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It Tastes Like The East...: The Problem Of Taste In The Gdr, Alice A. Weinreb
It Tastes Like The East...: The Problem Of Taste In The Gdr, Alice A. Weinreb
Alice Weinreb
This essay uses the topic of taste, specifically taste for food, as a way of unpacking the history of the GDR and East-West relations during the late Cold War. It explores the question of East German tastes from two angles: West German fantasies about the inadequacies of the GDR’s food system, and East German nutritionists’ unsuccessful struggles to regulate popular tastes. In particular, it focuses on the moment when popular taste was seen as a serious problem by the GDR state—during the rise of the obesity epidemic in the 1970s and 1980s.