From Cannonballs to Coffeepots

Benjamin Thompson, a/k/a Count Rumford

First, a digression. We Americans value niceness. In our culture, it is just as important to be nice as to be good. It is not enough to do the right thing, to simply be honest and charitable. We also should be really nice. In our books and movies, the good guy is nice and pleasant. The bad guy is rude and mean. 

It is not so in all cultures.  Some years back, I attended a seminar at the East West Center in Honolulu. Most of my fellow attendees were Asian, while the instructors were American. In private, my comrades grumbled that the instructors seemed cloying and insincere. "If they have something to say," one remarked after a round of class presentations, "They should just say it." The instructors were all-American. They smiled a lot when they spoke to the class and criticism was preceded with a compliment. The Asians hated it.

In another example, before a trip to France I read up on French culture, and was struck by the separation of helpfulness from niceness. This is a problem for the French when working with American tourists, because in the French view, it is not necessary to be nice in order to he helpful. But Americans often come away from encounters with tour guides, hotel clerks, train conductors and the like feeling like they've been assaulted. Although they might have been given good information and treated fairly, the tourists didn't get the smiley face and have-a-nice-day attitude that Americans expect. 

I guess that's why I'm so fascinated with the man who started the first school lunch program for poor children. He was an amazing person -- an inventor, an innovator, a man who did many things for the betterment of society. But he was not nice. His biographers use words like "despicable" to describe him. 

Benjamin Thompson Birthplace

Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814) was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in a home that is now a museum listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. His father, a farmer, died before little Benjamin reached the age of two. The boy was educated in the village school and soon realized that farming was not for him. He had a mind for science and studied hard. He even walked to Cambridge to attend lectures at Harvard College by the distinguished mathematician and physicist, John Winthrop. He became a teacher, and moved to Concord, New Hampshire (formerly called Rumford) to accept a teaching position in 1772. There, he met and married a wealthy widow who was 14 years older than him -- and he instantly gained the wealth and status that he craved. 

When the Revolution started, he took the side of the British. The local populace suspected that he was a British spy (which he was) and when an angry mob came after him, he fled, abandoning his wife and child, forever. He moved to Boston, where he continued his spy activities and recruited people to the British cause, until he joined the British evacuation of Boston in 1776. 

In London, he conducted experiments on gunpowder and continued his scientific studies with guns and cannons.  For his service to the crown, he was knighted. He became famous within military circles for his work with gunpowder and munitions, and in 1783, accepted the position of Major-General and Privy Counselor to the Elector of Bavaria. He moved to Munich. 

Thompson's illustration of his cannon-boring experiments

During his travels in Europe, he met an elderly lady who had a strong influence on him. All that is known of her is in one line of a letter that he wrote, that this unnamed woman "opened my eyes to other kinds of glory than that of victory in battle."  

After meeting this woman, he devoted the rest of his life to the betterment of mankind.  He stayed in Bavaria for five years and became a pioneer in the Social Reform Movement. One of the many good things he did there was found the Poor People's Institute, which provided food and work for the poor. He also started a school for poor children, which included lunch. This place was not paradise. Everyone was expected to work. And the food was basically a soup made of potatoes, peas and barley (giving rise to the term "soup kitchen").  Funding was always an issue, and Thompson learned as much as was known about nutrition in order to provide healthful, but budget-conscious meals. 

Monument to Count Rmford in the English Garden, Munich

He became famous throughout Europe for his work, and the governments of England, Germany, France, Scotland, and Switzerland consulted with him to set up similar programs.

While in Bavaria, he also came up with work programs for idle soldiers, set up the English Garden in Munich, started a veterinary school, and convinced farmers to start growing nutritious foods, such as turnips and potatoes, which, up to that time, were suspected as poisonous.

In his quest for ever more efficient ways to prepare food, he invented such things as: the double boiler, the kitchen range, the fireless cooker, the percolator, and the pressure cooker. In recognition of his achievements, he was named a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. He took on the title Count Rumford, in honor of the town in New Hampshire where his fortunes changed. 

Where would we be without the percolator?

