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Through previous centuries, eating changed by nearly imperceptible degrees, and mostly toward just getting enough.

Now big forces buffet food.

For the first time in history, the U.S. has produced a society in which less than one-tenth of the people turn out so much food that the Government's most embarrassing problem is how to dispose inconspicuously of 100 million tons of surplus farm produce.

In this same society, the plain citizen can with an average of only one-fifth his income buy more calories than he can consume.

Refrigeration, automated processing and packaging conspire to defy season and banish spoilage.

And in the wake of the new affluence and the new techniques of processing comes a new American interest in how what people eat affects their health.

To eat is human, the nation is learning to think, to survive divine.