Food Revolutions: Science and Nutrition, 1700-1950
Early Nutritionists at Mizzou
Food science and nutrition courses have been a part of University's curricula since 1902, when courses in food and dietetics were offered for the first time.
Louise Stanley
Louise Stanley was appointed Instructor of Home Economics at the University of Missouri, in 1907, after completing a Master of Arts at Columbia University. In 1911, Stanley completed her Ph.D. at Yale University and became Professor and Chair of Home Economics at the University of Missouri that same year. She first began working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1914 as a special agent in the Office of Experiment Stations conducting a survey of home economics instruction.
Stanley left the University in 1923 when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace appointed her as chief of the newly established Bureau of Home Economics. It was during the later 1920s and early 1930s that Stanley conducted some of her most important studies on the proper nutritional elements of the human diet. Data supplied by the Bureau led to the launch of a national campaign by the USDA to improve American diets.
The scope of Stanley's research expanded in 1943 when she was appointed as Special Assistant to the Administrator of the Agricultural Research Administration. There her research extended to the study of diets throughout the world, but most extensively in Latin America, where she worked to improve diets with the introduction of new foods and improved processing and distribution methods.
Louise Stanley's contributions were recognized by the University of Missouri both before and after her death in 1954. In 1940, she became the first woman to receive an Honorary Doctorate (LL.D.), and in 1961, a new building constructed for the School of Home Economics was named in her honor.
Stanley Hall
Stanley Hall circa 1963. Home Economics had become a school within the College of Agriculture three years earlier. In 1973, the school became the independent College of Home Economics and the name was changed to the College of Human Environmental Sciences in 1988. Stanley Hall is currently home to Architectural Studies, Textile and Appeal Management and the Child Development Lab.
Jessie Alice Cline, 1891-1996
Jessie Alice Cline had completed both a Bachelor of Science (1915) and a Bachelor of Arts (1916) degree at the University of Missouri prior to accepting a position as instructor in Home Economics in 1921. Cline was promoted to assistant professor in 1923, completed a Master of Arts in 1925, and was promoted to associate professor and chair of the department that same year. Cline became full professor in 1930, a position she held until 1940, when she resigned to accept the appointment of Director of Home Economics for the National Live Stock and Meat Board in Chicago.
While at the University, Cline had also worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, spending the summer of 1938 in Italy to study the management, methods and techniques of food preparation in hotels and restaurants. Her specialty was meat cookery and the conservation of meat nutrients by use of low temperature cooking. Cline wrote meat cookery manuals for the U.S. Army and Navy, and worked with large restaurants and hotels throughout the country during World War II, to assist them in conserving meat. At various times Cline owned restaurants in Columbia, Chicago and Kansas City, served as a director for the National Restaurant Association, as Food Editor for American Restaurant, and as president of the Missouri Restaurant Association.