A vitamin C tablet as a food supplement and an iodine tablet to purify water.” Fallout shelter cuisine was perhaps best exemplified with “Multi-Purpose Food,” described in a 1961 edition of The Science News-Letter as “food made from soy beans, a survival ration cracker and bulgur wheat. This shift in the American food production landscape was accelerated by the wartime economy’s need for logistically simplified ways to package and transport food for the military to far corners of the world. Canned and processed foods had longer shelf lives than traditional foods. This gendering of food practices within fallout shelters was predicated on the widespread availability of canned and processed foods. Men’s work was depicted as physically intense labor, while women were tasked with stocking food and creating aesthetically palatable spaces within shelters. These booklets emphasized the “do-it-yourself” nature of fallout shelter construction, and depicted gendered work practices based on privileging the role of the nuclear family in American life. Understanding these gendered dynamics and the progression of factors that led to the viability of such shelters can offer a glimpse into the important role processed and canned foods played in midcentury America.ĭuring the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations, several government-authored booklets containing free fallout shelter designs and recommendations were produced and distributed to the public. While the purpose of these shelters was ostensibly to protect against loss of life in the event of nuclear war, they also became sites of gendered food consumption and procurement practices. This socially produced phenomenon led to the construction of personal fallout shelters in communities across the country, including in Chapel Hill. The Cold War in the United States was a time characterized by societal fears of the practical possibility of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. A man inspects canned food rations in his Chapel Hill fallout shelter, 1961.
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