11:17am Thursday 30th March 2006
By Beena Nadeem
On April 1, 1957, swathes of the great British public were duped into believing that spaghetti grew on trees. Today supermarkets sell more than a dozen types of pasta. BEENA NADEEM this week talked to the organisers of a Middlesex University exhibition which looks at British culinary habits and how everything from meal times to kitchen utensils have shaped the way we eat
A series of food revolutions has changed our eating habits unrecognisably. The introduction of supermarkets transformed the way people shopped and bought goods, while the advent of frozen foods slashed cooking times and opened the door to food from around the world.
Immigration has obviously played its part the curry is testament to that but a new exhibition at the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture also explores how changes to work and family life have made quick and convenient foods more popular and meals times almost irrelevant.
"Shopping habits have changed a lot since the Fifties," said Professor Clive Bloom, one of the exhibition's organisers. "Back then people had to be taught how to use a shopping trolley there were diagrams for them to follow."
Shoppers, added Prof Bloom, also needed guidance on how to load up their groceries into the boot of their cars. "The fear was that they would melt into a lake, but of course they didn't because they were frozen.
"In the Seventies, packet Vesta curries were introduced. They weren't very nice but that's what people thought curries tasted like.
"And Smash, the instant mash with the aliens on the adverts, that harked back to the powdered foods that came in during war-time, but was brought back in and packaged differently."
The end of rationing triggered a switch in eating habits. In 1953 sweets were back on the shelves and their intake rocketed, although there were still few fatty snacks like crisps around.
And despite a recent backlash, snacks are still synonymous with comfort food, such as crisps, chocolate and sweets, which dominate the market and have been bolstered by television advertising and colourful packaging.
With changing family and work life, and new technology, a new era of TV dinners was ushered in during the Sixties, an advance' that makes Prof Bloom cringe. "In the Sixties and Seventies we had TV dinners," he said. "They were served in those trays like you get on aeroplanes and were disgusting. The concept came from the US. They weren't really considered civilised but it's about then when the word convenience started to get banded around."
Britain's top convenience food today is baked beans. "Around 97 per cent of baked bean sales are in Britain," he said.
The British public has now gone full-circle in its food requirements, according to Prof Bloom, from the days when food was organic and free-range because that was the way food was, to the need for cheap and plentiful produce, and then back to the desire for good quality, fresh food.
"We've come from having had food adulterated back to having organic foods," he said.
"But ironically now that we often don't want things added, we still opt for probiotic yoghurt, which, of course, helps the digestive system. Things like avocados didn't even get to us until the Sixties. People had not seen foods from abroad. They didn't drink wine ever and didn't eat spaghetti bolognese. Salads were seasonal right up to the Eighties and yoghurts were something you fed to your animals back in the Fifties," he joked.
The exhibition also touches upon gender changes. Women once spent three to four hours preparing the evening meal, today it is often a matter of convenient cooking and shopping.
"Women were released from the kitchens and from having 24 kids and a dog and a husband to look after, to going out to work," said Prof Bloom.
"She doesn't have to spend all day looking after people and hours preparing the meal, which also means people don't have to eat together."
This is something neatly reflected in the Bisto Gravy advertisements over the years. "In the latest advert, they are all priding themselves with fixing a time, one day a week, where they all eat together with the rest of the family. That would have been bizarre when the ads began, when everyone ate together. You would never have seen that back then," he said.
"Today the etiquette of eating has changed too. Children can fiddle with a mobile phone, change channels on the TV while eating. Eating habits have certainly got worse since the Fifties and onwards."
The exhibition combines pieces from all stages of the food industry: adverts from past and present, photographs, packaging, ingredients, recipes, video interviews, anecdotes, photographs, magazines and utensils.
Half a Century of British Eating Habits is on until October 29 at the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Cat Hill, East Barnet. For more information visit www.moda.mdx.ac.uk or call 020 8411 6639.
What's for Dinner Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MoDA) MoDA, Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Hertfordshire EN4 8HT Tel: 020 8411 5244. www.moda.mdx.ac.uk Entrance is free. 25 April 29 October 2006. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am 5pm. Sunday, 2pm 5pm
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