El paradigma comunicativo

Community health centres were not the only places from which a nutrition dis- course radiated. As we have seen, schools were also important places in which nutrition was deployed, especially through the establishment of school medical services. The first medical survey of school children in Australia was undertaken in Tasmania in 1906, promoted by the results of the English inquiry into physical degeneration. Subsequently, a scheme of routine medical examination of children at school was introduced in New South Wales (New South Wales Department of Public Instruction, 1908). Eventually children at school underwent medical exam- inations about every three years and, where considered necessary, treatment by a nurse was often undertaken during a home visit (Reiger, 1986: 166). School chil- dren were also weighed and measured as a way of tracking normal growth. The English surveys on physical degeneration also spelled out the need for physical education which became a formal part of the curriculum of schools in all Australian states.

Schools also became the site for education about the domestic economy move- ment, developed earlier in America by Wilbur Atwater and co-workers. State elementary schools in Victoria began teaching domestic economy, also known as domestic science, in the late nineteenth century as a preparation for an ‘ordinary calling of life’ (Reiger, 1986: 59). In 1904, however, the Australian Institute of Domestic Economy established a national movement by successfully lobbying state governments to fund training centres for domestic science teachers. The domestic economy movement applied scientific principles to the efficient running

of the home. Scientific cookery, including the theory and practice of nutrition, stressed the importance of avoiding unnecessary waste. As Reiger points out, this ethos resonated well with the ascetic Protestant movements whose concern for thrift and hard work permeated the thinking behind domestic manuals of the nine- teenth century (Reiger, 1986: 64).

The education of school children in scientific principles of food preparation was considered not only to be an investment in the health and efficiency of future generations, but also to be a strategy for the immediate introduction of nutritious food into the children’s families. As Shapiro tells us of the cookery classes in United States schools, some decisions had to be made about the best ways of deal- ing with the food that had been prepared in class by the students. Although the students were allowed to taste a little, mainly to see if meals conformed to the cor- rect standards, a major objective was for them to buy the food at cost:

In this way the stews and custards prepared at school would find their way to the girls’ homes, which was one of the major goals of the experiment. In addition, the pupils were supposed to take the recipe home with them and cook the same meals for the families. ... After six years the principal esti- mated that 1,600 girls had cooked 152,621 dishes at home.

(Shapiro, 1986: 141)

With the classroom as a focus for action about, and contemplation of, food, nutri- tional discourses were extended out into the community and into homes themselves. The domestic science movement, in which nutrition was firmly embedded, gained particular prominence during the early part of the century because the First World War and, later, the Depression years required that home management be carried out as economically as possible. These conditions pro- vided increased possibilities for a greater penetration of nutrition discourses into the home.

During the inter-war years, nutrition became part of a much larger network in which newspaper columns and magazines, especially those directed at women, reported widely on ideas about scientific ways of preparing food. For example, ‘Rita’, a writer of a home page in the Melbourne Herald during the 1920s and 1930s, and ‘Vesta’, who had a similar role with the Argus, regularly included the subject of scientific cookery and nutrition in their columns. Reiger (1986: 75) believes that the amount of technical detail included on the chemical and nutri- tional properties of food was striking, even compared to contemporary standards.

Much of the advice on nutrition in the print media was accompanied by adver- tising that amplified the themes of the columnists, reflecting an interest in nutrition by Australian food manufacturers which actually goes back much fur- ther. In 1882 Arnotts, for example, launched what Santich believes to be the first ‘health food’ in Australia: Milk Arrowroot Biscuits, which were promoted as ‘Best for children ... noted for their purity and excellence’ (Santich, 1995a: 19).

The advertising of sweetened condensed milk, as a feed for infants, was also an example of nutritional advertising of food products.

From the 1920s onwards an increasing number of new food products were launched on the basis of their convenience and nourishment. Common examples were tinned soups and stews. In women’s magazines other foods like fruits, veg- etables and milk were also widely promoted on the strength of their nutritional properties and their ability to ‘provide vigour’, ‘vitality’, ‘nourishment’ and also to ‘prevent fatigue’ because of their ‘vitamin’, ‘mineral’, ‘nutriment’ and ‘energy content’ (Santich, 1995a: 68–87).

Notions of ‘food goodness’ struck a strong nutritional chord, as did terms like ‘wholesome’ and ‘pure’. Of course, the alternative to good food was ‘unwhole- some’ food which could be damaging to health. These foods acquired very familiar characteristics which would have been recognisable a hundred years ear- lier since unwise foods, often processed, generally had their ‘natural’ properties stripped away. The following information from a 1931 booklet published by the Western Australian Health Department reinforces this: