quackery, and further, that these schemes have led to a significant segment of the population that is not only overweight but who seemingly cannot appreciate food due to its association with guilt and confusion.[14] Given the ever-increasing popularity of the food scene best described by Friedman and Kamp, it seems likely that Yager is describing only a specific segment of the population, comprising those people who would likely read and follow diet books only to find that perhaps the instructions are not useful in the long term. 

 Yager systematically reviews the various fads that have influenced Americans and recounts, decade by decade, the types of diets that have been in fashion as well as the current events that often propelled the popularity of a particular diet. She also argues that the start of the obesity epidemic began not in the 1980s, as so many believe, but in the 1950s with the start of the fast-food industry, the introduction of television and TV dinners, and the abundance of cheap, government-subsidized food.[15] She contends that the diet gurus of the 1960s responded with liquid diets such as Slimfast and Metrecal and sugar substitutes.[16] The Atkins high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet in the 1960s, followed by the Pritikin low-fat, high-complex carbohydrate diet and exercise plan in the 1970s, caused a debate among medical professionals that still goes on today. Yager further asserts that cheap high fructose corn syrup (at half the price of sugar due to government subsidies) that flooded the market in the 1980s further exacerbated the problem so that by the end of that decade, thirty-three percent of adults were overweight or obese, an increase over the proportion that remained steady for decades at twenty-five percent.[17] In Fashionable Food author Sylvia Lovegren argues that confusion resulting from a constant barrage of food recommendations (in favor of fiber, red wine, and fish) and warnings (against red meat, nitrates, and cholesterol) issued by experts during the 1980s did not help improve overall diet.[18] Lovegren characterizes the decade as a time of contradictions, for example, ‘lite’ meals followed by decadent chocolate truffle desserts and new trendy foods (kiwis, sun-dried tomatoes, raspberry vinegar) followed by a return to Italian comfort food.[19]

By the end of the 1990s, the Atkins diet, a low carbohydrate, high protein, and fat program, returned. New tools to combat extra weight came in the form of diet pills and bariatric surgery. Today, prescription drugs originally manufactured to control diabetes are being used for weight loss, despite the risks, costs, and shortages associated with them.

Additionally, cookbook authors have launched new fads or promoted those already introduced into the diet marketplace. During the 1980s a plethora of low-fat cookbooks encouraged lifestyle changes pledging to help readers avoid death due to heart disease or cancer. They cited and quoted governmental agencies (National Institute of Health) and medical organizations (National Cancer Institute, National Heart Association) as proof of the efficacy of their diet plans. Some writers promised to reverse the damage already done by high-fat diets, and all seemed to blame American affluence that enabled a diet of forty-to-fifty percent fat, mainly from animal products.[20] Jane Brody, a well-known author, biochemist, and columnist (Personal Health) for the New York Times, promoted a high-complex carbohydrate, low-fat diet in her cookbook/lifestyle manual, Jane Brody’s Good Food Book, published in 1985. One chapter is devoted to dining outside the home; she encouraged the reader to select restaurants that offer healthy options even while admitting that they are often difficult to find.[21] Prevention magazine published its own Quick and Healthy Low-Fat Cooking that promised a healthy heart and clear arteries, plus the added convenience of losing weight due to their low-fat recipes.[22] In the meantime, the Mediterranean Diet, first promoted in the 1950s and 1960s by Ancel and Margaret Keys, gained in popularity in the 1980s as an alternative to mainstream dietary recommendations. This diet is still popular today, encouraging the consumption of whole grains, olive oil, fish, and wine instead of a traditional American diet, along with a less stressful lifestyle, to combat heart disease, cancer, and obesity.[23] 

But considering that over forty percent of all food dollars in the US are used for meals consumed outside the home, the impact of diet trends on menu design is critical to understanding any food-related issue in the US.[24] In May We Suggest, author Alison Pearlman argues that restaurant menus are the primary way restaurateurs and chefs communicate their offerings to customers. Menus are likewise constructed to persuade diners to make targeted choices.[25] Using certain words on a menu to make the food sound more attractive, ethnic, authentic, or gourmet is known in the industry as ‘romancing the menu’.[26] Pearlman argues that casual dining chains often feature menu sections with health labels because these restaurants want to offer everything and appeal to everyone, using words such as ‘bold taste’ or ‘seasoned’ to make low-calorie food sound tasty.[27] However, according to Pearlman, the least persuasive romancing words are those that convey healthfulness because, according to studies of Americans, healthy food connotes bad-tasting food.[28] Given the proliferation of diet-specific menu items in recent years catering to certain health needs (gluten-free, low salt, low carb), this assertion seems to be dated.  

