Chapter 3: Consume not Consommé, food culture in the 1980s and 1990’s

Chapter 3: Consume not Consommé, food culture in the 1980s and 1990’s

In this chapter I will focus on the food culture of 1980s and 1990s Britiain, I will be looking at the expansion of mass-consumerism, industrialised foods, dining out and cultural values around eating. Suppose counterculturalism is about slow, organic, back to the land food and eating. In that case, mainstream food culture is arguably about mass-produced, consumer commodities much like other parts of our lives such as cars. Food author Claire Catterall describes food products on supermarket shelves as having the same 'designed process as a Ford Motor Car'45. Processed food goes through similar researching, designing, processing and marketing as other mass-produced products. By the end of it, like oil used in plastic, potatoes used in Pringles (which only arrived in the UK in 199146) are almost unrecognisable from their raw ingredients. A brief dip into food processing by food columnist and author Joanna Blythman in her book, 'Swallow This', allows us to see the extent to which this food is nothing like the homemade, nutrientdense food that activists of the past cherished. 'In the same way that you will never see a stray onion skin lying around the floor, you're extremely unlikely to see an eggshell either. Eggs are supplied to food manufacturers in many forms, but almost never in their original packaging. Instead, they come in powders, with added sugar, for instance, or as albumen-only special 'high gel' products for whipping. Liquid eggs will be pasteurised, yolk only, whites only, frozen or chilled, or with 'extended shelf life' (one month), whatever is easiest’47

Figure 3 'Lure of the Aisles' Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

45 Catterall, C. (1999). Food: design and culture. London: Laurence King Pub. Association With Glasgow. Pg. 23 46 Wilson, Bee. 2020. “How Ultra-Processed Food Took over Your Shopping Basket,” The Guardian <https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/feb/13/how-ultra-processed-food-took-over-your-shopping-basket-brazilcarlos-monteiro> 47 Blythman, J. (2015) Swallow This, HarperCollins Publishers. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/693624/swallow-this-pdf (Accessed: 11 January 2022 14

An enjoyment of consumerism, a more affluent nation and a post-second world war fear of running out was the perfect storm for the 1980s that propelled Tesco to the food giant we know today. As guardian columinist Anne Perkins observes, ‘Tesco’s glory years almost exactly match the dominance of Thatcherism48’, Margaret Thatcher, herself a daughter of a grocer and a chemist by training, became Prime Minister in May 1979. 49 She believed in an ideology of the free market and freedom of choice. Privatisation and the deregulation of the state was key to Thatcher’s policies, which bled into public utilities but most importantly for Tesco, planning regulations50. Local planning in the UK in the 1980s was focused on creating zones that allowed for more relaxed laws and public money being spent to bring the private sector back into deprived urban areas, dismantling big local authority power51 . The 'Diffusion of Innovation', is a behavioural change theory based on a bell curve that tracks the rate that new ideas become mainstream52. It shows us how ideas are developed and spread over time as a product gains momentum in society. If we plotted food onto this bellcurve, we could see changes throughout the decades. Let's look at innovators such as Cranks Wholefoods, for instance. We can see their food innovations travel along the bell curve to the end state of 'the late majority' as supermarkets, restaurants, and ready meals were developed around vegetarianism.

Cranks Wholefoods Vegetarian Movement Vegetarian Ready Meals

Figure 4 Diffusion of Innovation Bell Curve (Source: http://blog.leanmonitor.com/early-adopters-allies-launching-product/)

The global food system and the players within in it often adopt what has been created in order to keep up with mass-consumer trends and to subvert movements that try to change the way it works. This is even noticeable in the first large out-of-town supermarkets created in the 1980s, unlike today’s space age looking white boxes, these supermarkets adoped the faux rustic aesthetic suggestive of natural ingredients and processes, rather than industrial ones. Tesco supermarkets looked more like Kentish Barns than large corporate shopping spaces.

48 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/22/tesco-thatcherism-6-38-bn-loss-shopping 49 https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/margaret-thatcher-sworn-in 50 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40113491 51 A key-person involved in this deregulation during this period was Dame Shirley Porter, the daughter of Jack Cohen the founder of Tesco. She fronted the dismantling of The London Borough of Westminster Council under her premiership of Leader of the City Council between 1983-91 . 52 LaMorte, Wayne. 2019. “Diffusion of Innovation Theory,” Sphweb.bumc.bu.edu (Boston University School of Public Health) 15

Figure 5 'Kentish Barn' Tesco in 1995 in Burton-on-Trent (original photo - Staffordshire Live)

