Food History and Culture in The West

FOOD: HISTORY AND CULTURE IN THE WEST
Institute of European Studies and EU Center of Excellence 2010 Food

Symposium
K-14 Educational Resource Materials

As part of its public outreach activities, the Institute of European Studies (IES) at the University
of California, Berkeley has developed curricular resource materials for K-14 educators, adapted
from the proceedings of two IES events in 2010 that explored food cultures and histories. We
hope these materials will serve as a point of departure for classroom discussions surrounding
the topic of food in current and historical contexts for Europe and the U.S.

These materials are available online at http://ies.berkeley.edu/nrc/index.html and also on the
ORIAS website at http://orias.berkeley.edu/internat.html.

IES Food Resource Materials, 2

OVERVIEW OF RESOURCE PACKET CHAPTERS 1-3

The material in this resource packet takes up food issues that may be familiar in their American
forms to U.S. students and asks how they apply to European food production and eating trends.
Interest in food issues and food studies has surged in recent years, both in popular culture and at
universities. Much of the anxiety that accompanies this new interest relates to foods changing
context in an expanding global food system. That is to say, it has become more difficult to know
where our food comes from, and consequently, harder to feel connected to it. While there is still
interest in different culinary cultures and regional cuisines, attention has also focused on the
ingredients that make up any dish or product: where they come from and how they are produced.
These issues are reflected throughout in the summaries included in this resource packet.

Chapter 1 is based on topics that arose during the April 2, 2010 panel discussion Food, Culture
and Identity in a Global Society. Chapters 2 and 3 are based on presentations given during the
April 30, 2010 symposium Food: History and Culture in the West, which brought together
scholars from the U.S. and Europe. The following outline gives a brief overview of the chapter
topics, followed by suggested ways to lead into a discussion into these topics.

CHAPTER 1. Food, Culture, and Identity in a Global Context
This chapter is based on a discussion about current international food politics and trends,
focusing in particular on foods cultural role and its potential to promote tolerance and diversity.

Topic 1. Food as a Way of Promoting Tolerance and Diversity

Preliminary Discussion Questions:
What role does food play in peoples lives beyond nutrition?
What kind of cultural conflicts or misunderstandings have arisen over national or regional
food traditions?
How can food highlight various ethnic, religious, or political differences between
cultures?
Alternately, how can food be used to bring different groups together across cultural
differences?
What is the role of cookbooks in defining and legitimizing national, regional, and ethnic
food cultures?
One possible activity is to look at cookbooks from various cuisines in class, explore the
kind of information conveyed in a cookbook and discuss how to read it. Students can also
discuss differences and similarities in cookbooks that represent food from bordering
geographical regions on the one hand (Mexican and Central American, Mediterranean, or
Asian cuisines, for example) or compare cuisines of countries with different climates and
geographies. Students can also bring in their own recipes and talk about different ways of
learning to cooklearning and practicing with family and friends, following recipes,
watching TV cooking showsand also think about what is lost or gained in each method.


Topic 2. More on Food and Identity (Individual and Collective)

What kinds of influences, beliefs, and needs beyond what tastes good influence your
decisions about what to eat and what not to eat?
In what ways do your own eating habits differ from those of your family members or
from your friends?
How do you respond to eating habits or foods that are unfamiliar to you? How do other
people respond to the kinds of food that you choose to eat?
What are some different ways in which individuals express their identities through food
choices? (for example by being vegetarian or vegan)
In what ways do certain groups identify themselves through food practices? (for example,
in religious food guidelines such as Halal or kosher foods and in ethnic traditions
maintained in immigrant communities)
When we talk about authentic cuisines, as in authentic Italian food or authentic
Mexican food, what determines the authenticity of these dishes?
Students can also discuss more generally how their own heritage is expressed through
food and the ways in which they interact with or learn about different immigrant
communities by trying their food, either at friends houses or at restaurants.

Topic 3. Comparing European and U.S. Food Cultures and Concerns

What are some food traditions or specific ingredients that are special to the area you live
in or that you have experienced in other parts of the U.S. or other countries?
How important is it to preserve the food traditions of certain regions, such as a particular
way of making noodles (spaghetti, pho, ramen), French onion soup, or burritos? Should
we worry about food traditions that change over time as people forget recipes or
experiment with new ingredients or populations migrate to new places?
Have you heard of the term GMOs or GM foods? These stand for Genetically Modified
Organisms or Genetically Modified foods. What are some examples of genetically
modified foods?
How important is it for you to know whether the corn, tomato, or other produce you are
eating has been altered by scientists? Would it make a difference in whether you ate it?

Topic 4. Recent Food Trends (Locavorism, Food Celebrities)

Have you heard of the term locavore? (A person who eats locally grown and produced
foods) What are the arguments for and against always eating locally?
In what ways are politics and pleasure opposed when it comes to eating food? In what
ways can they work together?

Who are some famous chefs or food personalities? How have they influenced your
interest in food?

Topic 5. The McDonaldization of World Cuisine & the Role of Big Food Chains

How often do you eat at fast food restaurants? Which ones do you prefer and why?
What are the effects of fast food restaurants on neighborhoods and on the culture at
large? Can there be positive effects of fast food restaurants?
What do you think the term McDonaldization means? What is the attitude toward
McDonalds in foreign countries like France, Italy, China, and Russia?
What are the most important factors for you and your family in deciding where to buy
your food and what kind of food to buy?
One possible activity is to compare international menus of McDonalds to think about
how fast food can adapt to local cultures. Examples of international McDonalds menu
items can be found on the Food Network website:
http://foodnetworkhumor.com/2009/07/mcdonalds-menu-items-from-around-the-world-
40-pics/ and on the various international McDonalds websites:
http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/country/map.html

CHAPTER 2. The Influence of Mediterranean Cuisine and Fantasies of the
Good Life

This chapter considers how European culinary traditions, especially Mediterranean diets, and
their association with a certain kind of good living have influenced U.S. food trends from the
nineteenth through twentieth centuries and have also become popular in U.K. culinary culture
since World War II.

Topic 1. Adoption of Mediterranean Diets to Combat Obesity in the U.S.

What kinds of foods make up a healthy, balanced diet?
If someone said they were following a Mediterranean diet what kinds of cuisines or
meals would you think of?
Which world cuisines seem to be the healthiest (low fat, high fiber, lots of fruits and
vegetables)?
What are some differences in how Americans approach diet and health compared to other
cultures? What are the regional differences in the attitude toward food within the U.S.?
For example, how do Californians eat differently than other parts of the country?
What are some healthy eating or diet trends that have become popular in the U.S. that you
can think of?

Topic 2. Food Fantasies in Contemporary U.K. Food Writing

Have you or the people who cook in your family ever had a hard time finding the
necessary ingredients for a recipe? Which ingredients and why were they hard to find?
Activity: find a recipe for a dish from a foreign cuisine. Read it together and have
students discuss whether they would try to make the dish and how they would find the
ingredients. What experiences, memories, or scenes from their imagination does the
recipe make them think of? Alternatively, students can discuss the descriptive food
passages given below and then discuss what these passages make them think of.
What impressions do you have of British food? What is your impression of Italian food?
What kind of food would be in your ideal meal?
What kinds of foods or meals would you consider fancy or expensive?
What do you think of the recent trend in buying organic, local, and fresh produce and
other ingredients? How easy or difficult is it to eat this way in your everyday life?

CHAPTER 3. Food in Political and Historical Contexts
This chapter illustrates how food issues have entered into larger political and historical contexts.
The first section looks at the importance of vegetarianism in Nazi ideas about natural harmony
and purity and raises questions about personal practices seen as tools for nationalism. The second
section looks at the history of food in U.S. social reform movements in three major historical
periods: the J acksonian Era (1830s-40s); the Progressive Era (1890-1920), and the
Countercultural Movement (1960s-70s).

Topic 1. German Vegetarianism from the 19
th
-Century to the Third Reich

What are the reasons that someone might choose to be vegetarian or to reduce their
meat consumption? (health, concern for animals, environment, politics, etc.)
What assumptions do people often make about vegetarians beyond their food
practices? (Political beliefs? Class? Education? Religious beliefs?)
In what ways does the government regulate what we eat? What role does the Food &
Drug Administration (FDA) play in what we eat, for example.
Why would the government care what its citizens eat?
Should the government play a role in personal food choices? If so, what should its
responsibilities be toward its citizens?

