Chapter 2: Cranking up the counter-culture from the 1960’s onwards

Chapter 2: Cranking up the counter-culture from the 1960’s onwards

The full-bellied bliss that the global system affords many has never been enough for some. Changing the food system or using food to change other social, political and economic issues is perhaps more critical. In this chapter I will focus on the people who started such movements to resist the culture created by industrialised foods, global food powers and large business like Tesco in the 1960s and 70s in both Britain and America.

The 19th and early 20th century saw the invention of canning, freezing, and other preserving methods. Following the second world war II there was a surge in the science of food procession and American manufacturers' ability to manipulate our food into forms never seen in nature26 . 1960s America saw a rise in the rejection of these industrialised ways of making food, and a counterculture movement, termed 'Hippie Food' by writer Jonathan Kauffman, started. It was the political act of choosing to eat organic, local, and pre-industrial food. Counter-culturalist groups, mainly comprised of white middle-class youths, 'realised that food had the ability to be used as a tool for political expression’27 and used it to challenge the status quo in America. As activist and researcher Miller suggests, 'when we fight about food, we also fight about social change'28 . Arguably an early British example of the conventional business-led approach to food supply being challenged by a community-base was in Rochdale in England in 1844 a group of weavers created an early food coop selling flour, oatmeal, and other products to members to divert where their wages were spent after having their wage increase rejected29. These early examples show how people started to link challenging the food system and social issues. As well as wanting social change, activists wanted to make changes to food culture itself. In the UK, as part of the Wholefoods movement, an innovative restaurant called Cranks was founded in London’s Covent Garden, a former flower market that was re-purposed by bohemian entrepreneurs. Cranks opened in 196130 by husband and wife team David and Kay Canter. Cranks set out to change people's views on vegetarian cuisine, 'In contrast to the traditional, tired lettuce that makes the appetite wilt too, these salads could change the eater's whole view of vegetables'31 not just by opening cafés but by developing a lifestyle around them. Today vegetarianism is on the menu of every café and restaurant in the UK and Cranks Wholefoods no longer exists in café form. Once a 'vocal for local' café, Cranks wholefoods was eventually sold to Nando's Grocery. A large international grocer selling processed food, such as Nando's Piri-Piri Sauce32. In 2017, Nando's grocery created Cranks ready meals and boxed sandwiches sold through Holland and Barret and Waitrose33, a far cry from the original wholesome beginnings of 1961.By the twenty-first century, what had once been a subversive idea had become so mainstream that Cranks was no longer needed and, as Covent Garden had been gentrified meaning that rents were too high, it was no longer economically viable either. The powers within the food system have adopted this as

26 Ibid. pg. 5 27 Johnson, S. (2012). Colby College Digital Commons @ Colby Edible Activism: Food and the Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. pg.6 [online] Available at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1637&context=honorstheses. 28 Miller, S. (2008). Edible action: food activism and alternative economics. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Pub. Pg.4 29 Kauffman, J. (2018). Hippie food: how back-to-the-landers, longhairs, and revolutionaries changed the way we eat. New York: William Morrow, An Imprint Of Harpercollins Publishers. Pg. 239 30 Cranks Wholefoods (2021). All About Us - Cranks - Great Tasting Wholesome Food. [online] www.cranks.co.uk. Available at: https://www.cranks.co.uk/about-us/ [Accessed 20 Dec. 2021] 31 Canter, D. (1982). The cranks recipe book. London: Panther. 32 The Caterer (2002). Cranks may spring up again outside London. [online] The Caterer. Available at: https://www.thecaterer.com/archive/cranks-may-spring-up-again-outside-london [Accessed 20 Dec. 2021]. 33 Cranks Wholefoods (2021). All About Us - Cranks - Great Tasting Wholesome Food. [online] www.cranks.co.uk. Available at: https://www.cranks.co.uk/about-us/ [Accessed 20 Dec. 2021] 11

