GGIE Eats

Continuing our tie-ins with the SF Eats exhibit, this week's post highlights another food-related file here in the San Francisco History Center: the "Food and Beverages" folder from the Golden Gate International Exposition vertical files. The San Francisco History Center has several file cabinet drawers filled with folders of ephemera, guidebooks, and other documents from the GGIE, which was held on the specially-built Treasure Island in 1939-1940. The folder labeled "Food and Beverages" acts as a corporate-tinted window onto an earlier era of industrial food: there are recipe pamphlets from Libby's, Kingan's Reliable Meats, the California Prune Industry, and San Francisco's own Superba Packing Company, all displaying their respective products in terms of convenience, scientifically-based nutrition, and technological and social progress. A Heinz pamphlet advertises its exhibit as featuring eight period kitchens that "portray bygone days in the country and foreign lands, and one is a replica of the 1939 woman's workshop, the modern kitchen."

For balance in point of view, researchers might read Carey McWilliams's Factories in the Field.
All images are from the GGIE vertical files, folder GGIE. Food and Beverages, courtesy of the San Francisco History Center.