Food Reform Movements: The Quest for “Health and Efficiency”: Nutrition Science and Labor Reform in the Progressive Era

Reformers at the turn of the twentieth century were less likely to be found among preachers, when the early successes of the social gospel paralleled the institutionalization of social science as a legitimate cure for society’s ills. In the same way that antebellum food reform could not be separated from moral and spiritual renewal, food reform in the Progressive Era was inextricably linked with labor reform: a loose alliance of biochemists, economists, statisticians, social workers, and philanthropists were to conduct the first systematic investigations into human nutrition, in order to craft a solution to the “social question” (that is, labor unrest) by attempts at rationalizing the working-class eating habits.