The End of Craving: Recovering the Lost Wisdom of Eating Well

by Mark Schatzker

Did fortification—or “enrichment,” as it is known if the government does it—affect them? Did all that niacin, thiamin, and riboflavin change the eating behavior of a nation? One way to explore that question is to examine which foods provided Americans with niacin prior to enrichment. A sizable contribution came from beans, the very food Joseph Goldberger insisted on feeding to sick orphans. Prior to enrichment, the American bean story was a happy one. Bean consumption had steadily been ramping up and reached an all-time high in the early 1940s, at just under ten pounds per person per year. The future, you would think, should have looked rosy. The country was pulling itself out of the Great Depression and would soon enjoy the abundance and prosperity of the postwar years. That’s not how things turned out, however. As the nation’s grain millers began adding B vitamins to refined flours, bean consumption began a long and dismal decline, finally bottoming out in 1980, just as the obesity epidemic was taking flight. Now that everyone was getting their niacin in bread, pasta, and doughnuts, it was as though the inner need for beans faded away.