After five years in Munich, his patron died, and, having no other friends, probably on account of his abrasive personality, he returned to London. There, he ran another feeding program, serving 60,000 meals per day. He also continued inventing things that made people's lives better. The most famous of these is the Rumford Fireplace, which made him extremely wealthy in his own right. 

The peripatetic count moved one more time – to Paris, where he lived out his life still conducting research into the nature of heat and light. In physics circles, he is remembered as the Father of Thermodynamics. Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, died in Paris in 1814. He left the bulk of his estate to Harvard College.

This article, although way too long by blogging standards, barely scratches the surface of the story of Count Rumford. Saint or sinner? You decide.

A Brief History of the National School Lunch Program

School lunch in Tokyo includes rice, soup, fish, pickled cucumbers and milk

The National School Lunch Program is getting a bad rap these days. A free lunch for low-income children? Is it a communist conspirancy? A muddle-headed liberal give-away program? Why are school lunches so high in calories and low in quality? A recent study found that school lunches in the US are nutritionally lacking. Unfortunately, the study was published in Canada. It was also published in California - click here for more info. 

Sometimes, in a case like this, it's instructive to look at the reason such a large and dysfunctional program ever came to be. The reasons are, to say the least, enlightening.  

The National School Lunch Program began in 1946 in the interest of national security. It was also a sort of "give-away" program for farmers, mainly as a way to distribute excess commodity foods, such as cheese. 

During both World Wars One and Two, an astounding 40% of military inductees  of both sexes were rejected for service because of poor health, much of which was related to poor childhood nutrition. Twenty percent alone were rejected for poor dental health. Other medical conditions included rickets, pellagra, and goiter. Also, there were a large number of inductees who lacked basic academic skills. The link between eating and learning was well understood. as it has been for hundreds of years. As an example, an iodine deficiency results in both goiters and mental insufficiency.

Ironically, during the same time period, farmers were unable to sell all the food they produced. One of the tragedies of the Great Depression was that people starved while farmers produced an abundance of food. But people had no money to buy food -- and the farmers needed money to keep producing food. The farmers were forced to destroy tons and tons of good food in the name of economics.

Dairymen dumping milk during the Great Depression

Now, Congress had been supplying funds to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a school lunches since 1932, but funding was spotty. For instance, the first grant went to a few counties in southern Missouri to pay people to cook school lunches. This was actually as part of a jobs program, not out of concern for child nutrition. Most of the grants were year-to-year rather than long-term. School districts were wary of investing in proper lunchroom equipment if they weren't sure they would be able to pay people to operate it or purchase foodstuffs in future years.

So in 1946, the National School Lunch Act was enacted. Section 2 of the Act defines its dual purpose:

 "It is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress, as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food, by assisting the States, through grants-in aid and other means, in providing an adequate supply of food and other facilities for the establishment, maintenance, operation and expansion of nonprofit school lunch programs.”

The program was successful. As a result, it was expanded to include breakfast and there was even special legislation enacted to improve access to milk. It spurred tons of research on childhood nutrition and the links between nutrition and learning.  The USDA has posted a very interesting History of the National School Lunch Program on its website. Check it out for the full history. 

Partly as a result of these programs, we understand more about good food for kids. It's a shame that the present state of child nutrition in America is in crisis. These days, the biggest reason that military enlistees are turned down is obesity.  Retired military officers are supporting the reform of school lunches, calling obesity a threat to national security. 

School lunch in Washington, D.C.  YUMMY!

This is a fascinating topic that has captured the public's attention. Jamie Oliver, a British celebrity chef,  did a reality series on school lunches that has the industry a-buzzing (he did the same thing last year in a British school lunch program). Top Chef had a special episode where the contestants were expected to cook a tasty, nutritious school lunch within the same budgetary constraints that school districts are forced to live with. It was hilarious. My pet peeve about this episode was that celebrity chef Sam Kass, who was a guest judge, stated categorically that the tomato is a fruit. Shortly after the segment aired, the Obama administration made this guy some kind of school lunch guru. He doesn't even know the difference between a fruit and a vegetable. Clearly, the cult of personality has seduced the liberal left of which I was once a part. 

A vegetable

Naturally, I want to get into the act, too. Over the next few months, this blog will examine the historic context for our national nutritional pickles. Stay tuned and comment often.