ABSTRACT
The discussion on breakfast cereals, canned soups, the rise of the food conglomerates and prepared foods in the restaurant trade is intended to capture something of the complexity of the pervasive industry. The development of brand-name breakfast cereals in the late nineteenth century represents one of the greatest financial successes in the prepared-food industry as well as one of the most dramatic alterations of a culture's dietary preferences. The introduction of increasing numbers of prepared dishes on grocers' shelves, however, brought whole new meals within the grasp of consumers without the commitment of learning how to cook in an entirely new manner. Prepared foods play an even more pervasive role in the restaurant trade, where larger and larger numbers of stores are becoming little more than commercial dining rooms with assembly lines and a wait staff. A large share of the prepared-food market has always been in specialty foods for the institutional and restaurant trade.
