New Exhibit: From Invalid Broth to Balanced Plates: A History of Nourishment

The exhibit I curated, From Invalid Broth to Balanced Plates: A History of Nourishment, is a bite-sized look at how people learned about basic nutrition and food safety through books and visual aids. Each object shows the evolution of these resources over the last 200 years, from simple popular texts to the USDA’s “MyPlate” infographic. This exhibit gives a little taste of history.

With my love of old recipe books and food, I first got the idea for this exhibit by finding Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. From there, it evolved into searching the archives and the library catalog to make a more comprehensive exhibit relating to the overall education of nutrition that was more accessible to the public sphere. Some of the books not only talk about cooking, but also about keeping spaces purposefully clean to help prevent the spread of diseases that were common at the time.

While some of the content in the objects on display may appear to be questionable by today’s standards, the same basic ideas are found in modern food culture and cookbooks. While nutritional research has become more scientific over time, the need to nourish the body with good food and nutritional food is the same.

This mini exhibit was a fun and entertaining project to put together, especially to showcase some of the often-overlooked materials, such as home guides that are hidden in the archives. While these books may not be the traditional medical textbooks found in a collection, they still provide a wealth of information on how individuals viewed nutrition in the past. From the plates of the past, we can create meals for the future.

Ashley Brown volunteered at Laupus Library History Collections this summer to shadow the tasks of an archivist. Ashley was born in Huntington Beach, California, but lived most of her life in Huntersville, North Carolina. She is the third of a set of triplets and about to be a rising senior in the history program in the fall.