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Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet. By Bentley Amy . Oakland : University of California Press , 2014. Pp. ix, 223. $29.95, paper.
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In this informative work, Amy Bentley tastefully brings the history of baby food in America to life. The culmination of the author's expertise in cultural and societal histories of food, Inventing Baby Food, traces the emergence of commercialized baby food from the 1890s through the twenty-first century. Not only does it recognize the impact on marketing of economic state of the country, it also provides insight into marketing strategies that prey on maternal anxieties. Bentley also captures relevant concerns with the use of industrialized baby food, bringing into context scientific research of foods, their effect on human development, and their relationship to physical illnesses that can ultimately lead to morbidity and mortality.
Chapter 1 provides an important foundation for understanding the history of infant feeding as it evolved from breastfeeding, to the use of formula, and then to the introduction of solid foods. It clearly provides a timeline from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, noting the fears associated foods thought to cause illness, the discovery of basic food elements--vitamins and minerals, and the beginning of baby food industrialization. Most importantly, it discusses marketing and methods of advertisement as a driving force for the adoption of commercial baby food in the United States.
Promotion of commercial...