Beatrice Trum Hunter
1918–2017 · M.A. Columbia Teachers College
Published The Natural Foods Cookbook in 1961, a full decade before the natural foods movement existed, and spent the next fifty years as its most careful journalist.
Hunter is the cleanest record in this archive, and it is worth being specific about why: she never claimed a credential she did not hold. She was a journalist and food editor, said so, and did the work.
She was dismissed as a crank in 1961 for arguing that industrial food additives deserved scrutiny. The subsequent sixty years of food policy have largely been an argument about how right she was.
Her papers are held at the University of New Hampshire — a real, contactable archive, which makes her among the most straightforward clearances in the collection.
Selected books
- The Natural Foods Cookbook (1961)
- Gardening Without Poisons (1964)
- Consumer Beware! (1971)
- Food Additives and Federal Policy: The Mirage of Safety (1975)
Rights
Estate or foundation: Beatrice Trum Hunter Collection, University of New Hampshire Library. Clearance requests for this speaker's recordings go here.