Athens State Colloquium Series – Piggly Wiggly to Little Debbie: Cookies and the Food Revolution

Join us for the next gathering in our Colloquium Series – April 18th at 3 pm in the Classroom Building #104. Our presenter will be Dr. Kris Erskine and he will be discussing the food revolution and his research into Little Debbie snack cakes (and there just _may_ be some themed refreshments!).

In the early part of the 1900s, many of the top killers in the US were believed to be things that you contracted from the food that you ate. By the mid-1920s, those food killers had largely been defeated, yet the national response to dangerous foods was evident – food production and consumption had changed, and the ways that Americans ate were forever altered. The tidal wave of change that flooded the American market began when Piggly Wiggly opened its first store in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee. Seemingly out of place in this food revolution, another change was happening – a small group of Seventh-Day Adventist cookie bakers were swept up in this flood of change, and these bakers altered how Americans eat cookies. Indeed, they changed the very cookies we eat. Why Seventh-Day Adventists? And why cookies? And what was the food revolution and how does Little Debbie fit into this? Come get some answers to these questions!