In fact, Papies and Veling, in their research reported in Appetite, assert that using low-calorie or low-fat language on menus distracts highly motivated dieters from overindulging and can serve as positive reinforcement for them to make informed choices.[29] However, the diet reminders or clues did not impact those who were less determined to select the healthier fare.[30]  

A review of a selected sample of restaurant menus from the 1980s should thus begin to help determine if the low-fat and, later, no-fat dietary recommendations had an impact on the meals offered or if the advice to reduce all fats in the diet was contemporaneously ignored by the chefs and restaurateurs in this sample, and by extension, the diners themselves. In addition, following Pearlman’s conclusion that casual restaurants would offer low-fat or no-fat options, finding an emphasis on low-calorie foods on menus of high-end restaurants was unexpected. This assumption will be explored in the following study.

Methodology

To determine if restaurants served low-fat dietary-restricted meals in the 1980s, I examined the restaurant menu collection located in the Culinary Library of the Gastronomy department of Boston University. The John Mariani Menu Collection was assembled from 1977 to 2019 by John Mariani, a well-known author, journalist, and restaurant critic. Mariani, who has written and spoken about food and wine for over forty years, donated approximately five hundred menus to the library in 2019. Shortly thereafter, previous Gastronomy students sorted these menus alphabetically and placed them in folders in four large plastic bins, enabling future students easier access for research purposes. Each folder contains menus that start with the same letter, but the menus are not indexed in any other way. Maintenance of this specific collection in the library may eventually require (i) the purchase of archival-class boxes for its storage and (ii) the creation of a complete database of all menus and related data, as well as further incorporation of any new donations from Mariani into the current archive. 

Examination of individual menus serves as a reminder of the details gained through a close, in-person inspection of a primary source that might be lost in a review of digitized versions. As I perused the folders, the texture and thickness of the paper became a quick indicator that a specific menu was produced in the 1980s. Few were laminated. Occasionally, fragile menus, consisting only of thin paper pages, required careful handling.

Within each folder, I found a variety of menus from throughout the US (many from New York City (NYC)) as well as Italy and France. Some have beautiful artwork on the cover. Many menus have handwritten dates indicating the month, day, and year the collector acquired the menu; in addition, a few have notes from Mariani that indicate the items that he had ordered from the menu and presumably tasted, but no commentary. Other date information was provided by the printer or the restaurateur. Each menu needed to be inspected by me and those that lacked a date were rejected.

Out of this collection, I selected menus dated from 1980 to 1990. Of the hundreds of menus, I included seventy-one menus from the collection that fell within that time frame. Only those that self-referenced low-fat or low-calorie items were eligible. While many of the menus come from high-end establishments, many of them are from casual restaurants. I took photographs of each menu, including front and back covers (if any) for review later. A table summarizing the research sample is attached as Appendix 1.

I created a database of the selected menus using an Excel spreadsheet containing the restaurants’ name and location. The database also includes mention of dietary restricted offerings, unusual (for the period) foods or preparation methods, distinctive foods, and my classification of each restaurant as ‘casual’ or ‘high end’ as determined by the pricing, the menu items, and the design of its menu.

John Mariani

In addition to his career as an award-winning food critic, writing food and wine articles for Esquire, Bloomberg News, and GQ, John Mariani published fifteen books.[31] The most well-known are How Italian Food Conquered the World and The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink. He was nominated three times for the James Beard Journalism award, currently publishes an online newsletter, the “Virtual Gourmet,” and hosts a weekly radio show, “Almost Golden.”[32] Mariani published a ‘best restaurant’ column for many years. Given his inclination towards fine dining, it should not come as a surprise that a majority of the menus are from high-end restaurants.

In America Eats Out, Mariani argues that restaurants in the US would succeed if they “offer a gimmick,” which can come in the form of creativity, new technology, low (or high) prices, themed meals, or unique experiences that keep diners coming back for more.[33] He emphasizes that restaurants must be able to adapt to changing tastes, or they will fail. Therefore, according to Mariani, the 1980s ushered in a decade of New American Cuisine, followed by the introduction of fusion cuisine, salad bars, and a new ‘alternative’ healthy section on the menu.[34] He describes the dilemma diners faced between choosing a meal from the ‘good’ low-calorie section or succumbing to a ‘bad’ temptation; he relates it to the guilt commonly associated with America’s Puritan roots and the contemporary environmental movement.[35] As mentioned earlier, Yager ties guilty behavior to food, almost in the same vein as Mariani who associates guilt with succumbing to the appeal of rich food. However, Mariani also describes the “certain elitist snob appeal” garnered by customers publicly choosing righteous, healthy steamed vegetables from a menu also offering a decadent plate of foie gras.[36] Interestingly, of the seventy-one 1980’s menus reviewed from the John Mariani Menu Collection, only nine have low-fat or low-calorie selections or make some reference to alternative style cooking.

