2003-07-31 Food and Drink

This year marks the 50th anniversary of two products that, when introduced into American culture in 1953, spelled doom for one of society’s most revered traditions—the family meal. A compact publication called TV Guide appeared on supermarket shelves the same year that an invention called the “television dinner” began flying off those same shelves into grocery carts. With a television manual and accompanying tiny feast to determine the weekly schedule for preempting dinner conversations, mealtime was never quite the same. Little, wobbly tables were erected in the family den where televisions usually resided, and Mom served up an innovative delicacy called the Swanson TV Dinner. Divided into three separate compartments, the aluminum trays offered space-age, defrosted food that was like nothing ever previously consumed: alien-green, wrinkled peas, pasty mashed potatoes topped with a tiny puddle of gravy, and slices of turkey (white and dark meat). A fourth compartment was soon added to accommodate dessert, usually a serving of gooey apple cobbler the size of a silver dollar. The original Swanson box was modeled after a television set, with simulated wood-grain and volume and channel controls on the cardboard packaging.

	The Stuff of Dreams: With a package modeled after a television set, the TV dinner took America by storm in 1953.

According to Swanson executive Gerry Thomas, the idea for a TV dinner was hatched when Swanson, an agricultural commodities company, ended up with a glut of turkeys in 1952. The company challenged employees to come up with an idea to get rid of the excess birds. While on a Pan American Airlines flight, Thomas was inspired by the small aluminum serving trays the flight attendants dispensed to passengers at mealtime. The company gambled on Thomas’ bold idea by creating 5,000 TV dinners for a trial run. Before the year was out, they had sold 10 million.

The real winner in this new age of convenience was Mom. Casting aside the shackles of greasy, confining aprons and sweltering kitchens, housewives everywhere reveled in the convenience of throwing dinner on the table in 15 minutes. They were capable of satisfying even the most finicky of appetites once Swanson expanded its entree choices to include meat loaf, fried chicken, and Salisbury steak. With the advent of microwave ovens, things only got easier as Mom punched the timer to three minutes with one hand and turned the pages of her TV Guide with another. —Ed Reynolds