1944 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

Carnation evaporated milk creator Elbridge A. Stuart dies at Los Angeles January 14 at age 87.

Ohio State University tests prepackaged foods in cooperation with companies looking beyond the war to explore ways to reduce losses in food distribution. By 1961 88 percent of U.S. supermarkets will be prepackaging all or some of their produce, and 90 percent will be prepackaging all fish, smoked meats, and table-ready meats in transparent film (see polyethylene, 1935).

Only 10 U.S. grocers have completely self-service meat markets. The figure will increase to 5,600 by 1951, 11,500 by 1956, and 24,100 by 1960, when 35 percent of all meat sold at retail will be from self-service cases.

Chiquita Banana is introduced by the United Fruit Company in a move to make bananas a brand-name item rather than a generic commodity (see Sunkist, 1919). The bananas are advertised on radio with a tune composed by Len MacKenzie and performed by Ray Bloch's orchestra with vocalist Patti Clayton singing Garth Montgomery's lyrics: "I'm Chiquita Banana/ And I've come to say,/ Bananas have to ripen in a certain way:/ When they are fleck'd with brown and have a golden hue/ Bananas taste the best and are the best for you. / You can put them in a salad/ You can put them in a pie-aye/ Any way you want to eat them/ It's impossible to beat them/ But bananas love the climate of the very, very tropical equator/ So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator" (copyright 1945 Maxwell-Wirges Publications, Inc.) (The skins of refrigerated bananas do turn brown, and that disturbs consumers, but the fruit keeps longer if refrigerated.) (see 1974).

Hershey Chocolate increases the size of its nickel Hershey Bar from 1ΒΌ oz. to 1 5/8 oz. G.I.s in Europe hand out Hershey Bars to children and use them as a medium of exchange.