'Anxieties regarding degeneration among the lower classes were projected onto women, whose scientific ignorance was claimed to be a primary cause of the feebleness of modern (and especially urban) citizens. Reformers and legislators hoped that by offering scientifically-informed classes in such subjects as hygiene and cookery, this concern could be remedied. [note: 'Laura Shapiro, Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1986); Nancy L. Blakestad, “King’s College of Household and Social Science and the Origins of Dietetics Education,” in Nutrition in Britain: Science, Scientists, and Politics in the Twentieth Century (London, 1997), 75–89; Elizabeth Bird, “‘High Class Cookery’: Gender, Status and Domestic Subjects, 1890–1930,” Genderand Education 10, no. 2 (June 1998): 117–31; Joan E. Parker, “Lydia Becker’s ‘School for Science’: A Challenge to Domesticity,” Women’s History Review 10, no. 4 (September 2001): 629–50.']' (290-291)