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National Geographic
5 days ago
- National Geographic
Alcohol was banned to protect women—but it ended up empowering them
In June 1920, The New York Times reported that William Hartman shot and killed his wife, just after returning from a night of drinking whiskey. It's impossible to know what led to his actions. But stories like his appeared with disturbing regularity in newspapers during the early 20th century, illustrating the very dangers that Temperance advocates cited when pushing for alcohol prohibition. 'We all know that a lot of crimes occur when people are a little loaded or a little high, because there's the disinhibition factor,' says Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist and Prohibition expert. Alcohol consumption has long been linked to increased violence, and studies have historically shown that men are twice as likely to binge drink than women. 'So men would become more drunken and abusive and be more dangerous to women,' she adds. While much has been written about the women who helped repeal Prohibition, less attention has been paid to the complex role women played in its passage. Ironically, the very same legislation that limited their freedoms also opened doors to new forms of empowerment and legal recognition. 'It—in a way—implies that women have rights,' says Peter Liebhold, a Smithsonian curator emeritus. 'It was argued by the Temperance folks that great harm was often done to women by men consuming alcohol. By passing Prohibition, it suggests that women have greater value and therefore, should have higher legal standards.' Though Prohibition didn't grant women direct rights, the act of restricting something for everyone—rather than targeting women alone—subtly suggested a shift toward equality. Members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union destroy barrels of liquor during a Prohibition-era raid. Photograph by NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images Prohibition's impact on women Before Prohibition, saloons and bars were strictly male spaces. In fact, in places like Colorado, it was even illegal for women to enter. But contrary to the intent of the Anti-Saloon League and other 'drys,' the ban on booze created opportunities for people who had never been involved in the saloon scene and liquor trade before, especially women. (Americans knew their booze was poisoned—and drank it anyway.) 'Women were not allowed into the saloons and bars. This was male territory,' says Blum. 'They would meet and gather in the bar and make a lot of policy decisions. Women couldn't even cross the threshold. So, alcohol was part of what was perceived by women as having this powerlessness.' The booze ban defied societal norms and allowed women to transcend their traditional gender roles. No longer protected from alcohol, women began drinking, serving, and even selling it. Discreet liquor containers like this hollowed-out book (left) and garter flask (right) became fashionable among young women seeking to evade search and seizure laws. Photograph by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Bettmann via Getty Images (Bottom) (Right) The rise of female bootleggers As Prohibition took hold, it created unexpected opportunities for women, especially in the underground alcohol trade. Figures like Texas Guinan, a former silent film actress, were scouted by a bootlegger and ended up running some of New York's most infamous speakeasies. With a pistol strapped to her thigh and a drink always in hand, she flipped power dynamics nightly—welcoming guests with her famous 'Hello, suckers!' More than just serving drinks, she sold defiance—and in doing so, she became one of the first women to profit off nightlife on her own terms openly. (Humanity's 9,000-year love affair with booze.) Others like Ether Clark, who was known as 'The Henhouse Bootlegger' for famously storing her moonshine stash in her chicken coop, found careers where they'd be otherwise excluded. Prohibition allowed women to bypass traditional gender roles—such as dressmaking or teaching—and enter new, often illicit, fields like running speakeasy kitchens, peddling alcohol, and even smuggling liquor across borders. But gaining access to these opportunities wasn't without its social costs. The 'lady of the street' label was easily applied to women who deviated from the prescribed norms—whether it was by contracting a sexually transmitted infection, working as a waitress, or, in this case, running a speakeasy. Though accusations of 'prostitution' were often more about social control than actual accusations, they served to push women out of spaces of male power. Still, the secret double life of the 'New Woman,'—independent, assertive, and defying traditional expectations—became a key figure of the Roaring Twenties, signaling a broader cultural shift toward women's independence and self-expression. For example, some restaurants began implementing table service for female customers who would've been otherwise uncomfortable with bar-sitting. But as more women became involved in bootlegging, law enforcement took notice. Police officers were astonished at the number of women they were suddenly arresting, so much so that they started to treat female criminals differently, often to their advantage. In court, there were accounts of judges letting female criminals off the hook. Catching on to this pattern, the mafia actively recruited women. (Meet the female sheriff who lead a Kentucky town through Prohibition.) 'Increasing numbers of bootleggers would use women to help smuggle their alcohol as several states had laws preventing male agents from frisking or otherwise searching female suspects,' according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. 'Creating the urgent need for female law enforcement officers.' And just like that, new jobs were available for women. But this time, they're legal. A group of women drink wine, circa 1930. Though Prohibition made alcohol illegal nationwide from 1920 to 1933, many women defied the ban—drinking socially in private homes, speakeasies, and underground clubs. Photograph by Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis via Getty Images A subtle shift toward equality Though Prohibition is widely seen as a failed experiment, it laid the foundation for larger societal changes. For decades, women had been laying the groundwork for this shift. The Women's Christian Temperance Union wasn't just an anti-alcohol group, but one of the largest women's political organizations in U.S. history. For reformers like Frances Willard and firebrand hatchet-wielder Carrie Nation, temperance wasn't just about liquor—it was a level to gain social power in a society that denied them the vote, protection, and public voice. When William Hartman murdered his wife in June 1920, the newspaper accounts didn't ask what she'd wanted or wore, only what he'd done. For the first time in U.S. history, lawmakers started paying attention to the dangers women were facing behind closed doors—and responding with policy. It wasn't perfect—far from it. But it was symbolic. And in a country where symbolism shapes law, it was a starting point. As a result, Prohibition's subtle shift toward gender equality laid the groundwork for later advancements in women's rights, from suffrage to labor reforms, which began gaining momentum in the following decades. 'I think that there was a tectonic shift at the time, and prohibition was part of it,' Liebhold says. 'Women start to be recognized in terms of laws, and what follows is a broad culture shift that their place in society goes through. But the journey never ends.'
