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Family & Consumer Sciences Day Top Ten Facts about AAFCS Founder Ellen Swallow Richards

Engaging Families 10. Ellen was the first to serve Indian pudding—a corn-based dessert—upside-down, to encourage people to try it! It is still served in that way in Boston, 100 years later!

Engaging Families 9. Ellen represented Massachusetts at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago with a demonstration kitchen that sold healthy food and distributed info about nutrition and low-cost cooking. She insisted that her kitchen not be within the Women’s Pavilion, as she did not consider nutrition a gender issue.

Engaging Families 8. Ellen was a crusader against pollution, “warn[ing] that foul air, smoke, and poison fumes were hazardous, both outdoors as well as inside houses and buildings. ” 1 1. p. 86 The Remarkable Life and Career of Ellen Swallow Richards: Pioneer in Science and Technology, by Pamela Curtis Swallow

Engaging Families 7. Ellen was a trailblazer: the first woman graduate of MIT, the first woman accepted to a school of Science or Technology in the US, the first woman to earn a degree in chemistry in the US, and the first woman instructor at MIT!

Engaging Families 6. To test the safety of water in Massachusetts and promote water quality in order to save lives, Ellen and her students at MIT tested 40, 000 samples of water and sewage from across the state, doing a total of 100, 000 analyses. 1 1. p. 87 The Remarkable Life and Career of Ellen Swallow Richards: Pioneer in Science and Technology, by Pamela Curtis Swallow

Engaging Families 5. Ellen had her own version of “Distance Learning” in the 1800 s—she created correspondence science courses, complete with a kit to set up your own lab!

Engaging Families 4. Ellen opened the first health food restaurant in the country, which allowed the working poor of Boston to purchase healthy take-out meals and learn about low-cost and nutritious cooking. The New England Kitchen then expanded across the country!

Engaging Families 3. Ellen helped decide upon the name “Home Economics” for our field—but preferred the term Human Ecology. She was very insistent that the field encompass the sciences, but was overruled on the name— and her wishes are reflected in our current nomenclature!

Engaging Families 2. Along with the American Home Economics Association, Ellen also helped found the American Association of University Women and was the founder of the Journal of Home Economics (now the Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences).

Engaging Families 1. Ellen created the first healthy lunch program, in Boston, Massachusetts, feeding 4000 students across 16 schools daily—and it became the prototype for school lunch programs nationwide.