Krug Fug

comment on: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/the-kitchen-test/

This observation totally ignores *who* prepares food and *where* it is prepared. As recently as the '90s, the U.S. passed the tipping point where more meals were produced outside the home than within it. I'd call that a pretty big change, perhaps not quite on par with the movement from an agrarian to industrial society (when considered alone), but a significant index of our change to a "service" economy.

While technology (even in professional kitchens) has been quite stagnant - blame wage suppression on the retardation of labor-saving innovations - both quantitative changes (consider the huge amount of time went into producing food in the home, even with 1950s technologies) and qualitative changes (we have not yet "re-aligned" the nutritional content of commercially produced foodstuffs) continue to have a major impact on the way we live.

Considered in this context, everything from the obesity "epidemic" to the role of women in the labor force is implicated.