The Remarkable Life and Career of Ellen Swallow Richards: Pioneer in Science and Technology

Chapter 19

Health Food Kitchens

“The fate of nations depends upon how they are fed.”

~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826)

Too many people were sick and dying, often because of their poor diet. To Ellen, it seemed as if they were practically digging their graves with their knives and forks. People had very little understanding of nutrition and cooking practices. Ellen was determined to educate them. She was frustrated with what she termed “physical degeneration and mental flabbiness.”

She decided to open a community kitchen. There she could show people how to eat well and spend their food dollars wisely. She would offer affordable, ready-cooked, nutritious meals and demonstrate how low-cost foods could be as healthy for a family as pricey ones. With no frozen foods or even many good canned ones available, these take-out meals could also be an enormous help to working class people. The working class poor often spent ten hours or more each day toiling in factories and mills, and then had to muster enough energy to prepare meals at home after that.

The New England Kitchen was the homey-sounding name Ellen gave to this project. The first funding came from Pauline Agassiz Shaw, a wealthy woman with a generous heart whose father was the well-known scientist Louis Agassiz. Other contributions, both money and equipment, followed. Ellen’s good friend Mary Hinman Abel was an enormous help, working with Ellen to set up and run the kitchen.

Deciding which meals should be offered took ...