This section also raises the following central questions:
How was vegetarianism connected to 19
th
-century social reforms and romanticism
throughout Europe?
How did vegetarianism become a tool for nationalism under the Nazis? What is the
relationship between food production and national security?


Topic 2. Food Politics: Effecting Social Change Through Food

What did you eat at your last meal? What factors determined what you ate?
In general, what are the main factors that influence what you choose to eat? What
elements besides taste and convenience affect this decision? Do these factors ever
conflict with each other?
Have you ever decided not to eat something even though you knew it would taste
good? Why did you decide not to eat it?

CHAPTER 1
Food, Culture, and Identity in a Global Context


Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
II. Topics & Selected Transcript
1. Food as a Way of Promoting Tolerance and Diversity
2. More on Food and Identity (Individual and Collective)
3. Comparing European and U.S. Food Cultures and Concerns
4. Recent Food Trends (Locavorism, Food Celebrities)
5. The McDonaldization of World Cuisine & the Role of Big Food Chains
III. Appendix: Glossary and Additional Resources

I. Introduction

Source: Katrina Dodson
Barry Glassner and Darra Goldstein in conversation, April 2, 2010

This chapter is based on a conversation between Darra Goldstein, founding editor of
Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture and Professor of Russian at Williams College;
and University of Southern California sociologist Barry Glassner, whose book The Gospel of
Food (2007) looks at food myths and anxieties in American society. IES director J ohn Efron
moderated the discussion.


Source: http://www.gastronomica.org/issues1001.html
The 10
th
Anniversary issue of Gastronomica (Winter 2010)

Goldstein and Glassner discussed the relationship between food and identity and in particular
how food can be used to promote tolerance and diversity. The conversation ranged freely over
the cultural dimensions underlying food in different societies and considered the role of food
politics in our increasingly globalized world.

II. Topics & Selected transcript
What follows are summaries and selected excerpts from the discussion. The topics generally
follow the order of the conversation but some sections of the transcript and Q&A session have
been restyled to enhance clarity. Phrases in bold correspond to additional information and links
on these topics, listed in the Appendix.

A. Council of Europe Working Group on Food as a Promoter of Tolerance and Diversity
In 2002, the Council of Europe convened a working group to explore how food might be used
to promote tolerance and diversity. This endeavor was part of a larger, three-year project on
intercultural dialogue, governance, and cooperation among member countries. Darra Goldstein
participated in the group alongside Arie Nadler, a professor of Social Psychology at Tel Aviv
University and a specialist in conflict resolution; Stephen Mennell, a professor of Sociology at
University College, Dublin, and the author of All Manners of Food; J ean-Pierre Poulain, the
director of the Center for the Study of Tourism and Hospitality Industries at the University of
Toulouse; Kathrin Merkle, the head of the Councils Cultural Policies Department; and Simone
Bernhardt, the manager of the Councils Intercultural Dialogue and Conflict Prevention project.

DG: That an important governmental and very bureaucratic body would actually be thinking
seriously enough about food to convene an international working group to study it shows the
importance they attribute to the cultural and social role of food. I thought that if were talking
about differences between Europe and the United States, one very obvious distinction is that
Europeans recognize that food is an important part of the fabric of peoples lives. This is less so
in the United States.

The five scholars explored the question, What is the meaning of food? and debated its role in
ethnic and religious tensions. They also examined the possibility that food, which is something
that all of us share, albeit in different ways, can be used to bring people together instead of
differentiating between us. According to Goldstein, one of the most important ideas to come out
of the group was that food is a social process rather than a commodity and thus is central to
multicultural understanding: [Food] has to do with how we live and its not just an object that
we ingest. She suggested that in the U.S., food studies focus more on food as a commodity (an
agricultural product to be bought and sold, as in Mark Kurlanskys books Salt and Cod) whereas
in Europe, food is understood more widely as a social process.

Source: http://book.coe.int/EN/ficheouvrage.php?PAGEID=36&lang=EN&produit_aliasid=1912
The Council of Europe volume Culinary Cultures of Europe, co-edited by Goldstein

This working group discussion resulted in a volume titled Culinary Cultures of Europe:
Identity, Diversity and Dialogue, edited by Goldstein and Kathrin Merkle and published in 2005
by the Council of Europe to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the European
Cultural Convention. Each of the 40 contributing European countries was asked to submit an
essay that represented its national culture through food, and to answer the often-difficult

question, Who are we in terms of our culinary identity? Goldstein highlighted the entry from
Austria on the national image of the well-fed Austrian bourgeois, and one from Sweden on
considering food for the elderly in retirement homes. She also recounted difficulties along the
way; particularly the need to be careful not to appear to privilege the perspectives of one country
over another. For example, after the publication of the volume, representatives of Azerbaijan
wrote a letter to the Council of Europe protesting that in their entry, the Armenians had in fact
stolen their food from Azerbaijan. This whole idea that food could bring people togetherthis
letter really showed me that its a challenge.

B. On food as an agent of peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict and the adoption and
assimilation of food in a multicultural context

BG: Speaking of the utopian aspect [of food], a few years ago you explored the issue of whether
food can be an agent of peace between Israel and Palestine. Would you talk about that?

DG: I was brought up J ewish, and until two years ago I had never been to Israel, for a number
of reasons . . . Following on the project with the Council of Europe and this beautiful volume
that came out, [Culinary Cultures of Europe:] Identity, Diversity, Dialogue, I thought Well,
great, Ive edited this volume where we talk about how important food is to multicultural
understanding.

Working on the Council of Europe project led Goldstein to take a more activist role in using food
to deepen cross-cultural understanding. Giving the example of a new San Francisco restaurant
serving the cuisine of the Hakka, a minority group in China, she asked if we go there and try
their food, do we understand them better or are we just culinary adventurers? She began to
question whether this kind of restaurant experience presented an opportunity for true knowledge
and understanding of unfamiliar cultures, or whether it was mere tourism, an exotic pleasure
that leaves behind no residue of thinking or understanding. And I worried that I was more in the
culinary adventurer camp. . . . What was I really doing to promote tolerance through food? I had
to be more activist, and so I decided that now was the time finally to go to Israel and test whether
it could work.

Goldstein then joined Tel Aviv University psychologist Arie Nadler and another social
psychologist to work on a joint project aimed at bringing Palestinians together with Israelis for a
meal at the same table in the northern city of Safed, home to a large Orthodox J ewish
community, as well as a significant indigenous Arab population. Despite many engaged
conversations, there was continued resistance to the idea. So I did not solve the Israel-Palestine
problem, Goldstein said ruefully to the audience. She is continuing to work on other ideas
together with her colleagues and to ask more questions in order to surmount impediments to
engaging in a larger dialogue around food in Israel.

DG: Food is such an emotional thing. If you can channel those emotions into something
positive, its really wonderful, but all too often they are diverted into something negative. A case
in point is falafel. Everyone smiles and says, Oh I love falafel. So what is falafel? It can be
made with fava beans or chick peas and theyre mashed with spices. It is a food Arabs
[Muslims, Christians and J ews]have been making and eating for centuries. European Israelis

also started eating this food, but there were also some wonderful entrepreneurs who said, Wow,
I can start not Burger King but Falafel King and build chains of falafel restaurants. These chains
expanded to Europe, and falafel became a kind of icon of Israeli cuisine. Of course, Israel has
many different elements in its cuisine, but falafel was sort of the marker.

Source: http://mideastfood.about.com/od/maindishes/r/falafelrecipe.htm
Goldstein used the falafel as an example of a food that is linked with both Israeli and
Palestinian cuisine.

Well whats problematic about that? If you think about the adoption of foods and the
assimilation of foods, it happens all over the world and its a really good and important thing for
the way cuisines evolve. In California, particularly, theres sushi and theres sushi everywhere,
but theres the California roll. You ask a J apanese sushi master and hell say, Thats not sushi,
but hes not going to be particularly offended, its not a blow against J apan. But theres a
difference when something thats adopted no longer seems neutrally adopted but rather
appropriated, and then it becomes politically charged. And because the Palestinians are in a
vulnerable position vis--vis Israel, they feel that their identity is being erased in all kinds of
ways. Then this is just one more instance in which something has been taken from them, even
though from another perspective, you can say, Well its just the natural order of things; people
adopt foods and change them.

Goldstein pointed out that in the U.S., chefs have been very involved in promoting good eating
and nutrition, especially the northern California organic movement and with chefs like J amie
Oliver, whose TV program J amie Olivers Food Revolution highlights food-related health
problems in various American communities. In Israel on the other hand, there has been more
emphasis on the use of food to promote political goodwill.

