30th Anniversary Issue
When EatingWell first appeared on newsstands in 1990, the Berlin Wall had recently fallen. Something called the "World Wide Web" was just being proposed. And food and nutrition revolved in two vastly different universes: food was where gourmets waxed poetic about triple crème Brie en croute and molten chocolate cake; nutrition was where finger-waggy dietitians pushed salads with fat-free dressing.
No more fat-free diets. Amen to that—and other insights we've learned from covering 30 years of food trends and nutrition science.
By Joyce Hendley
EatingWell had a different view.
Led by founder James Lawrence, EatingWell assumed that the pursuit of healthy eating could and should be a pleasure—full of creativity fueled by global flavors and a love of whole foods in season. It was staffed by journalists with roots in investigative reporting and environmental and nutrition science. And with a food section overseen by a chef and a dietitian, the magazine carved out its own space at the intersection of food and health.
"EatingWell explored the connections between food as healthful sustenance and as culture. It dug beneath the surface to reveal practices of the mainstream food industry, it investigated how and where our food was grown and raised, and it used ingredients in novel ways to make dishes healthier yet uncompromisingly delicious."
We have more than 250 apple recipes in our archives and it was hard to narrow it down! From baking with apples to using apples in a savory fashion, it's clear that apples are good for more than keeping the doctor away (although it's justified!). With recipes like Caramel Apples to Apple Cider Chicken, you'll fall in love with the fruit just like we did 30 years ago.
Thirty years later, we're still at it. And, like most millennials, we've gained knowledge and a little more gravitas as we've aged. Today, the work of our small staff in Shelburne, Vermont, reaches 7.8 million readers, and our thriving website and social media feeds reach millions more.
To say we love salads would be an understatement. Salads show up in nearly every issue, and we've accumulated more than 1,000 recipes for them in our archives. We asked magazine and digital staff, both past and present, to share their favorite salads from the past decades. Here are their picks—we hope you love them as much as we do.
Our pages have explored issues as diverse as pollinator declines and personalized nutrition, heirloom legumes and the microbiome, "Frankenfish" and regenerative agriculture, vegan "cheese" and justice for farmworkers, along with the dangers—and possible upsides—of genetic modification. We've only just begun to cover the potential of our food choices to affect the health of our bodies and minds, as well as that of the planet. And as ever, we look forward to discovering new and exciting ways to procure and prepare foods, from chefs all over the world.
Over the last thirty years, EatingWell has done a lot of cooking and grilling, and have numerous delicious burger recipes to show for it. Check out some of our favorite flavor combinations over the last three decades.
To mark the occasion of our milestone birthday, we leafed through decades of issues to rediscover what topics were on our minds back then, and what we've learned since. We curated some of our favorite recipes, with contributions from chefs whose talents have stood the test of time, including Alice Waters, Mark Bittman and Eric Ripert. And true to our mission, there are also recipes that celebrate glorious produce (apples!) as well as makeovers of our readers' beloved comfort foods—a longtime EatingWell specialty. Carrot cake, anyone?
Over the past three decades, EatingWell has strived to take your favorite recipes and make them healthier. Whether that's cutting back on butter or oil, making something steamed instead of fried or swapping ingredients to fit your dietary needs, our goal is to provide recipes that are as good for you as they are delicious. And in honor of our 30th anniversary, we took existing recipes and made them even healthier the second time around. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
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