Participant Info
- First Name
- Clare
- Last Name
- Gordon Bettencourt
- Country
- United States
- State
- CA California
- gordonce@uci.edu
- Affiliation
- University of California, Irvine
- Website URL
- Keywords
- food history, regulatory history, pure food movement, food adulteration, food science, consumer culture, food activism, FDA history
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- other credentials
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I am a history PhD candidate writing a dissertation on the history of America’s food identity standards, a provision within the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 allows the FDA to create regulations about how foods are named and formulated. You may have seen these regulations in the news recently as a part of the conversation surrounding plant-based “milks” being allowed to be called milks. This project examines how these regulations were written, and who they were meant to protect. My research suggests that the food standards reflect broader 20th-century power struggles in American life between the administrative state, corporate influence, and grassroots consumer activists. This project uses the standards as an archive to help explain corporate consolidation in the consumer marketplace, the rise processed foods, and public health concerns like the obesity epidemic in the second half of the 20th century.
- Recent Publications
“Like Oil and Water: Food Additives and America’s Food Identity
Standards in the Mid-Twentieth Century”
Diet and Disease
Edited by Dr. Matthew Smith and Dr. David Gentilcore
Bloomsbury Academic Publishing“Encouraging a Broader Narrative of Pure Food Legislation:
Understanding the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of
1938”
Retrospectives, Volume 4 Issue 1
- Media Coverage
- Social Media
- @dearclare
- Country Focus
- United States
- Expertise by Geography
- United States
- Expertise by Chronology
- 20th century, 21st century
- Expertise by Topic
- Food History, Material Culture