DG: In Israel, there are chefs like . . . Erez Komrovsky [one of Israels most famous bakers and
owner of the Lehem Erez franchise of bread shops], who, during the second intifada, worked
with Palestinian chef Mahmoud Sfadi at the restaurant Diana in Nazareth. The two of them got
together as a public statement to cook a meal together . . . It was basically Arab food but had the
overlay of this Israeli chef. You couldnt really tell what was Arab and what was J ewish. It was
all one. And a number of chefs are trying to embrace the Arab traditionnot appropriate it but

give voice to it, if you can give voice to something through foodthat might not be the
appropriate way to phrase it but make it visible on the plate.

Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3265991,00.html
Israeli chef and restauranteur Erez Komrovsky with Lehem Erez bakery co-founder Ilan Rom.
Goldstein cites Komrovskys work with Palestinian chefs during the second intifada.

J E (moderator): Over 60% of the J ewish population of Israel is made up of people who come
from Arab lands, with traditions that have been there for eons in those countries, and who are
essentially Arabs who happened to be J ewish. This was their food. So for this sector its not
about appropriation or expropriation or even imitation. Its what they ate. And where it becomes
complicated is the physical, geographical context in which it now takes place. And as youve
said, when you take foods with you, both in your imagination and literally in your basket, when
you move to other places, either voluntarily or by force, you fall back on those foods that are
familiar to you.

DG: So that is part of a larger problem of defining boundaries. And they shift. But the other
thing I think is complicated in the Israeli case is that there are lots and lots of beautiful
cookbooks about Israeli cuisine and I have, I think, the only existing Palestinian cookbook in
English. Theres one that was published by a church group in southern California in a
mimeographed form and I havent been able to get my hands on it. But its less than five.
Palestinian cuisine hasnt been touted as a body of knowledge with a long history. So thats
another way in which people who have cultural savvy and the money to publish books are able to
broadcast things that have caused some of the rupture. It also shows the importance of
cookbooks as vehicles for communication.

During the conversation, other controversies over who can lay claim to a particular culinary
heritage were raised: the cuisine of the Basque region and disputes and overlaps between Turkish
and Greek food.

DG: There the difference [from the Palestine-Israel issue] is that both Turkish and Greek
cuisine are validated as great cuisines . . . There is a back and forth over where a dish originates
but there is no question of whether there is a Greek cuisine or Turkish cuisine. Basque cuisine
has also just exploded over the last decade, so whereas there are questions about the political and
cultural autonomy of the Basque people, Basque lands are where people need to go now to get
Basque food.

Discussing further the role of cookbooks in legitimizing and communicating the aspects of a
national or ethnic culture, Goldstein brought up chef Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit, a high-
profile fine-dining Scandinavian restaurant in Manhattan. Sameulsson is a Swedish chef of partly
Ethiopian descent.

DG: I think of someone like Marcus Samuelsson, who made his name with Aquavit, which is
Swedish, Scandinavian food, and now has embraced his Ethiopian heritage and written a
beautiful book on African food [The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and
Flavors of Africa, 2006]. But the thing is, somehow its not being picked up [by the food world].
In the recent J ames Beard Foundation nominations, I think it was nominated for the visuals, in
the art category, but not for the content. There are a lot of questions there and its not easy to
break down peoples preconceptions about who should be cooking what food and what food
belongs to whom. And it goes back to the whole question of food and identity.

A. On Individual Identity
BG: Can you talk more generally about food and identity?

DG: I will start with . . . Brillat-Savarins aphorism, which everyone cites: Tell me what you
eat and Ill tell you who you are. The reason that everyone keeps dragging that out is because,
like with other aphorisms, theres a lot of truth to it. We can understand food and identity in
many different ways. Most immediately, it has to do with the individual. Many of you who have
brought children up, know that probably at a certain point in their lives, they will announce,
Im not going to eat that; Im vegetarian. Its one of the first assertions of individual identity
or in the case that the parents are vegetarian and the kid says, Im going to eat meat. Its a way
of differentiating oneself. Youre vegetarian, youre vegan, youre freegan, youre a raw foodist.
Whatever it might be, it is a badge. And sometimes it can be private, but I think in American
society today, it is very public.


Source: http://www.charlesnealselections.com/wine/savoie/maison-angelot-bugey/
Tell me what you eat and Ill tell you who you are. French gourmand Jean-Anthelme
Brillat-Savarin in his gastronomic masterpiece The Physiology of Taste (1825).

During the audience Q&A, the conversation returned to the question of ingredient-based food
restrictions and trends and how these challenge the sense of togetherness at the table.

Audience member: We are more of a stewpot than weve ever been in the U.S. . . . you can have
a potluck, and all these different dishes come into the American home. Now there are other rigid
concepts that have to do less with cooking and more with the ingredients: where they came from
and what they mean; who grew them; and are they organic or genetically modified. And then all
of a sudden we cant all sit down and eat together anymore.

DG: Ive been thinking about that a lot lately. The model at the so-called elite private colleges
and universities on the East Coast is that you have to keep upping the ante because you want to
attract these students, and part of the way to do that is to offer them a little smorgasbord of
choices in the dining halls. So instead of focusing on basically a good meal served for everyone
with perhaps a meat option and a vegetarian option, now there is the bar for the Hindu students,
there is the kosher one, there is the vegan one, there is the macrobiotic one, and its all different
coteries now. Instead of saying We are a community, were all eating together, maybe were not
going to partake of that food but were going to sit down together and not identify ourselves
through which marketplace we go to. And I think this is a really pernicious thing.

Audience member: I think that barriers are being erected on the plate. And as much as we enjoy
all the other cuisines, certain ideologies have been put forth to complicate those decisions. So our
identity with food, whether its European or every leaf or every blueberry, is now making such

demands on usthat is, if we decide to opt in and take part in the retail idea of what we buy and
why we buy it.

DG: Or just giving a dinner party these days: inviting people to dinner and planning a menu,
then a call comes in saying I dont eat this, or I dont eat that.

J E (moderator): I can say that people on this campus [UC Berkeley] are absolutely petrified
when they invite Michael Pollan for dinner. But if anyone has watched an interview with him,
when he is asked what his favorite foods were growing up, he says, I liked what everyone else
liked. I ate brisket, and stuffed cabbage, so if you ever have him, youll be safe.

B. On Collective Identity
Following up on Glassners invitation to talk more generally about food and identity, Goldstein
went on to discuss group food identities.

DG: Then there are different kinds of group identity. You can have religious identity based on
eating practices. As we know today, there is matzo over here because its Passover, and thats a
way of differentiating ourselves from others who eat bread at this time of year. The same is true
for the choice of whether to eat pork, mix meat and milk, or eat beef. If youre Hindu, there are
all kinds of religious proscriptions. There are also ethnic culinary identities, which I think is
really quite complicated, because those have to do both with geographic boundaries, regional
identities, but also ethnic groups that might straddle different geographic areas. And
interestingly, in terms of ethnic groups, thats where you often find pejoratives having to do with
food. Goldstein gave past examples of frogs for the French or Krauts for Germans, who ate
a lot of sauerkraut. You have socioeconomic identities and again, you have many slurs that
come into play. You think about the terms grit or cracker, as associated with poor people in
the South who eat grits, but which are fantastic and really healthy.

So food and identity are really so closely tied. And if you look at communities of people who
have migrated or assimilated into the new culture, so you often find that . . . the language will be
lost before the last vestiges of the food, even if the food is not being cooked on a daily basis.
Whenever theres a holiday or a birthday or a special occasion, the food from the country that the
people came from will be served to remind people who they are and to mark it as a special
occasion.

During the audience Q&A one audience member brought up the difficulty of defining the
historical and culinary boundaries of any cultural tradition associated with a single nation or
region. For example, European cuisine changed drastically beginning in the 1700s with the
introduction of New World crops such as the potato, tomato, and corn. Goldstein responded by
asking how authenticity becomes defined in certain cuisines and gave the example of attempts by
the Italian Academy of Cuisine website to locate authentic pasta sauce recipes.

DG: On the page for Bologna, it says that in 1984, after a long and laborious process and much
research and investigation, they went back in the archives and found the authentic recipe for
ragout, ragout bolognese as being ne plus ultra, its just exquisite. So what does it have in it?
Tomato paste. And of course tomatoes didnt come to Italy until the Columbian exchange, and

then there wasnt even Italian cuisine as such. We can still argue whether there is, but you know
Italy wasnt a country until the second half of the nineteenth century. So I dont mean to say that
its all meaningless, but in a certain way it is. But the question of the local, the regional, what
you ate where you lived before all of these migrations took place, thats really what defines a
deep-rooted identity.

