This class examines how and why twentieth-century Americans came to define the “good life” through consumption, leisure, and material abundance. We will explore how such things as department stores, nationally advertised brand-name goods, mass-produced cars, and suburbs transformed the American economy, society, and politics. The course is organized both thematically and chronologically. Each period deals with a new development in the history of consumer culture. Throughout we explore both celebrations and critiques of mass consumption and abundance.

This class examines how and why twentieth-century Americans came to define the “good life” through consumption, leisure, and material abundance. We will explore how such things as department stores, nationally advertised brand-name goods, mass-produced cars, and suburbs transformed the American economy, society, and politics. The course is organized both thematically and chronologically. Each period deals with a new development in the history of consumer culture. Throughout we explore both celebrations and critiques of mass consumption and abundance.

In this activity, students will practice talking about Deaf culture. They will discuss how Deaf individuals order food. Students will also discuss foods that they perceive to be healthy or not healthy.

Students will be comparing different dishes of food and defending their opinion on which is more healthy. After that, the lab assistant will facilitate an open discussion (via prompted questions) about the Deaf community interacting in fast food businesses compared to hearing people's experiences.

A one-day strike by fast food workers in New York City is a teachable moment for students on the fast food industry and worker organizing. This lesson includes a brainstorm, small-group readings and discussion, and an opinion continuum activity to get students thinking about these issues.

Students will be learning Fast Food slang vocabulary via a Google Slide Presentation. (Note: These signs have been verified with multiple Deaf adults). Students will also be given a prompt as to how to make a specific Fast Food business more accessible to the Deaf.

Research and report on nutrition value of three favorite fast food meal items. Identifying healthier food options when eating out and how to make choices based on nutritional needs.

This collection of food science activities asks students to evaluate how fast food affects their lives.  Sections include Fast Food Dissection, Fast Food Caloric Count, Supersize Me video discussion, and a research paper activity. Written by Lee Weis of Ell-Saline High School, Brookville, KS in 2008.

This course will explore food in modern American history as a story of industrialization and globalization. Lectures, readings, and discussions will emphasize the historical dimensions of—and debates about—slave plantations and factory farm labor; industrial processing and technologies of food preservation; the political economy and ecology of global commodity chains; the vagaries of nutritional science; food restrictions and reform movements; food surpluses and famines; cooking traditions and innovations; the emergence of restaurants, supermarkets, fast food, and slow food. The core concern of the course will be to understand the increasingly pervasive influence of the American model of food production and consumption patterns.

This course explores the values (aesthetic, moral, cultural, religious, prudential, political) expressed in the choices of food people eat. Analyzes the decisions individuals make about what to eat, how society should manage food production and consumption collectively, and how reflection on food choices might help resolve conflicts between different values.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"In the past 30 years, the number of children who are overweight or obese has increased by nearly 50 percent. Ads for sugary cereals, soda, and other junk foods are thought to contribute to this rise, but few studies have directly measured how much marketing children see in a typical day. Now, using wearable cameras, researchers in New Zealand have done just that, finding that marketing for unhealthy foods outnumbers that for healthy foods by more than 2 to 1. The scientists recruited children attending various schools in Wellington to wear a small camera, or Kids’Cam, that would take snapshots every 7 seconds to capture marketing exposures. The students were about 12 years old and came from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. Recording lasted for four days, starting on a Thursday to cover both schooldays and weekends. The team reviewed all of the images from the 168 participants, coding each image for any food marketing..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

The objective of this lesson is to teach kids about food advertising. To compare and contrast the portrayal of real food versus processed food in the media.