The 1990s saw an increase in this quick, mass-produced menu. In 1995, 4,596 new food and drink products were launched onto the British market, a whopping 88 new foods a week53. A report titled 'Eating into the Millenium' in 1997 suggested that nearly half of the UK eat their evening meals in front of the TV. With a third of people eating more takeaways than in 1992. In 1999, a million pounds a day was being spent on pre-chilled dinners for one54 . The majority of British citizens lapped up the convenience food, offered to them as ‘lavish meals’, ‘cooked by chefs so you don’t have to’ without the knowledge of what they were eating. As Carolyn Steel points out ‘few of us are equipped to negotiate the minefield of industrial food’55. Arguably in Britain, and presumably by design, people have lost the knowledge of what is good for their bodies, food cultures from the past allowed people to easily understand what they were eating and why. When we look at mainstream food spending it tells a very different story to one that the average ‘British Foodie’ might be proud of. We spend very little on food compared to our past, as Steel suggests one of the key problems to a better food future is our ideas around how cheap food should be. For instance, ‘in 1950, the British spent between 30 to 50 per cent of their income on food, today we spend 9 per cent (the least in Europe)’56 . The National Food survey tells an interesting story about how food spending changed between 1974 and 2000 when it ultimately stopped. According to the survey undertaken every year by Defra57 , 13.3p per person per week was spent on processed vegetables on average in 1974, compared to 103.1p in 1999. Conceivably, the fact that the National Food Survey didn't start tracking things like confectionary until 199258 , shows how limited spending was on these items until that time. Even in

53 Catterall, C. (1999). Food: design and culture. London: Laurence King Pub. Association With Glasgow. Pg 24 54 Ibid, pg.26 55 Steel, Carolyn. 2021. SITOPIA: How Food Can Save the World. (S.L.: Vintage) pg.57 56 Steel, Carolyn. 2021. SITOPIA: How Food Can Save the World. (S.L.: Vintage) pg.168 57DEFRA - UK GOVERNMENT. 2013. “National Food Survey - Archives,” Nationalarchives.gov.uk 58 DEFRA - UK GOV. 2017. “75 Years of Family Food,” 16

this short space, though, spending on these items went from 23.5p per person per household to 36.5p per person per household by 200059 . Amazingly, the 1990s saw the growth of overall interest in food, 1990 saw the launch of the TV Food Network60. It was the decade of the proliferation of TV chefs as national celebrities. ‘Ready Steady Cook’ came onto British screens in 1994, showcasing ways to make a 2-course meal out of a random bag of shopping chosen by an average shopper who looked perplexed at having to chop onions and add salt. The irony of this fascination with food when few people seemed to cook and large parts of the population were tucking into ready meals every night was not lost on some people at the time. In her book ‘Food Design and Culture’ written in 1999, Claire Catterall writes ‘, It is ironic that a time when the traditional role played by food in our culture and society is disappearing, we are becoming obsessive gourmands’61 . In 1993, British academic and cultural critic John Bayley wrote, ‘Food like sex is mainly in the head. Or if that seems exaggerated, what about the thought that thinking about food is the modern growth industry62” it was the 1990s where we saw food consumerism grow, impact the economy and change British culture. Food altered in the form of TV, cookbooks and dining out. The London dining scene was arguably transformed by the influence of the British design entrepreneur Sir Terence Conran. Conran dominated London’s food scene with ‘megabrasseries’63 serving cheaper, more accessible dining to the middle-classes. His restaurants offered a different dining experience, different cuisine and none fell under the same ‘brand feel’64. Conran’s megabrasseries created a food culture of their own in what was a desolate London at that time. His restaurants put London on the gastronomic map and led to a food economy boom in the city65 .

Figure 6 Evening Standard Newspaper Article from 1992 - Terence Conran

59 DEFRA - UK GOVERNMENT. 2013. “National Food Survey - Archives,” Nationalarchives.gov.uk 60 https://tastecooking.com/1990s-moments-changed-way-think-food/ 61 Catterall, C. (1999). Food: design and culture. London: Laurence King Pub. Association With Glasgow. Pg. 26 62 Bayley, John. 2018. Foodists: Writing about Eating from the London Review of Books (London: London Review Of Books) pg.34 (original article, 25.2.1993) 63 https://www.standard.co.uk/reveller/restaurants/goodbye-to-conranisation-6341004.html 64 https://www.thecaterer.com/news/restaurant/sir-terence-conran 65 https://www.hardens.com/uk-london/12-09-2020/rip-sir-terence-conran/ 17

Conran designed his food empire in the same way as he designed for habitat; one commentator at the time suggested that if he couldn’t find the suitable knives and forks, he created them himself66 . This ‘Conranisation’ of London’s food fitted with the times; it matched the fast-paced juggernaut of consumerism of the 1990s and the ‘Cool Britannia’ ideals of the Blair government. It was probably not a coincidence that Tony Blair chose Conran’s Le Pont de la Tour restaurant to dine with Hilary and Bill Clinton during their visit to the UK in 199767 . The global food system is often blamed for destroying heritage in food, changing our diets and creating food that highly-marketable for their own profits. This is arguably the case, but changes to affluence and the desire in the middle-classes to eat novelty and impress others cannot be overlooked. It is clear from the ‘Conranisation’ of food that in the 80s and 90s there was a drive to eat differently. As French Chef Auguste Escoffer pointed out there is a clamour for novelty from wealthy diners ‘with their blasé palates or anxiety to impress their guests’68 . The next chapter skips a few decades forwards to decipher the mainstream food scene between the 2010s and the present day, evaluating similarities and differences between the past.

66 Ibid 67 https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/national-archives-bill-clinton-turned-down-tea-with-the-queen-during-cool-britanniasummit-with-tony-blair-1110572 68 Pen Vogler. 2021. Scoff : A History of Food and Class in Britain (London: Atlantic Books) pg. 7 18