Why should we care about food(as a subject of academia)?
Composed, Organized, Embellished, and Written by Zanthia Dwight; Edited by Takehiro Azuma of Nara, Nara, Japan.
Summary: A lot of the speakers in videos we've watched are famous writers and researchers in food-related areas. To list a few: Micheal Pollan, Mark Bittman, Anthony Bourdain(the coolest of them all, just saying), Mario Batali (hilarious), and so much more that Michael Pollan decided not to include at all in the credits anywhere online. (Netflix, IMDb, Wikipedia)
But the thing about these people is they are public figures spreading information that makes them money, and now that capitalism has taken the reigns, well, their food stories seem like expose of fine dining and entertainment, nothing of academic value.
In the beginning of our textbook The Key Concepts of Food. the overview addresses the phenomenon happening inside universities and academia where food is becoming a curricular subject, like in this class. "Despite its importance, food is often taken for granted, especially by academics, who have long considered food matters to be too coarse for scholarly attention. But the field of food studies has expanded tremendously in recent years, and many colleges and universities are now offering food-related courses designed for undergraduates in liberal arts programs"(Food ix). Then the first chapter goes on to address that certainly food production in science, urban and suburban planning, economics, environment, and health has been studied but not consumption practices, at least not as closely. Anthropologists and historians have studied food differences and food practices as related to ritual: like religious fasting, diet restrictions, or certain foods for certain holidays, but the overall culture of food consumption has been ignored, like the 5 main pillars that Food. has covered. Thanks to this book, and others like it, some people have come to know more about eating experiences and why food is more than just consumption for survival. But, it still feels that most people in America, even if they are on a special diet, still don't necessarily care about food as a subject.
I've had so many people, other students, friends, and family members, turn their nose up at me, scrunch their faces up and ask: "What the hell are you doing taking a class about food? That doesn't seem like it applies to your studies." And we return to the book's overview: "There is nothing more basic than food", which seems to be the major turn off for people. This is basic stuff, home-ec if you will.
My Question: Why don't we care about food in and out of academia and why should we?
My artifact: the textbook the Key Concepts of Food. and supporting evidence
The concept that food isn't worth looking into as a subject comes from a certain place of privilege. The amount of food security most Americans experience is unsightly, it's so obvious to all of us that we don't even see it. We experience food as a trivial aspect of life, even hungry people know that there is an abundance of food that's just out of reach. Unfortunately, because of this image of abundance, we don't see food as a phenomenon worth studying. For example, I tried searching the world wide web for things like "American food abundance", "American food security", "Food security culture in America" and all I got was people talking about how to end hunger or how we eat strange meat foods like sloppy joes and nothing academic about Americans overstocking shelves and having superstores. We are so comfortable with it, it's invisible!
Our privilege with food is so great that we would rather watch cooking shows and reality TV about cooking than actually cook or learn about the sacredness of food. The Daily Mail has an article about the inverse relationship between cooking shows and cooking in the home. Also, we have so much food, we literally eat the MOST calories.
The most I can find online about food that's academic is about: nutrition, food insecurity, how to solve hunger, food waste, sustainability, and money. Other than that, everything else is entertainment, like this very popular cooking channel Tastey, which tantalizes its audience with food making videos.
My earlier point about food being considered home-ec is related to the dualisms that separate the world; Dr. Emmerman talked about this and so did the Key Concepts of Food. Dualisms are an aspect studied by feminists, ecofeminist, and queer theorists trying to define the binary separation of "normal" and "other" in our western culture. A lot these "othering" and "normalizing" ideals are not just within us as individuals and a culture, but disseminate themselves into our food, communication, and how we go about both! Food ends up getting dualized just like anything else in our fun binary privileging culture.
The Dualisms Emmerman listed:
men/women
public/private
white/black
culture/nature
human/animal
Men are more associated with culture, public life, and humanity, which are the general concerns historically of academia. The book says this: "'Our tradition has tended to privilege questions about the rational, the unchanging, and the eternal, and the abstract and the mental; and to denigrate questions about embodied, concrete, practical experience” (Curtin 1992: xiv). Philosopher Carolyn Korsmeyer agrees that “Taste and eating [are] tied to the necessities of existence and are thus classified as lower functions . . . operating on a primitive, near instinctual level'"(Food 2). Thus the tendency to distance oneself from "basic" food practices, everyday home, private, natural, female activities.
Everyday food, shopping, and eating a packed lunch is associated with just sustenance and nothing worth looking into academically. It's just everyday activity for human survival. Now, food writers are trying to say "NO, its actually super interesting to study why we practice certain food manners, expectations, and preparations!" and it is super interesting. The way we treat our everyday meals, food prep, food treatment in communication or roles, manners, and how much we care about it, shows important aspects of our culture. Delving into the reasons we go about eating and treating food is hard because we've shoved behind us those ideas, although they are still motivating and influencing us. But it's more terrifying to look within our culture and discover its idiosyncrasies and problems than it is to just eat for the sake of eating and not care about it. Or turn up your nose at food that seems "inedible" instead of thinking of the reason why it is edible, or how it came to be edible to them but not to us. And when looking deeply into that, how that very act is a dualistic aspect of our binary privileging culture where we push away others and glorify ourselves, we don't want to see it. That's pretty scary to look at. That's pretty hard to take in.
