Opening the 1975 Food 'Time Capsule'...

Back in 1975, who would have predicted that by 2025:

• We’d be eating one-third less beef, twice as much poultry, but almost the same amount of vegetables?
• Obesity rates would triple, but fatal heart attacks would decline by 77 percent?
• Four grocers would control two-thirds of the market and that organic foods would be available in almost every supermarket?

In 1975, Michael F. Jacobson co-edited Food for People, Not for Profit (Ballantine), a wide-ranging anthology touching on everything food: farming, diet, hunger, health, and more. Now, 50 years later, he was curious to see how the food world changed over the past half-century.

Jacobson, the co-founder and long-serving executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, recently founded the National Food Museum. He is also a senior fellow at the Consumer Policy Center.

In his new report, “Opening the 1975 Food Time Capsule – Diet, Health, & Food Industry” Jacobson uses dozens of graphs (examples below) to dramatize the changes in what we eat, the structure of the food industry, anti-hunger programs, farming, and other topics.

Relying on data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Jacobson found a one-third reduction (per capita) in beef and a doubling in poultry consumption.

But notwithstanding the soaring number of farmers markets and almost ubiquitous admonitions to “eat your veggies,” Americans are only eating 10 percent more vegetables now than in 1975—but 13 percent less than in 2000.

And the food industry has gotten a lot more concentrated:

• In 1975, the top 20 grocers sold 40 percent of retail food. Now, just four companies (Walmart, Costco, Kroger, Ahold Delhaize) control 65 percent of the market.
• The market shares of the top four beef, pork, and poultry processors roughly doubled over the last 50 years.

Meanwhile, food prices (adjusted for inflation) have gone up, down, or sideways. For instance, milk costs half as much as 50 years ago, while ground beef has stayed the same. Overall, consumers are spending just 11 percent of their disposable income on food now compared to 13 percent in 1975.

Hunger has not been wiped out, but thanks to federal food programs many fewer Americans are going to bed hungry. Last year the federal government invested $122 billion in the SNAP (food stamp) program compared to $5 billion in 1975 (or $33 billion in 2024 dollars). Subsidies for school meals have also increased greatly, while the life-saving WIC (Women, Infants, Children) was just getting started in 1975.

The “Time Capsule” does not speculate on what our diets and the food system will look like 50 years in the future, but Jacobson noted “the radical unforeseen changes that have occurred over the past 50 years. In 1975 few or no people were talking about trans fat, plant-based milk and meat, genetically engineered crops and animals, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, ultra-processed foods, microplastics, web-based food shopping and restaurant reservations, Walmart and Amazon, and the obesity and diabetes epidemics—all major topics of conversation in the past several decades. What we’ll be eating and how it is produced in 2075 is anyone’s guess,” said Jacobson.

The nascent National Food Museum will start out later this year as an online museum, but its ultimate goal is to have a physical home that will cover all things food—from the history of the human diet to the marketing of food to kids. But the Museum’s special emphasis will be on the impact of diet and agriculture on health and climate change.

Sample graphs from the “Opening the 1975 Food Time Capsule – Diet, Health, & Food Industry”: