I decided to raise this topic, because the author, who is highly respected in certain circles, somehow betrayed a phenomenal, sorry, inaccuracy. Or rather a lie. He (or she) wrote - Mikoyan argued that delicious food is bourgeois prejudice, only calories are important.
This is how myths are born that in the Soviet public catering they were fed almost from troughs and slops. And all by order of the People's Commissar!
And, meanwhile, Anastas Mikoyan, firstly, did not say anything of the kind, and, secondly, made a lot of efforts to develop the Soviet food industry. It was at the suggestion of Mikoyan that Soviet specialists went to the United States in order to learn from the experience of technological production processes and the construction of new factories for the production of products. Since 1930 in the Soviet Union, he insisted that foreign experts and technical masters were invited to the USSR.
In 1930-1931. Mikoyan succeeded in drawing up drawings and projects developed in Chicago by American and Soviet specialists jointly. The largest Moscow and Semipalatinsk meat processing plants appeared thanks to his work.
Mikoyan did not consider it shameful to learn from bourgeois gourmet capitalists, he said: "If you learn from the capitalists, then first of all you need to learn from the Americans." A mechanized method of making buns, a technology for mass production of ice cream, which had previously been made in the Soviet Union in an artisanal way, were brought from the United States.
I already wrote a more detailed article about Mikoyan - you can read it HERE .
And this person (who certainly deserves respect and true memory of him) is credited with such a phrase.
I do not argue that this phrase existed - in the same form in which on the screen, or slightly changed. Its author is the chief nutritionist of the USSR, Professor Manuil Pevzner, it was he who believed that delicious food is bourgeois prejudices, spices and spices whet the appetite and therefore are harmful, and Soviet food should be first of all useful.
And I cannot blame him for this phrase either (and I suggest you not to do this). He was the genius who developed the system of "tables" - medical nutrition for various diseases. All his life he was engaged in nutrition and its influence on the body, he was one of the initiators of the creation in 1921. department of diseases of the digestive system and medical nutrition at the Institute of balneology in Moscow. He headed it in 1924. Pevzner is one of those titans on whose shoulders all ideas about proper and rational nutrition are held.
So his statement is, again, not an evil desire to make everyone eat tasteless, but... Professional deformation, so to speak. He didn't want to make food tasteless, he wanted to make it healthy. Well, yes, with the directness of an enthusiast who wants to do good to everyone ...
And, by the way, it is his nutritional development that many people owe their lives and more or less tolerable health (because medical nutrition and its diets really work). His "tables" are taken as a model!
Why did I write all this? Yes, from the desire to preserve historical justice, which is becoming less and less in the network.