While reformers worked to train housewives and future mothers, changes in scientific information about foods were forcing a re-evaluation of the Italian diet. With the discovery of the existence and function of vitamins, the strongest criticism of Italian food choice, its heavy reliance on vegetables and fruits, was no longer valid. Rather than complaining that Italians replicated the foods of their home lands too closely, dieticians now began to suggest that the problem was that they could not be duplicated closely enough. In Foods of the Foreign Born in Relation to Health, Boston dietician Bertha Wood explained:

The raw food materials of the Italian diet, many of which were easily procured from their own farms, when combined in their home country ways furnished a cheap, well-balanced diet. In this country, because of greater cost and more difficulty in securing, the Italians often have a poorly balanced diet and run short in some of the most important food elements.

Many nutritionists turned to a focus on substitutions and suggestions for how to create Italian foods using American ingredients. [204]

While enthusiasm for dietary change waned among reformers who were slowly coming to realize the resilience and even the functionality of ethnic foodways, World War I gave others an added incentive to renew their efforts. One head of a national women's patriotic organization commented "What kind of American consciousness can grow in the atmosphere of sauerkraut and Limburger cheese? Or what can you expect of the Americanism of the man whose breath always reeks with garlic?" Nutritionists hoped that efforts to conserve certain ingredients and the recipes put out by government agencies would finally Americanize immigrant diets. In fact, conservation efforts had little effect on the components of Italian diets. The Women's Department of the Chicago Commons Settlement House reported, "Our Italian people did not know the use of these substitutes the government recommended, barley, rye, corn and graham flours were practically unknown to them. On one occasion an Italian Mother brought bread in, which she tried to make with the new flours. It resembled a rock or cement block much more than it did bread." It was unlikely she tried the recipe again. Italian women, who in Italy, would seldom have been able to afford to make bread entirely from wheat flour, now could not cook without it. It was a subtle change that the writer failed to note. [205]

According to food historian Richard Hooker, "for many the wartime restriction meant a more nutritious diet. . . . For those who normally had little to eat, it probably meant only that they ate less." Despite the efforts of voluntary organizations, settlement cooking classes, and the Vernacular Press section of the Food Administration, Italians were uninterested. A sampling of recipes distributed by the Illinois State Council of Defense suggests one possible reason. Among the dishes were possum, whale meat pie, and peanut butter soup. It is small wonder that it was during World War I that some Americans developed a new appreciation for the Italian diet, rather than the reverse. "In this emergency," noted their recipe booklet, "only the simplest of living is patriotic." Italians, by this standard, were among the most patriotic of citizens. Their low meat intake and high vegetable usage fit well with wartime standards. [206]

Yet a new respect for Italian ingredients could not entirely wipe out the negative image of Italian diets, even in the face of contrary evidence. For instance, in 1919, Beck criticized the diets of Italian children (in language almost identical to the Department of Labor's 1895 study) while at the same time reporting that public school studies had shown Italian children to suffer less from malnutrition than other ethnic groups. Efforts to "Americanize" Italian diets continued and historian John McClymer sees the postwar years as the height of an often unrecognized social and political movement to Americanize immigrants. While men were encouraged to attend citizenship and naturalization classes, women were taught the importance of their role as nurturers of future citizens. Americanization literature for women seldom included civics but, instead, focused on housekeeping and the care of children. [207]

Reformers concerned with Italian immigrants turned their attention to a criticism of Italian home life, which differed so greatly from the middle class ideals promoted by home economists. The Hull-House settlement noted that, unlike other ethnic groups, Italians often attended social events as a family, and most reformers noted the strong ties of family obedience which children were expected to follow in their social and work lives. Reformers seem to have been torn between admiration for the strength of family ties and a concern over the constraints on individuality, which they saw as a result. For some nutritionists, however, the faults in the Italian home outweighed its benefits. [208]

