The Problem of Changing Food Habits: With Suggestions for Psychoanalytic Contributions: Margaret Mead. Bulletin of The Menninger Clinic, VII, 1943, No. 2.

Margaret Mead is Executive Secretary of the Committee on Food Habits of the National Research Council. In this paper, she points out that although psychoanalytic literature is rich in material on oral and anal attitudes, this material has never been organized to show the specific psychodynamics of the American character structure. She makes the following suggestions for psychoanalytic research which she believes might prove valuable in solving the present day problem of altering American food habits to preserve nutritional standards in the midst of war shortages: (1) An exploration of the development process as patterned by American culture in order to describe and place the period at which eating becomes delibidinized and classified as a superego problem. (2) An exploration of the divisions which are made between food and drink, on the one hand, and between serious meals and 'snacks' on the other. (3) An exploration of the terms with which Americans classify that which is inedible.

In conclusion, Mead remarks: 'Not until psychoanalytic insights into human mechanisms have been specialized into insights into the psychodynamics of an identifiable group of people at a given epoch in history do they become available for social planning'.