Analysis

As Alison Pearlman tells us, menus communicate information to the public from the chef and the restaurateur.[37] By examining this subset of seventy-one menus from the 1980s, emergent patterns can be interpreted and used to form tentative assumptions about restaurant menus in the 1980s. To summarize this sample of menus:

• Forty-four menus are from the East Coast (of these, twenty-eight menus are from restaurants in New York). Six additional menus are from the West Coast; both Coasts host seventy percent of the restaurants in the sample.

• Thirty-eight menus represent high-end restaurants, defined for this analysis as those that charge twenty dollars or more (in the 1980s) for a main course or an entrée.
• Thirteen percent (or nine) of all restaurant menus in the sample explicitly offered low-fat or low-calorie options.
• Of these nine menus containing low-fat or low-calorie options, eight are from high-end restaurants, representing eighty-nine percent of the menus in this subset and twenty-one percent of the total high-end sample.
• Eight of the menus containing low-fat or low-calorie options are located on the East Coast.

Twenty-one percent of the high-end restaurants offered what was considered a healthier choice on their menus in the 1980s. Only three percent of the casual, mid-range priced restaurant menus offered such a choice. This is a much lower percentage than I initially expected based on Alison Pearlman’s assertion that casual, mid-range restaurants want to be “everything to everybody” and keep up with the current food fads due to stiff competition.[38] In fact, the casual, mid-range restaurants did offer a wide variety of foods, some moderately healthy and some rather unhealthy (from today’s point of view), but they seem to have been slower to respond to the then-current calls for low-fat diet items. It is not that the high-end were necessarily more sensitive to the health of their patrons; a high percentage of them offered dishes such as foie gras or cream sauces that today might be considered too rich to eat regularly. Therefore, my initial sample result confirms market research, which claimed that, generally, restaurants were five years behind the rest of the food industry when introducing new food concepts before the social media age (beginning in the early 2000s).[39] 

More predictable was that eight of the nine restaurants that carried low-fat or low-calorie menu items were located on one of the country’s coasts, the presumed epicenters of the food scene, at least as noted in the 1980s by Andrew Friedman.[40] It was surprising, therefore, to learn that of these nine restaurants, only four were located in NYC; the rest were in smaller cities. Although only six menus are from California restaurants, it is nonetheless remarkable that for a state traditionally perceived as a trendsetter and a first adopter for healthy foods, no sample restaurant, high-end or casual, mid-range, explicitly offered any low-fat choice on their menus.

By examining and comparing menus in this sample collection, one can see different methods used by these restaurants in the 1980s to communicate the low-fat items, most of which are the expected fish, chicken, and vegetarian options; none contain any quantifiable data supporting the designation of the dish as low-fat or low-calorie. The most candid commentary was from The Forge (Miami Beach, Florida), which opened its menu with a cover letter to its diners announcing a new culinary concept, ‘Travant-Garde’ that mixed traditional cooking with avant-garde touches such as fresh ingredients and herbs. These items were scattered throughout the menu and designated with a bright red insignia, “SPA” (Sanus Per Aquam, Latin for ‘health through water’); they were “low in fat, cholesterol, and salt but with full-bodied flavor,” thus reassuring patrons that they could choose diet foods, such as Eggplant & Tomato Terrine or Swordfish Alfredo, and not compromise on taste. For the “extremely calorie-conscious,” Simple Chicken was an option. Interestingly, The Forge was one of the few restaurants to include beef on its low-fat menu, although its claims are suspect: “Double Thick Center Cut Sirloin (12 oz) …sirloin nurtured on a barley diet for spectacular pure-beef flavor while drastically reducing its fat, cholesterol and calories…”. The French Room (Dallas, Texas) restaurant also uses a similar method of publicizing the inclusion of low-fat food, designating, by an asterisk, its “Alternative Cuisine—dishes that are naturally low in calories, cholesterol and sodium” such as Salad of Roast Chicken and Spinach Salad with Shrimp/Golden Tomatoes.

