Health food, then and now

February 27, 2012 by Susie

| 5 Comments

In the mail the other day came a book whose title struck me as odd: 500 of the Healthiest Recipes and Health Tips You'll Ever Need. I wasn't sure, for a moment, what made it so odd. But then I realized it was that "health food," as a term, isn't something we hear about so much these days. Sure, we "eat healthy"--or try to--but it's come to mean something other than what "health food" did some, oh, say, 45 years ago.

I say 45 years mainly because it was in 1977 that the Moosewood Cookbook, that icon of early-mainstream vegetarianism, was first published.

Moosewood featured tofu and "exotic" dishes like baba ganouj and guacamole. It had weird compounds like carrot-mushroom loaf and lentil-walnut burgers. It had a lot of stuffed eggplant and a lot of stuffed squash. Like sprouts? Cottage cheese? So did Moosewood.

To read Moosewood today is to glimpse a carb-happy, dairy-tolerant, newly multicultural vision of health in which "vegetarian" equalled "healthy"--if only because out there in the secular world they were still serving steak Diane, or maybe quiche Lorraine, or some other megacalorie blockbuster named after a girl.

We live in both more and less earnest times. On the one hand, in 1977 there were no vegans to speak of, and most everyone would have scoffed at the idea that you should avoid honey out of respect for the bees. On the other hand, Moosewood's free hand with the cheese would have stopped today's keepers of the health-food flame in their tracks.

If I had to generalize (oh, OK, if you insist!) I'd say that the 21st century concept of health food is in some ways more inclusive--whole grains! lean protein! probiotic dairy! (as well as the plant foods that everyone has always known they ought to eat). But at the same time, if you look at the wide variety of diet-specific publications--gluten-free, lactose-intolerant, IBS-sensitive, Paleo!--you can't help but be struck by their increasing specificity.

So, I ask you: what does "health food" mean to you? And is it the same as what it means to your parents? and your children? Because even if food mores may be everlastingly subjective--de gustibus non est disputandam--good health, fundamentally, is not.

Category: Shelf Life With Susie

5 Comments

susan g on 2/28/2012 at 10:14 PM

The advent of the Moosewood Cookbook was an exciting event for me. I was in the world of hard core health food, and had just become vegetarian (and still am). Anna Thomas's books were over my limit for dairy (as was the much loved Julia Child), but Moosewood felt like a good fit. And Beatrice Trum Hunter led the way (for me) in learning about whole grains and home baked goods. Oddly, the latest books which espouse whole grains (Boyce, Flour) still seem to me to have too much fat, too much sugar. I eat well and enjoy cooking. Thanks to EYB, many of my older cookbooks have come back to life... so I can "relive those thrilling days of yesteryear" -- even if it does mean some pushing and shoving into the 21st century world of toasted sesame oil, preserved lemons et al.
Leslie on 3/5/2012 at 9:12 AM

I graduated high school in 1977, and took a copy of Moosewood to college with me. I loved it, and Vegetarian Epicure. Today, eating healthy to me means minimizing simple carbs, eating local, eating seasonally, and minimizing fat. Today I'm not vegetarian (though I was for nearly 20 years) - but if I eat meat I insist it be local, and humanely raised. So perhaps for me - eating healthy also means for a healthy planet.
Susie Chang on 3/5/2012 at 11:19 AM

Susan g, I know what you mean about the old cookbooks coming back to life! (see this week's post) and Leslie, I agree with your common-sense approach to eating healthy...although, to be perfectly truthful, I don't always follow it to the letter!
Taccolina on 3/14/2012 at 2:38 AM

Leslie, I totally agree with your philosophy of food.i too took Moosewood to college, only it was 1990, and through it I learned about other cuisines that now seem mainstream. I am loving exploring it again and can see how easily somuch of it can be cooking for a healthy planet diet.
Harvestmoon on 3/27/2012 at 8:22 AM

1977 was 35 years ago, not 45!