Mellorine, a “Time-Honored” Recipe?: FDA Food Standards as “Recipes” for Industrial Foods

By Xaq Frohlich What exactly is the purpose of a recipe? Much has been written about the important role of recipes in passing knowledge across generations, building communities, serving as an expressive media, and functioning as scripts that discipline the untrained cook or promote a companies’ product. But what happens when the idea of “recipe” is used to regulate mass-produced foods? This question was at the heart of a dramatic shift in U.S. food regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Admini...