Although market forces have become increasingly pervasive, many people continue to believe that certain objects and relationships should not be subject to the logic of supply and demand, because they either embody higher cultural values or are vital for sustaining life. In an earlier book, Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption (2006), Laura J. Miller explored the historical dynamics between independent booksellers and large chains and showed that books are still seen by many readers to have an extra-commercial status. In her new book she now examines the role of natural foods in the capitalist marketplace and how producers and retailers of such foods attempt to align – or not – their ethical impetus with their aim to attract more buyers of their products and to make their efforts into a sustainable business.
One feature of those critical of how food is produced in the modern world is that they are often themselves involved in commercial endeavours tied to producing and selling food. Like organic agriculture, the natural-food movement has, from its beginning, also been a business while retaining a critique of the corrupting influence of commercialization. Miller traces the history of the natural-food movement in the United States from its beginnings, when ideas about diet were associated with an understanding of what it means to lead a Christian life. The earliest proponents, such as William Metcalfe (1788–1862) or Sylvester Graham (1794–1851), did not produce any commercial products themselves, but many of their followers – especially in cities – took the first steps by establishing boarding houses or dining rooms and also started to distribute health foods. Only at the end of the nineteenth century, the first successful attempt was made to commercialize natural foods in a Seventh-Day Adventist Sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan, under the direction of John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943). With Kellogg, who increasingly distanced his products from religious connotations, natural foods began to appeal to a wider range of consumers. Kellogg and other entrepreneurs established a niche market for lifestyle products, which then started to raise questions about the moral status of markets. The natural-food movement proved to be quite flexible in the coming decades. While, in the nineteenth century, there was a tight match between the philosophical and religious foundations of the movement and the convictions of the buyers of the food, this link became more and more tenuous. This became obvious quite starkly in the 1950s when Hollywood stars and bodybuilders showed that the consumption of health foods was perfectly compatible with a glamourous lifestyle. In Europe, Demeter presently is a major producer of organic and health foods, but only a small minority of buyers share – or are even aware of – the rather esoteric philosophy of this organization. Modern consumers of health and organic food base their choices more on an assessment of personal risks and on broad political convictions than on adherence to a specific philosophy. Miller believes that consumers can indeed exert significant influence and that their choices can be a vehicle for broader social and cultural changes. She is confident that the integration of the natural-food movements into markets does not necessarily compromise their long-term, moral objectives.
While Miller does not primarily address historians of science, the natural-food movement has always been abuzz with terms, concepts, ideas and practices, which should give historians of science plenty to think about and to work with. Some precepts of the earliest, religiously motivated natural-food movements stated that food should be simple, ‘natural’ and as little processed as possible. This raises questions such as what food processing means. Preserving, cooking and baking are among the oldest food-processing technologies, which are needed to make certain foodstuffs durable, edible and digestible, and John Harvey Kellogg employed this grey area between minimal necessary and extensive processing to promote highly processed health foods, such as meat substitutes. Kellogg claimed that all the ingredients were impeccably natural and that the processing prepared the food optimally for the human digestive tract. The movement has also nurtured throughout its history scepticism towards ‘mainstream’ science and has frequently given a home to practices which are often quaint and harmless, but sometimes can be dangerous, such as anti-vaccination efforts. These examples show the value of food for historical study – ranging from studies of its materiality to what food represents about the modern world or about an imagined past.
What is missing from Miller's study is more detail about the often atrocious practices of conventional food production in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: adulterated milk made to look white with plaster of Paris or chalk and preserved with formaldehyde; fake honey made of coloured corn syrup; fake strawberry jam containing only mashed apple peelings, grass seeds and red dye; or flour routinely extended with crushed stones or gypsum. These apparently widespread practices shed a different light on the activities of the first proponents of natural foods. While they framed their motives often in purely moral and religious terms, they had identified serious issues and come up with solutions long before official authorities acted. Moral crusaders sometimes do indeed prefigure the shape of things to come.
