2018 Communication and Foodways

Eric Girton 1/29/18 Word Count: 1,393 The USA's Hunger Issue This past week in class we focused on Chapter 5 of the "Food" book by Warren Belasco. In this chapter, it highlighted the importance of responsibility with food. The term, responsibility, as defined by the book, means meeting one's obligations to others. This definition, in which the author states that the word responsible derives from the Greek word "Sponde" (to make an offering/ treaty/ libation), and the word "re-spond" (to reply to another's offering or gesture or treaty). This idea of responsibility is somewhat similar to the responsibility that we define today as the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone. Then we went on to find the incorporation of food responsibility and the serious problems that our modern society has with food, hunger, food-borne diseases, obesity, etc. Food waste in the United States is astoni...

Aesthetic Expectations and Food Waste Alex Williams | Pacific Lutheran University Over the course of this class we have repeatedly discussed the ethical pitfalls of our modern food system, including environmental degradation, inhumanity to animals, and of course the immense amounts of waste that occur. Food waste was the primary focus of our talks this week, and as we worked our way through the issue and unpacked it further, we narrowed down it's causes. The two roots that we identified and articulated most were arbitrary aesthetic values and capitalism. Both of these problems are deeply systemic and we can see them frequently manifested in day to day life. The preferred hierarchy of food disposal Perhaps the most striking aspect of food waste is that, despite the fact that nearly 800 million people are affected by hunger worldwide , we continue to throw away around 1.3 billion tons of food worldwide- up to 40% of food in the United States alone . This would obviously...

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 expos e 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...

America's government is failing to fulfill its responsibilities to its citizens. In a country full of rabid patriots screaming that the United States is the greatest nation on the planet, it is estimated that one of every eight Americans are food insecure. Approximately 13 million American children struggle to eat food every day, often relying on government-subsidized programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the National School Lunch Act to avoid dying of starvation. Why is this atrocious figure not one of the government's top priorities to solve? In class this week, we watched A Place at the Table , a documentary that explores this issue, and exposes the failures of Congress in relation to feeding their constituents. In this film, the language used when discussing programs to feed Americans in need absolutely infuriated me. Certain Republican representatives st...

After watching the film A Place At The Table it made me take a step back and really think about the concern of food waste and poverty in the United States. The sad part is that many of us contribute to food waste and don’t think anything of it. I will be the first to admit that yes I am guilty of going to the grocery store and not finishing all the food I buy. It goes out of date gets bad and I end up throwing it away. I will also admit that when I go to the grocery store if a fruit or vegetable does not look how I think it is supposed to I won’t buy it.  Sadly, I have been very picky with the food I buy and eat. But after learning about where food waste goes as well as all the people that can’t even afford to put a meal on their table for them and their family, it really made me open my eyes and think about  how I’ve been dealing with food my whole life. Some people throw away food because they buy too much or not buy food because it doesn’t fulfill their visu...