In "Factors Influencing the Nutrition Work Among Italians," Lucy Gillett of The New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor stated, "The nutrition problem is not all a question of food. We must find out what is preventing even the right food from doing good work. We must make the conditions possible for good nutrition. Fresh air, exercise, rest, sleep, and congenial surroundings must all be considered as much a part of the nutritional problem as the food itself." She concluded Italian home life was at fault and portrayed Italian homes as the antithesis of the rational, planned, and orderly middle class home. Large family sizes assured enough money couldn't be earned to adequately support the family and necessitated working mothers who neglected their home and children. The addition of boarders violated the sanctity of homes and ensured children could not get enough sleep, therefore were unable to properly digest their foods. Italian girls married too young to learn proper homemaking and their illiteracy kept them from realizing a "child welfare movement was afoot". The "emotional nature" of Italians led to a lack of child discipline at the dinner table, where "someone is 'yelling' at them all the time", and this "high-strung atmosphere" interfered with the proper utilization of nutrients by the body. In an appeal for the construction of model housekeeping centers, another writer used the example of a child sent to buy breakfast in the morning. "Poor little tenement girl", she wrote, "she does not even know that in well-managed homes breakfast is bought the day before." [209]

Progressive reformers planted seeds for change on many social issues. They spearheaded housing reform, called attention to issues of work safety and fairness, promoted public health issues, and influenced local, state, and national welfare efforts. Individuals learned to speak English at settlement houses, met with other nationalities, sometimes for the first time, and were introduced to American education and recreation. Yet, despite their best efforts, Progressive reformers had little impact on the diets of ethnic groups who used their services. Italians, in particular, seemed unimpressed with reformers efforts to convince them to change their diet and home life. Rosa Casettari, who loved and admired the residents at the Chicago Commons settlement house, was unimpressed with settlement workers advice,

Mis' Reuter talked German to the German ladies, and Miss Gray talked English to the other ladies. But I guess they both did the same preaching. They used to tell us that it's not nice to drink the beer, and we must not let the baby do this, and this. . . . [210]

Some of their lack of success resulted from an ethnocentrism that colored their efforts. Descriptions of Italian foods rarely hid the distaste writers felt for the ingredients. Edith Abbott described an Italian house in which drying herbs and vegetables were found hanging in a child's room as full of "strong and offensive odors." Mary Amberg of the Madonna Center, a Catholic settlement house serving Near West Side Italians, claimed that the settlement did "not attempt to upset a family's familiar bill of fare." Yet, when her friend Marie Plamondon accidentally cooked romano cheese rather than sprinkling it on her surprise dinner of "real Italian spaghetti," Mary and her roommate "exchanged the glances of martyrs ready to accept the worst. . . . Our little apartment smelled like a goat farm." At Hull-House, the cooking of macaroni was relegated to the Labor Museum, an indication of its status as an out-moded example of peasant traditionalism. [211]

Most reformers believed that their analysis disassociated food from both preference and tradition by evaluating it simply in terms of calories or proteins. Yet, whether teaching classes, serving meals, or taking the babies temperature, American methods were promoted. Many were convinced that only American foodways offered real nutrition, that American homes required a new style of housekeeping, and that the creation of hard working, clear thinking American citizens was reliant on the shedding of immigrant ways of child care and home life. Food was seldom just about food.

Historians have been highly critical of the efforts of dietary reformers and home economists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They have portrayed these reformers as seeking to control immigrant behavior by controlling immigrant diets, acting on scanty and untested scientific evidence, and advancing their own careers at the expense of immigrant families. Their ideas and methods are ridiculed for their unshakable conviction that American foods were a solution to problems of powerlessness and poverty. Yet too harsh a portrait of reformers obscures the realities of poverty and malnutrition that existed for many early immigrants. Few of us today would consider it healthful to live on the monotonous diets resulting from low incomes and lack of nutritional knowledge which many Italian immigrants endured. Health problems were rife within Italian communities, and reformers, quite logically, explored every avenue to alleviate them. They acted, as we continue to do today, on the current advice available from the scientific community. While they can be faulted for prioritizing science over experience and observation, they were not alone in their high regard for the benefits of science and their belief that it would lead to ever-progressing improvements in American life. We continue to deify scientific information as provable truth even today. [212]

