The Origins and Development of Food Policies in Europe

Contains the edited papers from the International Commission for Research into European Food History conference held in 1991 at Brunel University, West Germany. The conference was devoted to the development of European food policies, principally in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Several of the papers illustrate the significance of philanthropy in the initiation of food policies, others illustrate the voluntary initiatives for the feeding of poor schoolchildren in The Netherlands and England. Another paper demonstrates the ways in which scientists began to be incorporated into some sectors of the British food industry between 1870 and 1940, especially into some of the newer consumer industries where quality control was particularly important. Several papers are concerned with the introduction of new foods, illustrating how, in general, food habits are remarkably conservative and resistant to change; others illustrate the administrative difficulties of establishing rationing systems in the First World War.