When traversing the dangers of the modern supermarket, there’s no escaping the baby food section. This colourful creature always lurks strategically close to the checkouts, so that even customers without a need for baby food know its appearance, products and brands. The normalcy of our current form of baby food contrasts sharply with the contentious […]
Author: Public History Student
Fad or Food of the Future? Uncovering the History of Plasmon Protein Powder
It’s just a tiny carton box, one so small that you could probably carry it in your pocket without noticing it´s there. Yet, it is full of promises. The words on the cover that lure you in suggest that whatever is inside this box will connect you to nature, improve your mental capabilities and, last […]
The Army Biscuit: breaking teeth in the trenches
‘An army marches on its stomach’, Napoleon once famously proclaimed, or so it is believed. When thinking about war, we usually don’t think about what the soldiers had for breakfast or when their lunch break started, but instead, we imagine fighting armies, bullets whizzing through the air, and tanks rolling into enemy territory. The First […]
Recipes of scarcity: Dealing with rations in (post-)WWII Britain
Brown vegetable soup, celery and sprout salad or pumpkin and apple pie. Does this sound tasty to you? The recipes are from the Ministry of Food cookery calendar. These recipe advice sheets were issued bi-monthly in an effort to assist and improve diets during food rationing following World War Two. The cookery calendars were part […]
Tupperware – female empowerment in a plastic container
When the Tupperware brand was founded in 1942, and the first product launched in 1946, it predominantly advertised to the suburban housewife. The product itself, an airtight plastic container was marketed to keep food fresh for longer and thus make the lives of these woman easier. The key to the success of the brand was […]
Burn down a barricade, buy La Vache Qui Rit
Wait what, they turned the Laughing Cow into a sexy party girl? They sure did, look at how she is flirting with you. How else are they supposed to sell their unremarkable cheese? La Vache Qui Rit’s soft, crustless, processed white cheese is new and exciting in the 1920s, but loses its innovative nature as […]
The Italian Job: Wine Tales from Prohibition
Most people love an occasional drink, so what would you do when alcohol becomes illegal? You could go as far as creating a monopoly in illegal homemade wine production and trade. Because that is how far the Italian-American community in California went during the Prohibition. As a result, the Italians came to be most identified […]
Joris Fonteijn dissected: the anatomy lesson of Dr. Deijman
On the table lies a dead man’s body. His stomach is empty, his brain is visible. Behind him stands a man, whose head is missing. His hands perform a section on the brain of the corpse. On the left stands a second person. He carefully follows the actions of the man behind the corpse. In […]
Behind the meaning of loneliness
“The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.” Writer Douglas Coupland describes the feeling of loneliness in a striking way. It’s an emotion that every person has to deal with on an individual level. However, it’s also a collective emotion of the community. It gives […]
The Pink Triangle: from badge of shame to symbol of self-identity
Each year thousands of people visit the Homomonument in Amsterdam to celebrate the pride, social and self-acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. The monument consists of three large pink triangles that form a bigger triangle. It was built to commemorate everyone who had died because of their sexual orientation. Nowadays, the pink triangle has become a […]