Eyes on UMBC

A Novel Idea to Swallow




It's the ultimate fast food, but an idea whose time has never quite come.

It's the Meal in a Pill, the swallow-and-you're-done nutritious repast, the fancy of many a science-fiction dinner menu. While the pill idea has never caught on, American studies professor Warren Belasco knows the time to write about it has certainly arrived. His historical account of the Meal in a Pill concept won the Sophie Coe Prize in Food History at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.

The Oxford judges praised Belasco's essay as "original and stimulating." The essay is "an absorbing account and analysis of the idea of the meal-pill, the historical context of its emergence in 19th-century Anglo-Saxon culture, the social factors that made it attractive to generations of science and efficiency enthusiasts, and the reasons for its ultimate demise," according to the Oxford judges.

Belasco's essay appeared in Food and Foodways, the leading international journal for food scholarship, and is part of a larger book project he is preparing. Belasco also makes his research a prime ingredient in his UMBC undergraduate courses on the meaning and history of food in American culture.

Just as the meal-pill belonged to no particular ethnic cuisine, Belasco finds the fusion aspect of winning the Coe Prize appealing: "Winning an English prize for an article published by an international journal edited in France is especially flattering." The prize came with a cash award of £1,000 (U.K.), enough for a nice multicourse meal.



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