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
What was food like before the FDA?
We have a tendency to romanticize the past. Think about the food your great grandparents (or even their parents) ate in childhood and you might imagine farm fresh produce, pure milled grains, and pristine meat and dairy. But if they were living in the United States during the mid-to-late 19th century, that vision of food utopia wasn't likely reality. Before 1906, there were no federal food safety regulations in the US. Local grocers were a wild west of unlabeled additives, untested chemicals, and inedible fillers. In the gap between the industrialization of the food system during the mid-1800's and those first laws dictating what could be sold as food, working class Americans spent decades eating 'mostly crap,' says Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer-Prize winning science journalist. In her 2019 book, The Poison Squad, Blum details the origin story of the landmark Food and Drug Act. As more folks left farm life behind and came to rely on manufactured food 'an enormous amount of food fraud' emerged, Blum tells Popular Science. Nowadays, the overwhelming majority of people continue to purchase their food from grocery aisles, but the food we buy there is much less liable to make us sick. So, how did we get from that past to our current present? And, with regulatory agencies including the FDA facing enormous cuts, what might the future hold? European countries, including Britain, Germany, and France passed food safety regulations about 50 years before the US did. In classic American style, we eschewed top-down restrictions and allowed the free market, free rein. In lieu of federal regulation, there was a haphazard patchwork of state and local laws surrounding certain foods pre-1906. Massachusetts, for instance, passed 'An Act Against Selling Unwholesome Provisions' in 1785. But unsafe practices consistently fell through the cracks and into consumers' stomachs, says Blum. In some cases, food wasn't food at all. Pre-pasteurization, milk spoilage and bacterial growth was a major problem. Away from the farm, dairy had to travel farther and keep for longer if people in cities were going to buy it. So, the dairy section became a hotbed of questionable additives. Borax, which you may recognize as a general-purpose pesticide, was used as a milk and butter preservative. Formaldehyde (AKA embalming fluid) was also a common milk additive and antibacterial agent. In addition to preserving the milk, formaldehyde also reportedly had a slightly sweet flavor, which helped improve the taste of rot, Blum explains. In cheese, lead compounds were added to boost its golden color. Plaster of Paris, gypsum, and other white, powdery fillers made their way into milk and flour for color and texture. Flour was often portioned out by the grocer in-store–with mixed results. 'If you went to a very honest grocer, you might get real flour. If you didn't you might get a mix,' she says. Coffee and spices were particularly terrible offenders. Ground coffee was often about 80 to 90 percent adulterated in the mid-19th century, says Blum. It might be made up of ground bone, blackened with lead, or charred seeds and plant matter. Spices were frequently 100 percent adulterated. Or, in other words, entirely made up of something other than what they were sold as. Cinnamon was frequently brick dust. Ground pepper could have been ground shells or charred rope. 'Probably a good half of these products had some adulteration, depending on what you were looking at and how much you were willing to pay,' she says. The wealthy were generally able to afford higher quality, authentic, uncontaminated products. But for everyone else, the problem of food fraud was so prevalent that people developed a suspicion of ground coffee, Blum says. Consumers started opting for whole beans instead, wherever possible. Suddenly, there was a market for counterfeit whole coffee beans, made of pigeon beans and peas, or even wax and clay. 'You can find flyers that went to grocers that said, 'you can, multiply your profits with our super cheap dirt beans.'' In her research, Blum found a record of a congressional hearing, where a food manufacturer described producing and selling a 'strawberry jam' that was entirely red dye, corn syrup, and grass seed. His defense for the practice: 'we have to be competitive in the market and other people are doing it too,' paraphrases Blum. As all of the above was going on, people had little idea what they were consuming. 'There was no labeling,' she notes. Though there were many cases of people falling ill. In an Indiana orphanage, multiple children died from formaldehyde poisoning. In New York state, an estimated 8,000 infants died from adulterated 'swill milk' in a single year. [ Related: FDA bans Red No. 3 dye found in many of your favorite snacks. ] Calls for change came from multiple fronts, including womens' groups and the growing 'pure food' movement of the late 1800s, says Blum. But one chemist and physician, Harvey Washington Wiley, proved particularly dedicated and ultimately influential. Wiley began noting and publishing reports on food contaminants during his work at the USDA in the 1880s and '90s. His primary job was to develop alternatives to sugar cane, but he started studying and cataloging adulteration in butter, milk, and honey– and later spices and alcoholic beverages. That's where much of our data on food adulteration at the time comes from, notes Blum. Soon, Wiley was releasing regular bulletins on food adulterants and advocating for national of his early attempts ended in failure. Congressional representatives received a lot of money from the food industry, and weren't receptive to Wiley's science-backed pleas for labels, transparency, and contamination regulations, says Blum. 