Answer: we don't care about food in academia because it reminds us of the oppression our food is founded in, and we overlook that and call it "basic". Whether that oppression is of the animals, workers, other cultures, races, genders, or classes, its there, and it is bound up tightly in the American idea of abundance, entertainment, and favoring binary dualisms that stick with the status quo.
Word count: 1201
Summary: A lot of the speakers in videos we've watched are famous writers and researchers in food-related areas. To list a few: Micheal Pollan, Mark Bittman, Anthony Bourdain(the coolest of them all, just saying), Mario Batali (hilarious), and so much more that Michael Pollan decided not to include at all in the credits anywhere online. (Netflix, IMDb, Wikipedia)
But the thing about these people is they are public figures spreading information that makes them money, and now that capitalism has taken the reigns, well, their food stories seem like expose of fine dining and entertainment, nothing of academic value.
In the beginning of our textbook The Key Concepts of Food. the overview addresses the phenomenon happening inside universities and academia where food is becoming a curricular subject, like in this class. "Despite its importance, food is often taken for granted, especially by academics, who have long considered food matters to be too coarse for scholarly attention. But the field of food studies has expanded tremendously in recent years, and many colleges and universities are now offering food-related courses designed for undergraduates in liberal arts programs"(Food ix). Then the first chapter goes on to address that certainly food production in science, urban and suburban planning, economics, environment, and health has been studied but not consumption practices, at least not as closely. Anthropologists and historians have studied food differences and food practices as related to ritual: like religious fasting, diet restrictions, or certain foods for certain holidays, but the overall culture of food consumption has been ignored, like the 5 main pillars that Food. has covered. Thanks to this book, and others like it, some people have come to know more about eating experiences and why food is more than just consumption for survival. But, it still feels that most people in America, even if they are on a special diet, still don't necessarily care about food as a subject.
I've had so many people, other students, friends, and family members, turn their nose up at me, scrunch their faces up and ask: "What the hell are you doing taking a class about food? That doesn't seem like it applies to your studies." And we return to the book's overview: "There is nothing more basic than food", which seems to be the major turn off for people. This is basic stuff, home-ec if you will.
My Question: Why don't we care about food in and out of academia and why should we?
My artifact: the textbook the Key Concepts of Food. and supporting evidence
The concept that food isn't worth looking into as a subject comes from a certain place of privilege. The amount of food security most Americans experience is unsightly, it's so obvious to all of us that we don't even see it. We experience food as a trivial aspect of life, even hungry people know that there is an abundance of food that's just out of reach. Unfortunately, because of this image of abundance, we don't see food as a phenomenon worth studying. For example, I tried searching the world wide web for things like "American food abundance", "American food security", "Food security culture in America" and all I got was people talking about how to end hunger or how we eat strange meat foods like sloppy joes and nothing academic about Americans overstocking shelves and having superstores. We are so comfortable with it, it's invisible!
Our privilege with food is so great that we would rather watch cooking shows and reality TV about cooking than actually cook or learn about the sacredness of food. The Daily Mail has an article about the inverse relationship between cooking shows and cooking in the home. Also, we have so much food, we literally eat the MOST calories.
Videos like this are everywhere, and cooking shows are rampant! In the media, food is considered an industry for sustenance and entertainment, but not for studying.
The Dualisms Emmerman listed:
men/women
public/private
white/black
culture/nature
human/animal
Men are more associated with culture, public life, and humanity, which are the general concerns historically of academia. The book says this: "'Our tradition has tended to privilege questions about the rational, the unchanging, and the eternal, and the abstract and the mental; and to denigrate questions about embodied, concrete, practical experience” (Curtin 1992: xiv). Philosopher Carolyn Korsmeyer agrees that “Taste and eating [are] tied to the necessities of existence and are thus classified as lower functions . . . operating on a primitive, near instinctual level'"(Food 2). Thus the tendency to distance oneself from "basic" food practices, everyday home, private, natural, female activities.
Everyday food, shopping, and eating a packed lunch is associated with just sustenance and nothing worth looking into academically. It's just everyday activity for human survival. Now, food writers are trying to say "NO, its actually super interesting to study why we practice certain food manners, expectations, and preparations!" and it is super interesting. The way we treat our everyday meals, food prep, food treatment in communication or roles, manners, and how much we care about it, shows important aspects of our culture. Delving into the reasons we go about eating and treating food is hard because we've shoved behind us those ideas, although they are still motivating and influencing us. But it's more terrifying to look within our culture and discover its idiosyncrasies and problems than it is to just eat for the sake of eating and not care about it. Or turn up your nose at food that seems "inedible" instead of thinking of the reason why it is edible, or how it came to be edible to them but not to us. And when looking deeply into that, how that very act is a dualistic aspect of our binary privileging culture where we push away others and glorify ourselves, we don't want to see it. That's pretty scary to look at. That's pretty hard to take in.
Answer: we don't care about food in academia because it reminds us of the oppression our food is founded in, and we overlook that and call it "basic". Whether that oppression is of the animals, workers, other cultures, races, genders, or classes, its there, and it is bound up tightly in the American idea of abundance, entertainment, and favoring binary dualisms that stick with the status quo.
Word count: 1201
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