Other restaurants are more subtle. The Edwardian Room (NYC), through its Medley of Sliced Fresh Fruit with Cottage Cheese or Steamed Turbot, and Le Perigord (NYC), through its Filet of Halibut-steamed, inform diners of low-fat options by designating a small section of the menu as either “Lite” or “Low in Calories” and then by listing a minimal number of dishes. The establishments 1789 (Washington, DC), Adrienne (NYC), and La Caravelle (NYC) each use a simple, generic statement to alert customers that low-fat options are available upon request with no specific description of the food. Of the nine restaurants in this sampling, only the 1789 restaurant is still open with regular restaurant service. Its 2023 menu no longer informs diners of low-fat options. The asterisk accompanying several dishes now refers to a warning about the dangers of foodborne illness from eating undercooked foods. By far, the most unusual 1980s menu offering is from The Hampshire House (Boston, Massachusetts), the one casual restaurant in the overall sample whose menu also has a designated section entitled “Lighter Fare.” It has eight dishes listed; however, the robust menu items range from omelets to burgers to a Monte Carlo sandwich. Perhaps by lighter fare, The Hampshire House operators were referring to the price of the menu options and not their fat or caloric contents.

Conclusion  

Based on this collection, my data analysis indicates that the contemporary low-fat dietary recommendations made by the federal government and researchers and disseminated throughout the media do not appear to be widely established in this sampling of 1980s restaurant menus. This could have been a reflection of the food revolution described earlier in this paper, or it could have simply been the speed at which the government recommendations were incorporated into menus. Alternatively, the response may be consistent with the observation made by Wilbert Jones, citing a 1998 USDA study in Restaurant Hospitality which concluded that individuals were more likely to accept low-fat and no-fat foods at home than in restaurants; his article goes on to explain that certain establishments were beginning to offer alternative, health-conscious options.[41]  Even the adoption rate was uneven across high-end versus casual, mid-range restaurants. While debates over theories of dietary recommendations continue, the influence of the original government guidelines remains as evidenced by the myriad low-fat and no-fat products available in supermarkets then and even now. According to market research, manufacturers and supermarkets that supply home cooks with food generally respond much faster than restaurants to consumer demand and quickly advertise new products that conform to dietary changes.[42]

For future projects to better understand the impact of government recommendations on restaurant menus, I recommend supplementing the previous sampling of the John Mariani Menu Collection to include menus from the 1990s and early 2000s, to understand the long-term effects of government-sanctioned food guidelines. Further sampling of menus in later years could also show how food trends have spread across the country, especially after the introduction of the internet, smartphones, social media, and 24/7 newscasts.

Menus, as material artifacts of another era, can also be the foundation for future research. An in-depth analysis of this collection and other physical menus could provide additional insights about the materials used, the evolution of food-related language, and the introduction of new foods and food styles through time. For example, a focus on the nature of certain menu tangibles, such as the menu paper quality, graphics, and lamination, may uncover further subliminal or obvious messages regarding the intended sophistication and wealth of the target audience sought by specific establishments. Over time, the removal of printed menus, along with the advent of QR code cards, especially during and after the pandemic, will make this assessment more difficult. Of particular interest may be the environmental impact of producing menus and the effect of the green movement on the actual materials used, especially starting in the 1960s and on.

A review of additional menu collections from the 1980s would help substantiate my initial conclusions. Using menu collections other than the John Mariani Menu Collection would expand the sampling pool to include more restaurants from across the country that offer lower-priced menu items and a wider variety of ethnic and regional cuisines. Future research may also focus on menu changes due to animal rights activism, demographic changes, or specific food trends such as vegetarian and vegan, gluten-free and keto diets, or the trans-fat ban. More recently, the Covid-19 pandemic and related item-specific food shortages have changed how some restaurants conduct business and could have affected their menus.

As noted earlier, continuing efforts by the federal government to mandate solutions to dietary issues continue in the twenty-first century. Examining menus can be one tool to determine its effectiveness. The requirement of calorie counts and nutrition content on menus for chain restaurants has reportedly made a positive impact on some customers’ decision-making, but so far, this effort may not be enough.[43] According to the National Institute for Health, over forty-two percent of American adults are obese and over seventy percent are overweight or obese.[44] These rates are twenty percent and thirty-five percent for children, respectively.[45] There are myriad reasons for this increase in obesity, and the health consequences to the individuals are serious. Since an increased number of meals begin with an order placed at a restaurant rather than a quick scan of the refrigerator contents at home, future research projects connecting menu offerings to well-being may also provide some insights for grappling with this problem. Understanding what is on the menu and how menu choices impact overall health could help people make informed decisions for themselves and their families.

