My favorite random food trivia question asks which restaurant was the biggest consumer of kale until about 2013.
The answer is Pizza Hut, which used the leaves to garnish its salad bars. The idea of using a popular superfood for decoration now is unthinkable, but this small change is exemplary of a broader revolution in the American food scene. In Columbia, Missouri, my favorite bakery and cafe is around the corner from the Korean taco place and down the street from the brown-rice vegetarian restaurant. My favorite pizza shop offers the option of vegan cheese, and the local biscuit food truck offers the option of replacing bacon or sausage with tempeh. Tofu, nutritional yeast, and kale are all available in the grocery store alongside brands like Stonyfield Farm and Garden of Eatin’. In Hippie Food, Jonathan Kauffman makes the argument that many of these changes can be traced back to the counter culture of the 1960s and 1970s.
The seven chapters of Hippie Food take the reader from the communal origins of the food movement in Southern California following World War Two through the emergence of industrial food systems epitomized by, for instance, Whole Foods. Kauffman takes a lively, journalistic approach to the story, focusing in on a couple of characters that exemplify the theme of that chapter while also making nods at the wider changes taking place. The first chapter, for instance, follows Robert Bootzin (aka Gypsy Boots) , the proprietor of the Back to Nature Health Hut, and Jim Baker, whose food career began with the Aware Inn, though the latter became better known as Father Yod of the Source Family.
Kauffman emphasizes how the food of the counter culture had twin motivations: matching the larger philosophical principles of the movement and health. The prophets of the health movement took their inspiration from eastern philosophy, including pioneers of macrobiotics like George Ohsawa, who claimed his diets would cure disease by bringing balance to the body and whose advice ranged from the beneficial (whole grains, alternatives to meat like Seitan) to the potentially deadly (consume no vitamin C). Other movements, like the Tessajara Bread Book espoused the latent zen potential of baking bread.
Following these principles was not easy. At numerous points, Kauffman notes that it was easier to start a farm, a co-op or counter-culture cafe than to sustain one. Most of these initiatives were the province of the young and energetic, and even when they could attract a following, selling goods at cost––or even giving it away––had a way of interfering with paying rent, let alone employees. And yet, healthy food and organic farming matched the broader cultural concerns, particularly over chemicals, opening the door to big business.
Hippie Food is the food of my upbringing. My kitchen is stocked with rice, beans, whole grain flour, and tofu and we eat Seitan at least every couple weeks. I grew up working inventory at the local co-op. Kauffman name-checks a bakery my parents were involved in in Ann Arbor, Michigan and one of the Vermont communes he talks about was in the town where I went to high school. Beyond the personal connection, though, Kauffman spins a lively story filled with colorful characters as he supplemented the recent surge in academic interest in this history with interviews with more than a hundred people.
For as much as I loved Hippie Food, I kept coming back to one issue. Kauffman acknowledges in the introduction that his is a largely white story, offering a few explanations, including the demographic makeup of the United States at the time, the segregation and racism in areas where the back -to-the-land movements took root, and the “pervasive nostalgia” and romanticism that did not appeal to particularly African American audiences (14). I don’t dispute any of this, particularly in terms of the racial issues with regard to African Americans and found Kauffman’s explanation of how this movement went ended up going commercial compelling, but nevertheless couldn’t help but note the absence of immigrants other than the pseudo-spiritual guides of the movement. This meant that Kauffman’s central thesis about how the counter culture shaped how millions of Americans eat is undeniable, it nevertheless fell short of capturing the full extent of the diversity of the current American food scene.
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The normal course of the semester caused a slowdown in my reading, so I’m still working my way through David Gooblar’s The Missing Course, and started reading Z, Vassilis Vassilikos’ formerly-banned novel about a conspiracy to kill a left-leaning Greek politician.
Noodlings 