'He keeps pushing for it. The industry keeps shooting it down, and the political dog fight continues,' she says. But then, Wiley shifted tactics. He began conducting a series of experiments that he called the 'hygienic table trials' with a group of USDA employees, later dubbed 'the poison squad.' All of the dozen or so participants willingly and knowingly signed up to receive three freshly prepared meals, seven days a week, for six months from the newly created USDA test kitchen. Yet, along with their nourishing meals, a subset of the participants were also fed additives commonly found in adulterated food. 'You could never have gotten this sort of study approved today,' says Blum. 'He poisoned his co-workers.' The group worked their way through borax, boric acid, salicylic acid, benzoic acid, sulfur dioxide, formaldehyde, copper sulfate, and saltpeter– among other things. Unsurprisingly, the squad was frequently sick and the experiment garnered a ton of publicity. 'If you go to newspapers of the time, every single one had a story–'Americans are eating poison,'' Blum says. The fervor, paired with the public outcry in response to Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle, about Chicago's meatpacking plants, led politicians to change their tune. In 1906, Congress passed both the Meat Inspection Act and the Food and Drug Act (colloquially known as 'Wiley's Law'). Later, the Food and Drug Act would be replaced by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics act of 1938, which has been extensively revised and updated since. From these laws, the modern USDA– responsible for regulating meat and poultry products– and FDA, responsible for all other foods and pharmaceuticals, emerged. Since the start of federal food regulation, states have beefed up their policies and the food industry has adopted its own standards. Many companies have even signed on to efforts like the Global Food Safety Initiative, which involves third-party testing beyond what's legally required. Plus, the mere existence of federal law means that people can sue when things go wrong. Litigation is a big driver of compliance and caution at the corporate level, says Blum. Yet the FDA still plays a key role in oversight, research, and responding to emerging threats like bird flu in milk, says Brian Schaneberg, a chemist and director of the Institute for Food Safety and Health (IFSH) at Illinois IFSH, academic researchers collaborate directly with industry and FDA scientists and the institute hosts multiple federal projects and labs. Research there includes work on improving infant formula safety, food contamination from packaging, pathogen prevention in food manufacturing and produce, investigating the causes of illness outbreaks, and Grade A milk validation. 'We really touch a lot of areas,' Schaneberg tells Popular Science. Recently, the Trump Administration slashed more than 3,500 FDA jobs, amid broader slap-dash federal cuts. Despite claims to the contrary, these layoffs included dozens of scientists who conduct quality control and proficiency testing on everything from infant formula to dairy products and pet foods. The cuts have temporarily left the Center for Processing Innovation at IFSH almost entirely unstaffed, Schaneberg notes. From 15 staff, they're down to four. Other labs across the country were also impacted. After public pushback, FDA leadership promised to reinstate scientists in key roles and re-open a handful of the shuttered labs last week. At Schaneberg's institute, federal scientists have been told they'll be reinstated. Though, he notes they haven't received formal notices confirming their re-hiring. The long-term fate of FDA research and testing labs also remains uncertain as proposed major budget cuts and a massive reorganization looms. The currently proposed Trump Administration plan would shift most food testing to the states. [ Related: How to properly wash fruits and vegetables. ] 'I'm definitely concerned,' says Schaneberg. He doesn't see any clear, immediate threat to consumers, but in the long-term– he is worried about the FDA's ability to ensure food safety if the agency is equipped with fewer staff and resources. 'I still think all the big companies are going to do the best thing they can because they don't want to hurt their brands and they don't want to impact people.' And many states might have the ability to fill gaps. Yet there's always bad actors, new brands, new additives, and unknowns, he notes. It may be much rarer than it once was, but the FDA still detects unsettling instances of food contamination. In 2023 and 2024, the agency investigated high lead and chromium levels in cinnamon applesauce pouches, marketed to children, notes Martin Bucknavage, a senior food safety extension specialist in the Department of Food Science at Penn State University. 'There's those types of things that pop up, and it's like 'who– who else is going to go through and do that?,'' he says. The FDA has expertise in the science and the supply chains that few other institutions do, Bucknavage says, along with the ability and authority to respond quickly. With rapid changes and reorganization on the horizon, it's hard to predict what the effect will be, he adds. 'I think immediate-term, our food supply is going to be safe,' Bucknavage says. After all, FDA inspections are far less frequent than companies' own safety tests and measures. But without the final layer of oversight, it's possible something could be lost down the line, he says. Blum, with all her knowledge of the treacherous food landscape of decades past, agrees. 'I'm not sitting here saying catastrophe, because we don't actually know,' she says. 'But there's nothing in what the [Trump Administration] is doing that you would look at and say, 'oh this makes us safer.''