Yet, with their eyes turned trained towards chemical charts and efficiency schedules, reformers failed to recognize the true causes of their lack of influence. Instead, they looked to the Italian character for an explanation of their lack of influence. Husbands were accused of refusing to let their wives and daughters stray from home to the detriment of their education in American mores, while women were portrayed as weak and needy victims of oppression and ignorance. Italian families however were capable of responding to efforts that they felt fit their needs. Their active participation in empty lot garden programs attests to this. In 1916, 37 of the 110 families participating in the city's municipal garden program were Italian. A Children's Garden located near the Italian neighborhood on the North Side attracted 200 more applicants than it had plots for, and in 1919 Italian children won all the seasonal prizes for best gardeners. Reformers had great respect for the character building qualities of rural life and miniature gardens in the city were meant to encourage wholesome work and values. Italians probably just came for the food. [213]

Reformers faith in science blinded them to the intense cultural meanings which food had for Italian families and their conviction that education, rather than money, was the solution to dietary problems obscured the very real effect that poverty had on diets. Rosa Casettari, an Italian immigrant from Lombardy, was cleaning woman and occasional cook for the Chicago Commons Settlement House during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One day, Rosa averted near disaster in the Commons kitchen. Her story is more than just an amusing anecdote. It illustrates the gulf of feeling and method that could separate reformers from Italian immigrants over the elemental issue of food. She described that day:

Tonight the Madonna made a miracle to help me. Listen what happened.

You know Mis' Bliss, the new housekeeper, she all the time comes in the kitchen, and such a fussing she makes. She's a kind lady, she never scolds nobody, but she wants everything made with such fussing that she makes me really dizzy. For thirty years I've done the cooking when the cooks' away, and she thinks I don't know how? She has to help me? Well she came in the kitchen tonight and she was fixing the leaf on the salads, and fixing the dish for the potato with the parsley and decorating this and decorating this. I got so nervous I forgot all about those tomatoes on the stove. When I smelled them they were all caught black on the bottom. I didn't know what to do! All those tomatoes-lots, because we had forty people tonight. Oh, I was brokenhearted. I put that kettle in some cold water, and I was tasting, then Mis' Bliss was tasting. Those tomatoes tasted terrible burnt. Mis' Bliss said, 'Well, it's too bad, but we can't help it. We'll open the can of peas, that's all.'

I was almost crying-what a sin to waste all that good food. And I started praying the Madonna. I prayed with all my heart, what I can do to make those tomatoes come good again. All at once it came in my mind to go in the pantry and get some of that black spice-clover, cloves? I put some of that clove spice in a clean kettle with that tomato, and some sugar too. Then I cooked it up al little and I tasted. I could no more taste the burn-it tasted even good. I said, 'Oh, Mis' Bliss, taste now! Just taste'

She tasted and said, "Well I don't know, but I don't think I taste the burn." Then she tasted again and she said, 'It's good. It's all right after all."

Just think how I was thanking the Madonna that she put in my mind about that clove spice! I never in my life heard to put that stuff in tomatoes. But when I told Mis' Bliss the Madonna made that miracle, she looked at me funny, like she thought I imagined. But that was true! The Madonna is the mother of us poor women. She helps us all the time. [214]

For Miss Bliss, housekeeper at the Commons settlement house, appearance, and neatness were an essential quality in the preparation of food. She fussed with the plates, fretted over their arrangements and worried that Rosa, an untrained immigrant, would not be able to adequately handle the preparations. When her intervention caused the tomatoes to be ruined, she has no qualms about the substitution of canned peas. Rosa, however, was appalled by the wastage. Food is much too precious for her to blithely consider throwing it out. Nor can she even consider canned peas as an appropriate item to be served to the community of workers, which she has grown to consider a second family. The amount of nutrients they might contain is not the issue. Food should be fresh and processed with care and personal attention. Rosa does not turn to a cookbook for suggestions or to the shelf for a processed substitute. Rather she relies on her instinct for the feel, smell, and taste of food--and a little help from the Madonna.