BG: Whats received as authentic also comes largely through cookbooks, which also have lots
of influences that are reintegrated into the local culture they describe.

BG: You talked about many types of identity and I want to raise some comparisons between
Europe and the U.S. . . . In the U.S., especially in recent decades, the sorts of identity around
food that you talked about have become really prevalent . . . such as veganism, eating local
foods, farmers market foods. This is true not just in California but also in places like the snow
belt of the Midwest. That seems to me very different than anything Ive seen anywhere [in
Europe]; the closest comparison would be the anti-genetically-modified foods or anti-GM
movement, which differentiates different parts of Europe from one another. But its very much a
political, nationwide phenomenon. Its not that you find people saying, Im anti-GM and thats
how I identify myself. Theres legislation for the entire region. Its very different from what
were talking about here [in the U.S.], and I was wondering if you see those differences.

Sources: http://laurakowalewski.wordpress.com/category/food-for-thought-2/page/2/,
http://www.squidoo.com/nomogmo
Anti-GM slogans and signs

DG: I would say that there definitely are differences but many of them are more on the national
than the individual level. Going back to one of the first comments I made on food being part of
the fabric of life in Europe: there you eat and you enjoy your food, and you dont have to parse it
so constantly as we do here in order to assert our extreme knowledge of something and show that
we are foodies . . . or that we are who we are. Its just more natural [in Europe] if I can use that

word. But theres also a different kind of anxiety in Europe that were not experiencing here and
that has to do with the E.U. as a larger, multi-national bureaucratic organization. . . . What has
happened in individual regions [as a part of this larger integration] is the fear of losing their
particular identity. Much of that is tied up with food.

The increase in the number of E.U. member states, and in the quantity of regional food products
being shipped more widely throughout Europe has led to the rise of a new system named
Appellations of Controlled Origin [or AOC, an abbreviation of the French Appellation
dorigine contrle. This is a title of distinction that originated in France in 1935, given to foods
from a particular region as stamps of authenticity, quality and differentiation; the EU-wide
system based on the AOC is called the European Protected Designation of Origin, or
European PDO, inaugurated in 1992 . For example, a well-known kind of chicken raised in
Brest, France now has to compete with chicken that is more cheaply produced in Eastern
European countries, presenting a new difficulty for both farmers and consumers.

Goldstein went on to discuss the importance of culinary patrimony (the idea that meaningful
cultural heritage is passed down through food traditions) to European cultures. This is especially
true in France, which applied to UNESCO, the branch of the United Nations known for
designating World Heritage Sites, to get French culinary traditions included in its Intangible
Heritage List. This request has been rejected twice, in 2006 and in 2008, as has a similar
application from Mexico. UNESCO has yet to designate gastronomy as a category in its heritage
list.

Goldstein observed that in the U.S., there are regional identities as well, especially in the south,
where the Southern Foodways Alliance is very active in collecting oral histories and preserving
foodways as a kind of folk heritage. For the most part, however, food and place and identity are
not quite as strong here. [See Appendix for more on USDA Organic regulations]

Another difference between Europe and the U.S. has to do with certification. Glassner noted that
Europe pays more attention to genetically modified foods and to certifying the regional origins of
food products, whereas in the U.S. debates center around the question of what constitutes organic
products, with over 2,000 pages of legislation created to determine what is organic by federal
USDA standards. You would never find that sort of thing in Europe.

DG: Were not going to have the same sort of debates that you were just describing [on
governmentally certified regional food appellations] for a local product here [in the U.S.]. Well
its beginning, but were a newer country so we dont have a lot of the same traditions.

However, Goldstein did recognize a growing U.S. interest in regional products and on knowing
the name of the particular farm or area where certain kinds of produce are grown. Living in the
Berkshires in western Massachusetts, in the late fall she gets excited about the most awesome
turnips, the Florida Mountain turnips. That is not a controlled appellation, but everyone who
lives there seeks the Florida Mountain turnips. And if you go to any of your farmers markets
here [in the San Francisco Bay Area], youll see its not just mandarins but it is either the farm or
the region where theyre grown. So yes, we do pay attention to the origins of local foods, but its

not as regulated and not as much of a political issue. This, because were in the United States and
ostensibly comprise one country.

To consider further the different ways in which food and politics intersect in the U.S. and
Europe, Glassner read a passage from Adam Gopniks April 5, 2010 New Yorker article No
Rules! about a new French culinary movement called Le Fooding, which is challenging the
strict rules upheld by traditional French culinary approaches. To illustrate how food and politics
combine differently in France versus the U.S., Gopnik writes: In America and England, you are
what you think about eating. Tell me where you stand on Michelle Obamas organic White
House garden and . . . I can tell you what the rest of your politics are. His point is that in the
U.S., those in favor of progressive political reform are also likely to favor liberal reforms in food
practices. (For example, someone in favor of healthcare reform would also be likely to buy
organic produce from the farmers market.) In France, however, Gopnik argues that the
philosophy of food does not break down on such neat party lines. . . . tell me what you think
about eating, and I will tell you only that you are French. He explains that many of those most
resistant to change in French cuisine are on the political left, whereas some of those most open to
new ideas in food are members of rightwing political parties, so that there is not as predictable a
correlation between food and political principles in France, as in the U.S.

BG: And that difference struck me as something Ive been trying to define in a way. But I
wonder if you agree that this is a good characterization, and if so, does it go beyond France and
Europe?

DG: I think that France is really the prime example, and maybe Italy one notch down. I was just
in Ireland and the food scene is really amazing there, so theres something happening there.
Theres even a burgeoning movement in Russia.

BG: But I think the politics of food work very differently in Europe than in the U.S.

Gopniks article also reflects upon the ways in which food reform in the U.S. often means
returning to traditional food practices as a way of resisting the dominance of the industrialized
food system, while the French movement Le Fooding sets its standards around a good eating
experience that challenges the strict rules that have characterized French cuisine until now. The
guide that the group has put out is open even to pizzerias and other fast food establishments, as
long as the time and place are appropriate to their context. In this way, Le Fooding takes what
might be considered a more typically American openness to that which is new and non-
traditional.


Source: http://www.lefooding.com/le-gout-de-l-epoque/
A Guide to Eating from the recent French food reform movement Le Fooding.

According to the discussants, then, in the U.S. more regulatory emphasis is placed on the
healthfulness of the food and the standards by which it was produced, while in Europe, there is
more concern about maintaining both traditional regional distinctions and the natural genetic
makeup of food.

During the Q&A session, an audience member remarked that when traveling to Russia over the
last five or six years, she has noted a marked distaste for food imported from the West. They
suggest to me that there is in the food, not a literal poison that will kill them at that moment, but
a poison that they will ingest through their bodies that will sicken them over time. She added
that this new anxiety might be taken as a reformulation of Brillat-Savarins famous aphorism:
You are what you eat . . . and you are contaminated by it.

Goldstein responded by agreeing that there had been a recent revival of interest in domestic
products in Russia and a suspicion of imported food; a distinct contrast from the embrace of
Western products that marked the fall of the Soviet Union. Its a really interesting phenomenon
because when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was just this floodgate that opened and all they
wanted were Western products, which had been denied them for 70-odd years. They imported
from the United States in particular Purdue chicken, and it was known in Russia as Bushs
thighs. They were very plump, not like the scrawny Russian chickens, the scrawny, tasty
Russian chickens that were also very expensive, so here [from the U.S.] was cheap packaged
chicken.

As the new Russia has evolved, people are now starting to turn to cottage industries. They are
valorizing their own produce in a way that was prevalent during the Soviet years when it was a
matter of survival, and the only way you could get through the winter was to forage for
mushrooms and berries and canning and salting. It was part of how they lived. But now, theyre
construing it differently. And we talked about the cultural patrimony of France; I think what
were seeing now in Russia is this awareness of what we have. . . . [Theyre thinking,] We
wont be tainted by foods from the West because theyre not natural, theyre adulterated. Over
time, well be sickened. But I dont think they mean physically sickened. Its going back to the
1830s and the debates between the Slavophiles and the Westerners. You know, What is Russia
and whither is she going? And Gogols famous image of the troika rushing forth. [Goldsteins
reference is to a famous passage in Russian writer Nikolai Gogols 1842 novel Dead Souls that
compares Russia to a troika, a traditional three-horse carriage, speeding wildly out of control:
Where art thou soaring away to, Russia? Give me the answer!]