a key ingredient in what they offer consumers. Nevertheless, with the success of Vegetarian food came the demise of the counterculture. The food system and its conglomerates won. As mass production increases, the distance between where food comes from and the consumers that eat it creates a disconnection that obscures the knowledge about the conditions in which foods were made34 . Under the same brand people may believe they are eating the same wholesome food but now under industrialised processes that food is different. Cranks are not the only tale that begins and ends in this way. It is likely that some of their original consumers, once delighted by the difference and counterculture, now eat their boxed sandwiches and ready meals in the belief that it is the same thing. As editor of Food, Culture and Society Belasco suggests, today's political and environmental themes that characterise the global food system critique have echoes in the language of ecological activists of the 1970s'35. The need for food system change and how this change is discussed is very much aligned with the counterculture movements of the past. Belasco stated that 'to be self-sustaining, a cuisine needs more than ideas about food; it also needs the food itself'36. The organic food movement in the 1970s was another form of counterculture to the industrialised food system. Kauffman describes those who started the organic food movement as 'back-to-the-landers37. His account of the people seated at the start of the 'Natural Organic Farming Association' in the USA in 1971 gives us an insight into the activists who started this movement. "The majority of people seated around him [Kaymen] were hirsute, homespun, and under the age of thirty. They had fled the cities for the land a few years before"38 . This movement started the organic movement in America and shaped its values. It was led by hundreds of back-tothe-landers who brought their ideas and counterculture about food, politics, and community. The soil association, a central backbone to the UK’s organic movement was founded in 1943 by a pioneering female farmer, Eve Balfour39 . Her book Living Soil documented her own experience of experimental farming that involved non-chemical methods. However, the number of organic farmers remained small and it wasn’t until the social unrest of the late 1960s, leading up to the oil crisis of 1973, that the UK saw the “back to nature” philosophy of the modern environmental movement40 . In the mid-1980s, a number of supermarkets including Tesco began to stock organic food, bringing the movement into the mainstream41 .

Back in America, the lack of organic farming knowledge resulted in the decline in the number of new countercultural communes that had been created and devoted to organic farming in the early 197042s. The labour intensity of some organic methods also emerged as a barrier to success. Even within the farming community, organic farming did not become mainstream. Many farmers still cite the overall more expensive inputs and lack of stable outputs to this day.

34 Yount-Andre, C. (2021). Moral Orders of Multinationals: Registers of Value in Corporate Food Production. Signs and Society. Signs and Society, 9(10.1086/713153), pp.89–117. Pg.96 35 Warren James Belasco (2006). Appetite for change: how the counterculture took on the food industry. 2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 36 Ibid. Chapter 4 pg.10 37 Kauffman, J. (2018). Hippie food: how back-to-the-landers, longhairs, and revolutionaries changed the way we eat. New York: William Morrow, An Imprint Of Harpercollins Publishers. Pg. 169 38 Ibid. pg. 170 39 Soil Association (n.d.). Our history | Soil Association. [online] www.soilassociation.org. Available at: https://www.soilassociation.org/who-we-are/our-history/. 40 politics.co.uk (n.d.). Organic Farming - All you need to know. [online] Politics.co.uk. Available at: https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/organic-farming/ [Accessed 10 Jan. 2022]. 41 Soil Association (n.d.). Our history | Soil Association. [online] www.soilassociation.org. Available at: https://www.soilassociation.org/who-we-are/our-history/. 42 Warren James Belasco (2006). Appetite for change: how the counterculture took on the food industry. 2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 12

It seems that the urge to retain good food against the backdrop of the global food system was not only part of American and British counter culturalism but also on the European continent. In 1983, Carlo Petrini and Italian activists started the Slow Food Movement. The values that underpinned the movement were 'preserving regional traditions, good food, gastronomic pleasure and a slow pace of life'43 . As suggested by 'Food Activism' writer Carole Counihan, 'Democracy is expressed, through consumer choice, regulation of food production, control of food distribution, and goals for universal access to resources'44. Like the counterculture movements in America and Britain, the slow food movement enables a democracy through food. The above movements show the desire to use food for social, political and economic change throughout history. They are all rooted in the counterculture movements of the past. These ideas about food and the food system are still present in food system change today. This dissertation will evaluate the similarities and differences of modern-day food systems’ change to these movements in future chapters. However, this chapter only shows a one-sided story about food; Organic, Vegetarian, and Coop culture, which are still not the mainstream and were not even during the counterculture movements. The next chapter will explore the other side of the food story, one of mainstream food culture, taste and consumer choices. Arguably this is still the most predominant ‘foodie’ type today.

43 https://www.slowfood.org.uk/about/about/what-we-do/ 44 Counihan, C. and Siniscalchi, V. (2014). Food activism: agency, democracy and economy. London, Uk ; New York, Ny: Bloomsbury Academic. Chapter 1. pg 6 13