1930s: Food and Drink

Many people had enjoyed luxuries during the prosperous 1920s, with its easy credit and installment (regular payment) plans, but the 1930s were a different story. Families across the nation struggled to make ends meet after the stock market crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression (1929–41), a decade-long economic collapse that affected the entire world. Families budgeted their resources and began making goods that they had once purchased ready-made in stores. Food was one item most people could figure out how to make at home. Cookbooks and radio programs offered recipes, including those for "poor man's cake" (a cake made without flour) and green tomato mincemeat, a kind of relish. Instead of buying canned food, women would take the fresh produce from their own gardens and can, pickle, and preserve it. A family of six could be fed on about five dollars of groceries each week, but every penny counted. Sometimes women would shop together to buy items in larger quantities and split the savings, even if the savings were only pennies. Of the processed food that was purchased, Spam and frozen dinners were new favorites.

One dramatic change in the way people drank alcoholic beverages during the 1930s came with the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment of 1919 and Prohibition (1920–33), the so-called "noble experiment" that had outlawed the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcohol. Upon his election to the presidency in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) changed the Volstead Act (the law enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment) to allow the sale of beer. By December 5, 1933, Prohibition ended. The manufacture, sale, and consumption of all alcohol was again legal. The martini, a cocktail made with gin, became a popular and legal beverage.