Topic 4. On Recent Food Trends: Locavorism and Food Celebrities
Adam Gopniks New Yorker article No Rules! (cited in the previous section) is also a good
point of departure for thinking about recent food reform trends:

Change we can eat. . . . The Western world has been filled with food-reformmovements
in the past twenty years. Slow Food, the Edible Schoolyard, the various vegetarian and
ethical movements sprung by the likes of Peter Singerin no other time would a highly
regarded young novelist like Jonathan Safran Foer view a book about the anti-animal-
eating movement as a necessary extension of his oeuvre, the way a novelist in the sixties
might have felt obliged to write a book about the anti-war movement. This proves,
depending on your point of view, either that the reformof food has become essential to
the reformof life or that, failing in the reformof life, we reformour food instead. Yet all
these movementsvegan and whole beast, localist and seasonalistshare a sense that
the industrialized, Americanized food economy is destructive of small-scale, European,
traditional, farm-based eating.

A. On the Locavore Movement
At this point, the discussion turned to the locavore movement, which originated in the San
Francisco Bay Area and has intensified over the last decade. It is defined as a practice of eating
mainly locally produced food out of concern over sustainability and the environment,
appreciation for freshness and taste, as well as a commitment to preserving local food cultures.
While Goldstein praised the values of the movement, she also raised some of its limitations, both
practical and political.

DG: At the prior evenings event [which was a discussion between Goldstein and food writer
Harold McGee[also held in Berkeley] someone came up to me and said, Well, you, being a
locavore . . . And it was this assumption that because I am who I am [editor of a food journal], I
must be a locavore, and I looked at her and said, Well, I think its wonderful to eat locally, but I
live in a very stony area of Massachusetts and as a matter of fact I cannot eat locally except in
the summer. And there was almost shock, as though the person she thought I was had
disappeared and I didnt know whether Id suddenly plummeted in her estimation. So yes, there

are those assumptions having to do with whether youre a liberal or a conservative [and the
association of these political types with certain food principles]. Someone else asked me, Do
you actually eat junk food? Do you have any pleasures like that? and I said, All the time! and
its like the two arent supposed to go together.

In 2007, in recognition of the growing impact of the eating local trend, the New Oxford American
Dictionary chose locavore (a person who eats locally grown food) as its word of the year:

The past year [2007] saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients,
taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared
without the need for extra preservatives.

The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy fromfarmers markets or even
to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and
taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly
measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for
transportation.

The word locavore shows how food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while still
appreciating the impact they have on the environment, said Ben Zimmer, editor for
American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. Its significant in that it brings
together eating and ecology in a new way.

BG to DG: What do you make of that? Thats amazing to me that locavore would have been
word of the year. So somehow it must have gone way beyond California.

DG: Oh yes, its everywhere. And its a word like other words that are everywhere that start
becoming meaningless after awhile. I mean, how consistently locally do you have to eat to be a
genuine locavore? Or can you just be a periodic locavore and still be within the locavore fold? I
dont really know. I think the urge to eat locally and sustainably is absolutely right and we
should all try to do that as much as possible. But Im also really frightened by extreme
locavorism, I guess you would call it. I see it as the obverse of the NIMBY [Not in My Back
Yard] mentality. Locavorism in its extreme form is Only in My Backyard, and the truth is that
we live in a global world now. Whether we like it or not, it is the nature of the world and I really
think that we, particularly as an affluent society more or less relative to others, have a
responsibility to the rest of the world. And it isnt right just to say, Well Im only just going to
support my farmer down the road and not support anyone else because all these foods for good
and for ill are being shipped around the world. Other economies are dependent on it.

I think particularly about my own experience with the Republic of Georgia. Their largest export
market is Russia and when relations were strained in 2006, even before war broke out between
them, Russia put an embargo on all Georgian agricultural products and, to the great distress of
Russians, on Georgian wine as well . . . But that was 75% of the Georgian GNP [Gross National
Product]. Thats huge. So what does a small country like that do? Well all of its food is organic
because they never had the infrastructure to do industrial agriculture. And the USDA stepped in
to try to find a new market for Georgian hazelnuts. . . . So we need to think much more broadly
than locavorism.

During the audience Q&A, a proponent of locavorism brought up the concern over excess
packaging and fossil fuels used in the trucking of food in from other places.

Goldstein responded by pointing out the unique advantages of being a locavore in the San
Francisco Bay Area, which is close to farms with a year-round growing season and a wide
variety of local crops, unlike that of New England, where Goldstein lives. If I confined myself
to foods that had not been trucked, I would be eating only rutabagas. I love rutabagas, but Id be
eating root crops, things that I had spent many hours putting up over the summer. An audience
member later added that the Slow Food movement in the Bay Area seemed to be a natural
extension of food culture in Italy because of the abundance and variety of its agricultural setting.
Glassner pointed out the difficulty of weighing the costs of food and measuring the inputs and
outputs that go into its production and distribution, even food that is locally grown; he noted for
example that Chilean blueberries are light and do not cost as much to transport as heavier items
that come from closer sources.

Goldstein reflected further on the emotional and social motivations for eating locally: The idea
of eating locally is invested with all that is good. It is meaningful to us. We have the opportunity
to know the farmer, to actually know the soil. We can put our hands into it if we wanted to. . . .
Part of this free-floating anxiety in the United States and why there is so much attention to the
food chain now is because people in general are anxious. And then there is talk of terrorists
infiltrating the food sources, so that if we know where our food comes from, then its a source of
comfort, but its also a connectedness, which as Americans in a very mobile society we dont
have in a number of other ways. So I think the idea of eating local is based not just in the fact
that the food is grown locally and therefore better for us or for the farmer, but it has so many
emotional attributes too.

B. The Rise of Celebrity Food Culture

Source: http://www.jamieoliver.com/news/jamie-s-american-food-revolution
British chef Jamie Oliver on the set of his American TV program Jamie Olivers Food
Revolution


During the audience Q&A an audience member asked Goldstein for her opinion of the celebrity
culture surrounding food, in part fueled by TV personalities on The Food Network, food
memoirs like Anthony Bourdains Kitchen Confidential, and a general growing interest in food
and restaurant culture. Other celebrity chefs include the aforementioned J amie Oliver, Rachel
Ray, Mario Batali, and Nigella Lawson.

DG: We live in a celebrity culture. Its in the kitchen right now, but I think its going to move
on to something else. In college, a friend really wanted to go to the C.I.A. [Culinary Institute of
America]. We went to Vassar, and [the C.I.A.] was a half-hour up the road. It was so stigmatized
then. Its really only been a generation or two now that this has changed. . . . I think the good
thing about [food] celebrities is that they get peoples attention, they get people thinking, and
that is wonderful. People actually want to eat good food but too often they oversimplify things
and reduce complex issues to a mindless foodie-ism, which I dont think is a good thing.

BG: One thing I think everyone can agree is very good is that the celebrity chef/foodie culture
in the last twenty or thirty years has opened the vast majority of Americans to eating all sorts of
things that they wouldnt before then, and that means that these food are being grown, sold, and
enjoyed. And I think thats a big change over just a few decades in this country.

In response, Goldstein referred to Ben Wurgafts article in Gastronomica, Incensed: Food
Smells and Ethnic Tension, about associations between unfamiliar food smells and fear of
immigrant groups and remarked, As late as the 1940s into the 1950s in this country, the Italians
were cooking with garlic, and Americans who were not cooking with garlic were smelling it.
And it was the Other and it was offensive. So I think that if celebrity food culture can open
peoples minds then thats a good thing.


Source: www.mcdonalds.com

A. Debating the consequences of McDonaldization around the world
In this segment of the panel, Goldstein and Glassner discussed the consequences of the
McDonalds fast food chains entry into non-American cultures. While the influence of
McDonalds is generally criticized, they also suggested that it is not always wholly negative.

Goldstein gave the example of McDonalds in Russia and argued that its effect on Russian public
food culture had generally been positive and that McDonalds had also helped to support local
industries during the economic hardships of the early 1990s. Glassner added that McDonalds
and other fast food chains in low-income neighborhoods often provide a safe, clean place for
families to bring their children to, even though its unhealthy food offerings remain a source of
concern. The conversation also turned toward the role of large food chains, like Wal-Mart, and
the ways in which their significant economic impact and influence might be channeled toward
supporting sustainable and healthful food practices.

