Courtesy of National Archives, Records of the Office of War Information
Posters are part of promotional campaigns, nutritional admonitions, factory regulations and gardening tips documented in a new exhibition at the National Archives.
WASHINGTON -- More than 80 years before "Got Milk?" there was "Eat the Carp!"
The slogan was dreamed up by the U.S. Department of Fisheries in 1911 as part of an effort to push the uncomely fish into the American kitchen, one of many ways the federal government has tried over the past two centuries to direct how Americans eat through promotional campaigns, nutritional admonitions, factory regulations and gardening tips.
Many of these are engagingly documented in a new exhibition, "What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?" which opens later this month at the National Archives.
Through documents, food labels, film footage, photographs and other artifacts from the Revolutionary War to the 1980s, the show offers a fascinating and at times quirky reminder of the vast and perpetual role that the federal government has played in all things edible, with goals both laudable and perverse.
The ongoing debates in Congress concerning food safety, which stemmed in large part from a slew of E. coli outbreaks, were preceded decades ago by an outrage over deaths due to toxic candy sold by street vendors. That helped spark the regulation of commercial food, documented through photos and papers in the exhibition.
Long before the makers of fatty crackers tried to sell Americans on their nutritional value, the government was pushing enriched white bread as a fantastic source of vitamin B1. The ever-evolving food pyramid was presaged by a nutrition chart that counted butter as its own food group.
"Government has been involved in our food system since the earliest days of Colonial America," said Andrew F. Smith, a food historian and author of numerous books on the subject. "I think among virtually all the foods you eat, the federal government has certainly had a role in it."
The idea of a show exploring the government's place in the national food chain was hatched by the archive's director of exhibits, Christina Rudy Smith, who stumbled upon a document from 1776 designed to entice men to enlist in the Continental Army through the promise of three solid meals a day.
Her inkling that the archives could be harnessed to tell the history of food in the United States was bolstered by the discovery of other items, such as a receipt for portable soup left behind from the Lewis and Clark expedition.
"People have been concerned with exactly the same things, from nutrition to food safety, for hundreds of years," said exhibit curator Alice Kamps.
The exhibition is organized into four parts: farm, which explores the relationship between government and growers; factory, which looks at the history of food regulation and processing; kitchen, which includes displays of nutritional studies and government education campaigns concerning food; and table, which documents the way government has fed people from schools to military bases.
The show also peers into the White House kitchen, with menus from state dinners, President Lyndon Johnson's barbecue apron and a smattering of recipes, like ones for Queen Elizabeth's scones and Lady Bird Johnson's chili.