Newsweek
01-05-2025
- Health
- Newsweek
Food Safety Author Sounds FDA Alarm—'My Hair Is Gonna Catch on Fire'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer has spoken out about her worries for American food, accusing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of lacking transparency. Deborah Blum, who has written extensively on the history of U.S. food safety regulations, cited how an E. coli outbreak in November 2024, which killed one and hospitalized dozens, was never fully explained publicly despite an official investigation. "I worry that we are going to see uninspected factories put out really bad stuff, uninvestigated outbreaks piled on uninvestigated outbreaks," she told journalist Talia Lavin's newsletter, The Sword and The Sandwich. Alleging a government cover up, she added: "I hair is gonna catch on fire." Newsweek contacted the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for comment via email on Thursday. File photo of the outside of the Food and Drug Administration headquarters is seen in White Oak, Md., on Monday, November 9, 2015. File photo of iceberg lettuce, taken in Kennington, London, in February, 2017. File photo of the outside of the Food and Drug Administration headquarters is seen in White Oak, Md., on Monday, November 9, 2015. File photo of iceberg lettuce, taken in Kennington, London, in February, 2017. AP The Context The Poison Squad author Blum cited a lack of information about a 2024 E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce. The November 2024 outbreak spanned 15 states, resulting in 89 known cases, 36 hospitalizations—including seven with kidney failure—and one death. Most documented cases were in Missouri. The FDA has since confirmed that it did not release information about the outbreak because, by the time it determined the likely source, the contaminated lettuce was no longer available in stores. Without actionable advice for consumers, the agency decided not to issue a public warning. An official probe concluded in February 2025 without naming further details or any companies involved, according to an internal FDA report obtained by NBC News. What To Know Blum said: "You probably saw the story about the romaine lettuce investigation—there was E. coli contamination that sickened people in a number of states in the fall." "And the Biden administration launched an investigation that concluded in February, and the Trump administration has refused to release the results," she said, "They won't say what happened. They won't even say what companies are involved." "And so what we are seeing with this federal government is a food contamination case in which the government is conspiring to cover it up. I hair is gonna catch on fire," she continued. "There's no way for us to keep track of all this information," she said. "I worry that we are going to see uninspected factories put out really bad stuff, uninvestigated outbreaks piled on uninvestigated outbreaks." Attorney Bill Marler, who is representing three victims—including children who suffered kidney failure—of the E. coli outbreak in two lawsuits, said federal documents confirmed a link between the outbreak and a specific grower, but its name was redacted. "For me to eat romaine lettuce that the FDA has decided we don't have a right to know who grew, it just doesn't make sense to me," Marler told Missouri station KMOV last month. What People Are Saying Former FDA deputy commissioner Frank Yiannas criticized the decision to keep the information quiet. "It is disturbing that FDA hasn't said anything more public or identified the name of a grower or processor," he told NBC News last month. Taryn Webb, who led the FDA's public engagement for human foods until she was laid off a month ago in a sweeping downsizing of Health and Human Services, said the government had eliminated key channels for public health information. "We no longer have all the mechanisms in place to learn from those situations and prevent the next outbreak from happening," she told NBC News. What Happens Next Lawsuits filed by victims are proceeding in several states. While the FDA says it refrained from naming firms because the product was no longer in circulation, advocates argue the public still deserves to know who was responsible. Blum and others warn that a system unwilling to share vital food safety information risks putting more people at unnecessary risk.