McDonaldization is a term coined by U.S. sociologist George Ritzer, who defines it as the
process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and
more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world. On the business and
production side, these principles include efficiency, predictability, an emphasis on quantifiable
results, and control, especially through non-human technologies. On the consumer side, this
means eating habits that emphasize food as something to be consumed as quickly, efficiently,
and inexpensively as possible and that in Ritzers view "pose a profound threat to the entire
cultural complex of many societies."

BG: What about the McDonaldization of world cuisine? Why is there so much concern about
it?

DG: Im no fan of fast food and I havent been to [McDonalds] since I was twelve years-old,
and the first one opened in Pittsburgh and I had to, even then, try the latest restaurants.. . . I dont
mean to say that McDonalds is an intrinsically good thing and celebrate the fact that its all over
the world. However its not as bad as I think its painted to be. And I speak from personal
experience in Russia.

During the Soviet years there was basically no decent food. There were no restaurants in
Moscowwell maybe there were threewhere you could actually get something interesting.
There were these huge menus and there was nothing available. There was surly service, and
everything was dirty. It was bad!


Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/McDonalds-Still-Thriving-in-Russia-After-20-Years-
83327327.html
McDonald's crew and founder at the opening of the first Soviet McDonalds in Pushkin
Square, on Jan. 31, 1990.

McDonalds came in 1990, making a huge statement, just across the street from Red Square, so
heres the Kremlin and heres the United States. But it transformed Russian public culinary
culture. It was efficient; you didnt have to wait for an hour only to be shoved something that
you hadnt ordered from a surly person making you feel terrible and then not having any place to
wash your hands or go to the bathroom if you needed to. It was brightly lit, clean, efficient,
reliable, and consistent. It was good! People flocked to it and they still do. And it spawned a
number of fast food chains that were Russian-owned [such as Russian Bistro].

Goldstein also cites supporting the local agricultural economy as another benefit of the
McDonalds presence. Because there was no infrastructure they couldnt have supplies they
could rely on, so they created their own farms, and agriculture. Now, fifteen years later, they are
selling those off and going with local suppliers. They really helped the economy there to grow
and to get people there involved in agriculture locally. So I dont think that you can paint it all
with a negative brush.

Glassner brought up a parallel positive effect of McDonalds in low-income U.S. neighborhoods
often overlooked by critics, which he investigates in his book The Gospel of Food. Where else
in a really low income neighborhood can you go take your kids to play safely in a playroom
thats clean and quite well-equipped while getting them [fed]? . . . So the critics are right by and
large, but theyre missing a lot of what actually happens in those places.

During the audience Q&A, an audience member acknowledged that McDonalds in Russia was a
great example of the chains potentially positive impact in a foreign setting but wanted to think
about cases in which the arrival of McDonalds was greeted with loud local protest. This was the
case in Italy, where food plays an important role in national culture. When McDonald's planned

to build a restaurant near the Piazza di Spagna in Rome in 1986, Slow Food International
founder Carlo Petrini organized a demonstration in which he and his followers brandished bowls
of penne as weapons of protest. This example also prompted discussion of the ways in which
local responses to the U.S. fast food chain reflect these populations attitudes toward U.S. food
culture and U.S. influences in general, as well as the role of food in their own cultures.

DG: Yes, there were protests in France and Italy, but if you look at the per capita consumption
at McDonalds, I think its highest in France of any [non-U.S. country]. So people say its
terrible that there is a McDonalds on the Champs Elysees, but people are also eating its food.

Glassner refers to a sociologists study on who was actually eating at McDonalds. So it turns
out it was adolescents by and large. And what they kept telling him independently was, We had
nowhere to go before this and now we do. So again, back to the point that I was making about
McDonalds, we always talk about the food [itself], and maybe thats appropriate today, but
thats only one small aspect of the use of those places.

The two also discussed the ways in which McDonalds adapts to suit the tastes of the local
population, so that in China, the menu is almost completely different from here. You cant find
anything resembling a Big Mac, according to Glassner.

B. The Mixed Effects of Large Food Chains

Source: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/0739312502.html
Eric Schlossers expose of the production and labor practices of the fast food industry.

Continuing to offer counterpoints to popular criticisms of large food chains, Glassner and
Goldstein discussed some of the positive consequences of the far-reaching influence of other
chains, such as Taco Bell and Wal-Mart. Glassner mentioned food writer and activist Eric
Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation (2002), who has written about how much these chains
can influence food production and labor practices. Glassner remarked, If you can get one of
these large chains to make just a small change in their labor practices, it makes a huge difference

for farm workers. He also pointed out that while many large chains have questionable labor
practices, the possibilities for exploitation are more limited and more easily monitored than
these so-called mom-and-pop operations, for example.

In 2007, Schlosser wrote an impassioned editorial in the New York Times, Penny Foolish, in
favor of the struggle to increase wages for Florida tomato pickers. This campaign had been
supported by some food chains, like Taco Bell and McDonalds, but was resisted by Burger
King, as well as the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange. He writes:

In 2005, Florida tomato pickers gained their first significant pay raise since the late 1970s
when Taco Bell ended a consumer boycott by agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound
for its tomatoes, with the extra cent going directly to the farmworkers. Last April,
McDonalds agreed to a similar arrangement, increasing the wages of its tomato pickers
to about 77 cents per bucket. But Burger King, whose headquarters are in Florida, has
adamantly refused to pay the extra penny and its refusal has encouraged tomato
growers to cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonalds.

Schlosser takes apart Burger Kings defense that it had no control over labor practices of its
suppliers and notes that when its own interests were at stake, the company was quite willing to
intervene:

The prominent role that Burger King has played in rescinding the pay raise offers a spectacle of
yuletide greed worthy of Charles Dickens. Burger King has justified its behavior by claiming that
it has no control over the labor practices of its suppliers. Florida growers have a right to run their
businesses how they see fit, a Burger King spokesman told The St. Petersburg Times.

Yet the company has adopted a far more activist approach when the issue is the well-being of
livestock. In March, Burger King announced strict new rules on how its meatpacking suppliers
should treat chickens and hogs. As for human rights abuses, Burger King has suggested that if the
poor farmworkers of southern Florida need more money, they should apply for jobs at its
restaurant.

In 2009, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, after refusing to pass these supplemental wages
on to workers and threatening to fine growers who complied with the fast food chains request,
finally relented under pressure spearheaded by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and agreed
to pay the increased wages. (See Appendix for additional reading.)


Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/03/the-great-grocery-smackdown/7904/
The produce section at Wal-Mart, pictured in The Atlantic article The Great Grocery
Smackdown.

Glassner also referred to Corby Kummers March 2010 article in The Atlantic, The Great
Grocery Smackdown, which stages a blind taste test between Walmart and Whole Foods
produce and explores the ways in which Walmarts recent embrace of organic and sustainable
food production suddenly gives the discount chain a significant role in effecting change on a
level even greater than Whole Foods because of its size and position. Kummers endorsement of
Walmarts positive effects on the organic and sustainable movement was especially surprising to
Goldstein, given the Kummers status as the ultimate slow foodist.

III. Appendix: Glossary and Additional Resources
I. Introduction
For more on Darra Goldstein and Gastronomica, see http://www.darragoldstein.com and
http://www.gastronomica.org

For more on Barry Glassner and his book The Gospel of Food, see http://barryglassner.com

II. Topics & Selected Transcript
The Council of Europe is an international organization based in Strasbourg, France, that works
toward European integration through greater cultural understanding. It also seeks to develop
throughout Europe common and democratic principles based on the European Convention on
Human Rights and other reference texts on the protection of individuals. Distinct from the
European Union, the Council of Europe was founded on May 5, 1949 by 10 countries and now

includes 47 member countries, covering virtually the entire European continent. The most
famous conventional bodies of the Council of Europe are the European Court of Human Rights,
which enforces the European Convention on Human Rights, and the European Pharmacopoeia
Commission, which sets the quality standards for pharmaceutical products in Europe. The
Council of Europe's work has resulted in standards, charters and conventions to facilitate
cooperation between European countries and further integration. Links: http://www.coe.int/

The European Cultural Convention produced a treaty signed by the members of the Council of
Europe in Paris on December 19, 1954. One of the main aims of the Convention was to facilitate
cultural cooperation in Europe by promoting the mobility and exchange of people as well as
cultural goods. Government bodies took up responsibility for supporting cultural cooperation and
to promote regional cultural cooperation.
Links: http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Summaries/Html/018.htm]; program of the 50
th

anniversary celebration of the European Cultural Convention,
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/culturalconvention/default_en.asp

