Inventing Baby Food

Taking candy from a baby is easy. Feeding a baby is not. Amy Bentley begins Inventing Baby Food with a personal anecdote many parents will recognize—that bewildering first walk down the baby food aisle. Bentley then traces the development of the baby food industry and ties it to themes of American consumerism, public health, and food culture. Meticulously researched with sources ranging from company advertisements to industry statistics, Inventing Baby Food makes important contributions to American cultural history and the histories of business, consumerism, and food culture. Concise writing and a forthright structure makes it easy to follow Bentley's argument: “the creation and industrialization of baby food in the twentieth century played a central role in shaping American food preferences” (p. 6). Her argument is based on three key ideas. First, the rise of the baby food industry is largely responsible for the decline in breast-feeding in the twentieth century. Second, baby food paved the way for an American palette that favors highly processed foods. Third, Bentley argues that during the last century, “mothers in every era [were] made to feel guilty and inadequate with regarding to infant feeding” (p. 7

Anecdote · Argument (complex analysis · Baby food · Consumerism · Culture of the United States · Food industry · Industrialisation · Political science · Taste · American Environmental and Regional History · American Literature and Culture · Culinary Culture and Tourism · History · Law · Medicine · Psychology