Appendix

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The John Mariani Menu Collection. 1977-2019. Boston University Gastronomy Program’s Culinary Library.

[1] David Merritt Johns and Gerald M. Oppenheimer, “Was there ever really a ‘sugar conspiracy’?” Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Vol. 359, Issue6377 (2018): 747–750. 

[2] David Kamp, The United States of Arugula (New York: Broadway Books, 2006), 118.

[3] Kamp, The United States of Arugula), 118.

[4] Kamp, The United States of Arugula, 237, 354.

[5] Kamp, The United States of Arugula, 125.

[6] Andrew Friedman, Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll: How Food Lovers, Free Spirits, Misfits and Wanderers Created a New American Profession (New York: HarperCollins, 2018), 21.

[7] Friedman, Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll, 22.

[8] Kamp, The United States of Arugula, 359.

[9] Josée Johnston and Shyon Baumann, Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010), 3.

[10] Johnston and Baumann, Foodies, 20.

[11] Johns and Oppenheimer, Science, 747.

[12] Ann F. La Berge, “How the Ideology of Low-Fat Conquered America,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 63, Issue2 (2008), 139–177.

[13] N.J. Temple, “Fat, Sugar, Whole Grains and Heart Disease: 50 Years of Confusion,” Nutrients Vol. 10, Issue 1, (2018), 39.

[14] Susan Yager-Berkowitz, The Hundred Year Diet: America’s Voracious Appetite for Losing Weight (New York: Rodale, 2010), xii.

[15] Yager-Berkowitz, The Hundred Year Diet, 85.

[16] Yager-Berkowitz, The Hundred Year Diet, 94.

[17] Yager-Berkowitz, The Hundred Year Diet, 156.

[18] Sylvia Lovegren, Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1995), 407.

[19] Lovegren, Fashionable Food, 357, 411.

[20] Jean Rogers, editor, Quick and Healthy Low-Fat Cooking (Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press 1993), 3-10.

[21] Jane Brody, Jane Brody’s Good Food Book (New York: Bantam Books 1985), 204.

[22] Rogers, Quick and Healthy, 7-9.

[23] Carol McConnell and Malcolm McConnell, The Mediterranean Diet (New York: W.W. Norton 1987), 20-27.

[24] Rosanna Mentzer Morrison, Lisa Mancino, and Jayachandran N. Variyam, “Will Calorie Labeling in Restaurants make a Difference?” Amber Waves, March 14, 2011.  

[25] Alison Pearlman, May We Suggest (Chicago, IL: An Agate 2018), 171.

[26] Pearlman, May We Suggest, 146.

[27] Pearlman, May We Suggest, 155.

[28] Pearlman, May We Suggest, 155.

[29] Esther K. Papies and Harm Veling, “Healthy Dining. Subtle Diet Reminders at the Point of Purchase Increase Low-calorie Food Choices among Both Chronic and Current Dieters,” Appetite Vol. 61, Issue 1 (2013): 1-7.

[30] Papies and Veling, “Healthy Dining,” 4.

[31] John Mariani, “Mariani’s Virtual Gourmet Newsletter” http:/johnmariani.com/current-issue.  Accessed March 24, 2023.

[32] Mariani, “Newsletter.”

[33]John Mariani, America Eats Out (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991), 9.

[34] Mariani, America Eats Out, 256-257.

[35] Mariani, America Eats Out, 258.

[36] Mariani, America Eats Out, 258.

[37] Pearlman, May We Suggest, 8.

[38] Pearlman, May We Suggest, 156.

[39] Thomas, “Restaurants Losing Low-Fat War,” 1.

[40] Friedman, Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll, 40.

[41] Wilbert Jones, “New Wealth from Health,” Restaurant Hospitality October 1999: 98-102.

[42] Jerry W. Thomas, “Restaurants Losing Low-Fat War,” Marketing News October 30, 1996.

[43] Morrison et al., “Will Calorie Labeling,” 5.

[44] “Overweight and Obesity Statistics,” National Institute of Health: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. September 2021.

[45] “Overweight and Obesity Statistics,” National Institute of Health.

Biography

Adrian Bresler is a graduate of the Gastronomy program at Boston University. Her interests are the science of food, cookbooks, French cooking and healthy eating.  This research topic, which began as a project for a “History of Food” course, incorporates those interests plus a new one, the impact of government policies and the media on an individual’s food choices.