Culinary Cultures of Europe: Identity, Diversity and Dialogue, Eds. Darra Goldstein and
Kathrin Merkle. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publications, 2005.
Published to celebrate the 50
th
anniversary of the European Cultural Convention, this collection
of essays and photographs acts as a sort of culinary heritage tour of 40 European countries. Each
essay focuses on a specific country or region, highlighting the diversity of European food
traditions and how the study of culinary culture and its history can provide insight into broad
social, political and economic changes in society.
Link: http://book.coe.int/EN/ficheouvrage.php?PAGEID=36&lang=EN&produit_aliasid=1912

See Darra Goldsteins Beyond Table Talk editors column in the Spring 2003 volume of
Gastronomica for more on the issues discussed by the Council of Europe working group on food,
available as a pdf online at: http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/pdf/10.1525/gfc.2003.3.1.3

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825)
Brillat-Savarin was a French lawyer, politician, and gourmand whose obsessive interest in food
matters led him to write The Physiology of Taste, considered one of the earliest and most famous
collections of gastronomic essays. Brillat-Savarins book presents meditations on key elements
affecting gastronomythe art of choosing, cooking, and eating good foodincluding the role of
the senses, the concept of taste, and eclectic matters such as the erratic virtues of truffles. The
well-known idiom, You are what you eat, originates in Brillat-Savarins line, Tell me what
you eat, and I will tell you what you are.
Link to ebook: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/brillat/savarin/b85p/

Michael Pollan, The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2007)
In this influential best-seller, the food and science writer investigates differences between the
industrial and organic and local food systems that confront the American eater. Some key
questions that drive the book are: Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or
perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? The publishers description says, The
omnivores dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American

supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food
landscape. Whats at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our childrens health,
but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth. Pollans more recent food-related
books include In Defense of Food, and Food Rules.
Link: http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/

See the Italian Academy of Cuisine website (Accademia Italiana Della Cucina) as a case
study or research project on the motivations for defining what is authentic in a certain groups
cuisine.The academy takes upon itself the task of safeguarding, together with the traditions of
Italian cuisine, the culture of the civilization of the table, lively and active expression of the
entire Nation.
Link: http://www.accademiaitalianacucina.it/en_index.php

GM or GMOs refers to genetically modified organisms, whose genes have been combined with
those of other organisms using recombinant DNA technology. GM products include medicines
and vaccines, foods and food ingredients, feeds, and fibers. In 2006, 252 million acres of
transgenic crops were planted in 22 countries by 10.3 million farmers. The majority of these
crops were herbicide- and insect-resistant soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, and alfalfa. Other crops
grown commercially or field-tested are a sweet potato resistant to a virus that could decimate
most of the African harvest, rice with increased iron and vitamins that may alleviate chronic
malnutrition in Asian countries, and a variety of plants able to survive weather extremes. In
2006, countries that grew 97% of the global transgenic crops were the United States (53%),
Argentina (17%), Brazil (11%), Canada (6%), India (4%), China (3%), Paraguay (2%) and South
Africa (1%).

Proponents of GM foods say that these more resilient species are more efficient to raise and thus
an important resource in combating world hunger, while opponents, often referred to as the anti-
GM movement, which is especially strong in Europe, voice concern over unintended health and
environmental impacts, the increased dependence of world food production on a small group of
industrial companies, and the ethical issues of mixing plant and animal genes and tampering
excessively with nature. Bans on importation of GM foods in Europe have also caused trade
conflicts with the U.S., which produces a majority of GM crops.

Links:
Overview of GMOs from the Human Genome Project:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml

World Health Organization 20 Questions on genetically modified foods:
http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en/

Guardian editorial opposing the recent European Commission decision to allow member states
to ban GM foods: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/aug/17/genetically-modified-
crops-ec-eu

EU regulations on GM foods:

http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/biotechnology/index_en.htm

Friends of the Earth Europe information page on the anti-GMO campaign:
http://www.foeeurope.org/GMOs/Index.htm

USDA National Organic Program, Link: http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/nop
Examples of regional U.S. certification programs include the California Certified Organic
Farmers (CCOF), founded in 1973 and one of the earliest organic certification organizations in
the country [http://www.ccof.org] and Certified Naturally Grown (CNG), the more recent
grassroots alternative to national organic standards criticized as too inclusive, which first arose
from a group of Hudson Valley farms. Like CCOF but on a smaller scale, the CNG program
works on a peer-review model between farmers with lower costs and less paperwork and builds
its standards based on the USDA National Organic Standards.

More on Culinary Patrimony and Certifications of Regional Authenticity:
Culinary patrimony is the idea that meaningful cultural heritage is passed down through food
traditions

See De Soucey, Michaela, Gastronationalism: Food Traditions and Authenticity Politics in the
European Union, American Sociological Review (75:3), J une 2010, 432-455, for a study of how
culinary patrimony and the idea of food authenticity has become important as the E.U. expands.
Link: http://asr.sagepub.com/content/75/3/432.abstract

Appellation of Controlled Origin (or AOC, from the French Appellation dorigine contrle)
is originally a French certification system for food products that began in 1935. It sets standards
for certain products that producers have to meet in order to make products called by certain
names and also defines products based on geographic area. The AOC is most associated with
wines and cheeses (like Champagne and Roquefort cheese), but can also be applied to other
products, like chicken, dairy products, and olives. Other individual countries throughout Europe
have similar systems of certification (such as Austrias Districtus Austria Controllatus, Italys
Denominazione di Origine Controllata and Portugals Denominao de Origem Controlada).
Source: http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/appellationofcontrolledorigin

The European PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) certification system began in 1992 and
applies to products throughout the EU and is based on the French AOC system.

More on the European PDO certification:
Telegraph article, Why Do Some Cheeses Begin with Capital Letters?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/a-little-different/food-questions/8217235/Why-do-some-
cheeses-begin-with-capital-letters.html

Specialty Food trade association account of the pros and cons of the PDO label:
http://www.specialtyfood.com/news-trends/featured-articles/retail-operations/the-pdo-label/

The UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list extends the idea of cultural heritage beyond
monuments and designations of objects to include traditions or living expressions inherited

from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts,
social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the
universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts. The definition also indicates
that the ICH is transmitted from generation to generation; is constantly recreated by communities
and groups, in response to their environment, their interaction with nature, and their history;
provides communities and groups with a sense of identity and continuity; promotes respect for
cultural diversity and human creativity; is compatible with international human rights
instruments; and complies with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, and of
sustainable development.
Link: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg=en&pg=00002

On whether UNESCO should designate a gastronomy category as part of its Intangible
Heritage Sites list:
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designates
World Heritage Sites around the world to encourage the identification, protection and
preservation of cultural and natural heritages around the world considered to be of outstanding
value to humanity. This is embodied in an international treaty called the Convention concerning
the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO in 1972.
Link: http://whc.unesco.org/en/about/

The New York Times article Does French Cuisine Merit UN Stars? by Mary Blume, April 9,
2008, highlights the most recent debate over whether French culinary patrimony should gain UN
cultural protection. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/arts/09iht-
blume.1.11804339.html?_r=2

From the Edible Geography food issues blog:
Those arguing against the designation of culinary traditions as UNESCO Intangible Heritage
Sites tend to worry that labeling a cuisine as one of the treasures of human patrimony will have a
stifling effect, discourage innovation and mark the beginning of a slow, smug mummification.
Their opponents counter that UNESCO is careful to define Intangible Heritage as traditional
and living at the same time, something constantly recreated, and argue that formal recognition
would help defend national cuisines under threat from globalisation and changing lifestyles.
Link: http://www.ediblegeography.com/unesco-culinary-heritage-sites/

Slow Food International is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that
was founded in 1989led by Italian writer and food activist Carlo Petrini with delegates from
15 countriesto counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and
peoples dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our
food choices affect the rest of the world. Slow Foods approach is to bring together pleasure and
responsibility in what it calls eco-gastronomy, thus paying attention to criteria like taste and
quality but also environmental and social impact. Today, the organization has over 100,000
members in 132 countries. Link: http://www.slowfood.com/

