100 Most Influential Americans... Food Missing!

The Atlantic, in a rare fit of Time magazine-like listmaking and publicity seeking, recently posted its list of the 100 most influential Americans in American history. (That's not redundant; there are lots of non-Americans with huge influence on American history, like Columbus.) Not surprisingly, the list is a whole lot of politicians, a goodly number of inventors, and a smattering of totally obvious literary and cultural figures (Twain, Disney, Louis Armstrong). And if your life consists solely of flying your airplane and contemplating foreign policy, then those probably are the 100 most influential Americans.

On the other hand, Hugh Hefner didn't make the list. I ask you, look around the world you live in, and who do you think has influenced it more-- Herman Melville or Hef? Henry Clay, or the guy in the pajamas with four well-endowed fembots on his arms? I guess Americans don't have sex, as any ten seconds of modern television will demonstrate.

Likewise, when it comes to the other primary appetite, apparently we don't eat, either. I count exactly one person whose achievement has much of anything to do with food: Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the reaper and father of industrialized agriculture. Still, he's there as an inventor and corporate titan, more than because of any sense that food matters culturally.

Looking at the bottom half of the list-- the likes of Bill Gates, John C. Calhoun, John Steinbeck-- I would propose replacing some of them, at minimum, with the following, for hugely influencing what goes in our mouths:

• Lorenzo Delmonico, maestro of the first modern restaurant

• Fannie Farmer, author of a cookbook which, if not the first to comprehensively cover American cooking, was the first to include exact, reliable measurements for all ingredients

• Clarence Birdseye, inventor of the first practical, large-scale system for shipping and selling frozen food

• Ray Kroc, conqueror of the world

• Julia Child, who (not singlehandedly by any means-- but she had the benefit of being on TV) effected a cultural shift in how and what Americans cook

Any others?

How about C.W. Post and John Henry Kellogg in tandem, who pretty much decided what everyone would be having for breakfast for the next millennium. I'm sure far more Americans have spent far more time perusing the back of a cereal box than they have reading Huckleberry Finn.

alice waters, definitely

My food related nominee would be Asa Candler----Thanks to him, my dentist leads a very comfortable life.
( click on link for mini-bio )

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/ ... p?id=h-633

I’m a historian, and I hate these sorts of lists, as they encourage an ahistorical emphasis on the individual; all of the folks listed achieved great things but focusing only on singular achievement doesn’t tell us much about the way history or society works. Having said that, I’ll agree that the list seems to omit a number of folks who had a great impact on the everyday lives of Americans (and people everywhere), and on this score I’d agree absolutely that Ray Croc should be included on any such list. A few others I’d include whose lives connected to food in some way: I’d bump John Steinbeck (or Faulkner) in favor of Upton Sinclair, who may not have been as good a writer but whose work resulted in the first federal regulations of food safety. On that score, you might also want to include meat titans Swift and Armour, whose introduction of the “disassembly” line in the packing houses was the precursor of the modern factory, and Frederick Taylor (another who I’d include in any list of the most important Americans) whose development of “scientific management” revolutionized the organization of work and whose ideas also had a huge impact on the developing “science” of home economics. Kellogg, Post and Birdseye, surely. Fannie Farmer, though she really only codified a movement to “standardize” cooking that had been promoted by many other women, largely middle and upper class, before her, and to that list it would be necessary to include Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe (included for that other book she wrote) for their book, The American Woman’s Home, was the essential Victorian-era guidebook instructing women how to manage their homes (and their kitchens.) Henry Wallace, whose contributions to the development of hybrid corn (in essence, the first GMOs) transformed modern agriculture. Cesar Chavez, who brought to the attention of the nation the plight of millions in the food industry who had been mostly invisible before. That’s only a few of the people I’d add if the emphasis is on food, though they’re important anyhow (because food is, of course.) I’d keep John C. Calhoun, by the way. And the list is of the “most influential figures in American history” – not those necessarily “American,” (so where is Columbus, or for that matter John Winthrop and all the rest of the Puritans?) because if American birth is the criteria Tom Paine and a few others, I think, would have to go.

Sorry for the long-winded response. That’s why people prefer lists to overly verbose historical analysis!

On The Splendid Table last week* one of the guests is David Kamp, the author of a book called The United States of Arugula, a deeply silly title for a cultural history of how over the last 30-40 years food and cooking became, as he says, "a serious pastime rather than just a wifely duty... it's okay to spend the whole day shopping and cooking and then having a dinner party at the end of it."

Along the way he mentions his central figures in that cultural shift, including:

* James Beard, for first raising the awareness of food as a serious subject in the 30s and 40s, with honorable mentions to Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, and Clementine Paddleford, who he credits for introducing such Italian exotica as pizza (complete with pronunciation guide) and thus laying the groundwork for the triumph of Italian/Mediterranean flavors decades later

* Lynne asks about Alice Waters, and he agrees with her place but then expands it from her alone to talk about the entire counterculture approach to food, calling it their most lasting legacy on the broader culture (David Brooks might argue, in turn, whether there is that much of a broader culture that isn't the counterculture any more, but we'll let that pass), and going on to talk about less well known figures such as Bill Niman or Laura Chanel, the first person to sell goat cheese commercially in the US (which he says came out of the fact that goats were the perfect hippie livestock, requiring little skilled care and willing to eat anything)

• Dean and DeLuca and other entrepreneurs for turning commodities like olive oil into gourmet items

* Teruro Imazumi, coinventor of the California roll, for helping make Asian food accessible

* show date Jan. 13

Mike G wrote:On The Splendid Table last week* one of the guests is David Kamp, the author of a book called The United States of Arugula, a deeply silly title for a cultural history of how over the last 30-40 years food and cooking became, as he says, "a serious pastime rather than just a wifely duty... it's okay to spend the whole day shopping and cooking and then having a dinner party at the end of it."

I just finished reading this book and it's quite good, although he does tend to ramble off on tangents for a while. A good portion of the book is devoted to Child, Beard, and Waters. I found the story to be a little heavy on the 60s counter-culture influences, but for someone like me who wasn't even born when Chez Panisse opened, it was quite an interesting read.

The Splendid Table interview is quite good too. Since they've started providing the entire weekly show as a podcast, I never miss it.

Best,
Michael

Here's another interesting/infuriating list, which I am happy to see rates food-related things much higher: the top 25 innovations in human history.

How about John Deere or Cyrus McCormick who has helped reduce farm labor from 35% to 2% our work force?

jlawrence01 wrote:How about John Deere or Cyrus McCormick who has helped reduce farm labor from 35% to 2% our work force?

McCormick is on the list:

73 Cyrus McCormick
His mechanical reaper spelled the end of traditional farming, and the beginning of industrial agriculture.