Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1982. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 275-286). Also available via the Internet.

The purpose of this study was (1) to determine some of the problems in family foods and nutrition of dual-role mothers in Giles County, Virginia, and (2) to make recommendations of types of assistance homemaking teachers could render these mothers in solving some of their problems. Using schedule forms especially prepared for this study, information relating to problems in family foods and nutrition was personally collected from 32 mothers, and by mail from 32 mothers. None of the respondents had children who had reached the eighteenth birthday. Study of the data obtained on the schedule forms showed that the mothers who participated in this investigation were generally poor managers of time, energy, and available resources, had inadequate knowledge of nutrition, and failed to exercise desirable kitchen and shopping practices. The investigator recommends that homemaking teachers (1) emphasize experiences which lead to better use of time, energy, and available resources and (2) consider possible ways and means of promoting adult education programs which will meet the needs of the dual-role mothers. / Master of Science

Preface: Knowing how people eat-their foods, preparation styles, and dining customs-helps us understand style of food preparation, a cuisine profile of a culture, the physical how they live. Not merely a is the culinary and gastronomic and behavioral expression of a culture's social and aesthetic values. A cuisine has a dynamic relationship with its time, and historical cuisines also relate to our own time: an understanding of food in history better enables us to interpret and even influence current food styles and patterns. Yet the researcher interested in historical cuisines faces a dilemma: how to conduct historical studies of the subject. Although we have methods for studying the chemical, nutritional, economic, and social aspects of food, we lack methods for studying historical cuisines or for defining the aesthetic and stylistic aspects of a cuisine. Most historical research centered on food has employed agricultural economics in relating food production data to a general nutritional status, while most research on food in culture has studied food habits with the objective of improving nutritional status. American food seems to have been especially neglected in the al ready scanty store of historical food studies, and almost all of the American studies have examined folk or ethnic food. Because so few studies of food history or of cookery styles have been conducted, we lack what might be termed a "body of knowledge." Food history has no orderly scholarly arena, no discipline. One reason for the lack of systematic studies of food in history is an aversion among many scholars in food and nutrition to "cuisines," to the stylistic and aesthetic aspects which might seem merely decorative aspects of man's diet. Another reason is a lack of training among those professionals in humanistic disciplines. But an overriding reason for the absence of scholarly histories of cuisines is the temporal, transitory nature of a cuisine. If we compare cuisines with related popular arts such as costume, textiles, and home furnishings, a distinction quickly emerges: costumes, textiles, but food does not. and furnishings may survive as extant artifacts, However humble or grand, a meal is prepared to be consumed. In no way can we study a meal of the past firsthand; in no way can we know with certainty what tastes, textures, and smells met our ancestors at the dinner table. Descriptions and pictures of a meal reveal no more about a dining experience than descriptions and pictures of a musical event bring us the sounds or the experience of listening. Food in seventeenth-century Virginia serves well as a test subject for a historical method. Historians traditionally have neglected daily life and common people in studies of that period, concentrating instead on politics and the elite. More recently, historical archaeologists and scholars in material culture have begun investigating the realm of daily experience in which food figures importantly, but they have discovered little about the stylistic and aesthetic aspects of the cuisine. This study begins to address those two problems: the need for a method for studying historical cuisines, and the unanswered questions about Virginia's early cuisine. Although the method developed and tested in this study proved complex and demanding, it also brought rewards. Working across disciplines and using three categories of research sources-artifacts, documents, and iconographic records-proved especially helpful in uncovering and sifting data. Much was revealed about the physical context of Virginia's seventeenth-century cuisine: the available foods, the cooking and dining equipage. Aesthetic values were explained to some extent, as were dining customs. But the absence of primary recipe books, the dearth of information about seventeenth-century women, and our general ignorance of daily life during that century hindered discovery of the activities relating to food-the techniques and procedures for preparing, cooking, storing, and serving food. Additional studies, new sources, and refined methods may begin to unlock even those mysteries. / Ph. D.

Make Your Food Dollars Count is a program the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published to help low-income people improve their nutritional status and maximize the use of their food dollars. This program was implemented in Roanoke City at Mountain House, a special rehabilitation program sponsored by Mental Health Services of the Roanoke Valley; Melrose Tower Retirement Village and Morningside Manor Retirement Village. Program effectiveness was measured by food dollars saved, a decrease in good dollars spent on foods in the firth food group (fats, sweets, and alcohol), and improved dietary intake. The main instruments used to measure effectiveness were pre and post-demographic surveys, pre and post 24-hour recalls, and four food habit surveys. A total of 53 people participated in this study. Results show that were was an average $1.15 weekly decrease in the amount of money 12 participants attending sessions and four spent on foods in the fifth food group. An average of $4.23 per week was saved by those six participants who attended all four sessions. Fruit and Vegetable Adequacy and Milk and Milk Product Adequacy Subscores improved for all participants attending sessions one and four. The greatest dietary changes occurred for those participants attending all four sessions. / M.S.