Slow Foods Ark of Taste program is something of an endangered species list for foods that
are threatened by industrial standardization, the regulations of large-scale distribution, and
environmental damage. In an effort to cultivate consumer demandkey to agricultural

conservationonly the best tasting endangered foods make it onto the catalog, which currently
lists over 200 foods.
Link: [http://www.slowfoodfoundation.com/eng/arca/lista.lasso]

The Slow Food movement is also associated with Terra Madre, an international network of
farmers and food activists who hold an annual conference in Turin, Italy to exchange ideas and
information about sustainable solutions to the world food system. Link:
http://www.terramadre.info

See also the Italian Academy of Cuisine website listed in previous section

Programs Relevant to a Discussion of U.S. Culinary Patrimony:
Southern Foodways Alliance website: http://www.southernfoodways.com/

Slow Food USA is the U.S. affiliate of the Slow Food movement and has particularly
emphasized food education and reform through work with schools, from classroom and campus
education to rethinking school lunches. Some notable American promoters of the Slow Food
movement are Chez Panisse chef Alice Waters, food and science writer Michael Pollan, and
food writer and activist Eric Schlosser. Itoversees two programs dedicated to locating,
documenting, and preserving North American regional food traditions, such as heirloom fruit
trees and heritage breeds of livestock:

U.S. Ark of Taste: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/ark_of_taste/

Renewing Americas Food Traditions (RAFT) is an alliance of food, farming, environmental,
and culinary advocates who together have worked toward preserving the diversity of U.S. food
traditions. Their activities include organizing events like regional farmers conferences and
hosting workshops on topics like How to Raise Heritage Turkeys on Pasture. RAFT also
produces publications like the pamphlet Food Producers and their Place-based Foods at Risk in
the Gulf Coast (August 2010) that documents Louisianas food culture and the book Savoring
and Saving the Continents Most Endangered Foods (2008), edited by food conservationist Gary
Paul Nabhan. Link: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/raft/

On Le Fooding:
Le Fooding is a new French culinary movement that challenges the rigidity of more traditional
French food culture. Links: http://www.lefooding.com/le-gout-de-l-epoque/ [in French],

See Adam Gopniks April 5, 2010 New Yorker article, No Rules! on Le Fooding, Link:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/05/100405fa_fact_gopnik

On Le Foodings anti-traditionalist bent, Gopnik writes:

What distinguishes Le Fooding, I was beginning to understand, was that it is, in effect,
against an overly European, tradition-minded approach to food. Slow is the last thing it
wants French cooking to be, French cooking being slow enough already. The goal of the
Fooding movement is to break down French snobbery, in the formof its hidebound

hypersensitive discrimination, while the goal of the slow-food movement, though not put
quite this way, is to build up hidebound hyper-discrimination.

The full text of the passage that Barry Glassner read from is:

In America and England, you are what you think about eating. Tell me where you stand
on Michelle Obamas organic White House garden and (with the exception of a handful
of Crunchy Cons and another handful of grumpy left-wing nostalgists for whiskey and
cigarettes) I can tell you what the rest of your politics are. People who are in favor of the
new approach to foodeven if that approach involves a return to heritage breeds and
discarded farming methodsare in favor of a new approach to social life. But in France
the philosophy of food does not break on such neat party lines. Many reactionary
traditionalists today cluster on the left, while some of those most open to reformare over
on the right. . . . The politics of food in France cuts haphazardly and unpredictably across
party lines and allegiances; tell me what you think about eating, and I will tell you only
that you are French.

See also the transcript of Gopniks online discussion with readers about this article and other
recent food topics. Link: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ask/2010/03/questions-for-
gopnik.html#ixzz0wizZDqEZ

Topic 4. Recent Food Trends (Locavorism, Food Celebrities)
See previous Appendix section for a description of the international Slow Food movement

Locavore as New Oxford American Dictionarys word of the year:
http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/locavore/
The locavore community website: http://www.locavores.com/

April 25, 2007 New York Times article on the locavore movement:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/dining/25loca.html?_r=2&oref=slogin

Another good source for thinking about locavorism is Barbara Kingsolvers Animal,
Vegetable, Miracle (2007), in which the writer chronicles, with help from her husband and
daughter, the difficulties and discoveries during one year of eating locally in southwest Virginia.
The book is a mix of memoir, journalism, and food writing, as it shifts between Kingsolvers
account of the undertaking, husband Steven Hopps informative sections on the food industry
and science, and daughter Camille Kingsolvers seasonal recipes and meal plans. Link:
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com

The Edible Schoolyard is a program of Berkeley chef Alice Waterss Chez Panisse Foundation
dedicated to teaching urban public school students about vegetable gardens and cooking through
hands-on education and integrating food systems concepts into the core curriculum. Link:
http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/

Peter Singer is a philosopher known in part for his arguments against eating meat. His 1975
book Animal Liberation is credited with setting off the modern animal rights movement. Michael

Pollan has a dialogue with him in the Ethics of Eating Meat section of The Omnivores
Dilemma. His website is: http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/

Jonathan Safran Foer is a young fiction writer who has recently written articles and the book
Eating Animals (2009) that argue against eating meat. His New York Times essay Against Meat
is based on the arguments in his book. Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11foer-t.html

On food fears and ethnic tensions, Darra Goldstein references Ben Wurgafts article
Incensed: Food Smells and Ethnic Tension, Gastronomica (Spring 2006), 57-60. Link:
caliber.ucpress.net/doi/pdf/10.1525/gfc.2006.6.2.57

In The McDonaldization of Society (1993) and The McDonaldization Thesis (1998), sociologist
George Ritzer introduces and explores the concept of McDonaldization, which he defines as
"the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and
more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world." On the business and
production side, these principles include efficiency, predictability, an emphasis on quantifiable
results, and control, especially through non-human technologies. On the consumer side, this
means eating habits that emphasize food as something to be consumed as quickly, efficiently,
and inexpensively as possible and that Ritzer argues "poses a profound threat to the entire
cultural complex of many societies."
Links: http://www.georgeritzer.com, http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/ritzer.htm,
http://www.amazon.com/McDonaldization-Thesis-Explorations-
Extensions/dp/0761955402/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282175748&sr=1-1

Tastes of the McDonalds international presence:
A Food Network sampling of 40 McDonalds menu items from around the world:
http://foodnetworkhumor.com/2009/07/mcdonalds-menu-items-from-around-the-world-40-pics/
McDonalds World Map with links to various international sites:
http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/country/map.html

Slow Food founder Carlo Petrinis critique of McDonalds:
An open letter to McDonalds originally published in the Italian newspaper La Republica Feb. 3,
2010 and translated here into English:
http://culatelloblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/open-letter-to-mcdonalds-from-carlo.html

New York Times Q&A between Petrini and Amanda Hesser, J uly 26, 2003:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/26/arts/26QNA.html

For more on American fast food chains in Russia, see the article McDonalds and Burger
King Kill Russian Bistro, in the Russian newspaper Pravda.
http://english.pravda.ru/business/companies/09-11-2009/110367-burger_king-0.

In his best-selling book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001),
Eric Schlosser investigates the large-scale impact of fast food chains on American life. He argues

that fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and
poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad.
Publishers description: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Fast-Food-Nation-Eric-
Schlosser/?isbn=9780060838584

Schlossers essay reflecting on the books success and cultural relevance
http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=21208&isbn13=97800608385
84&displayType=bookessay

For more background on the controversy surrounding Florida migrant worker tomato
pickers wages and the role of large food chains and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange
resistance, see these sites:

Eric Schlossers Nov. 11, 2007 New York Times Penny Foolish editorial challenging Florida
growers resistance to wage increases
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/opinion/29schlosser.html

Miami Herald Feb. 17, 2010 article on the wage increase victory
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/02/17/1483663/tomato-workers-to-get-wage-increase.html

Florida Tomato Growers Exchange site, with announcment of new wage
policy:http://www.floridatomatogrowers.org/

Ethicurean blog Feb. 25, 2010 critique of Florida tomato growers method of implementation,
Victory for Florida tomato pickers, or a sneaky worker-around?
http://www.ethicurean.com/2010/02/25/tomato-wages/

Corby Kummers March 2010 The Atlantic article, The Great Grocery Smackdown
stages a blind taste test between Walmart and Whole Foods produce and explores the ways in
which Walmarts recent embrace of organic and sustainable food production makes it suddenly
an important factor in effecting change on a level even greater than Whole Foods because of its
size and position. Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/the-great-
grocery-smackdown/7904/

CHAPTER 2
The Influence of Mediterranean Cuisine and Fantasies of the Good
Life

Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
II. Topics
1. The Adoption of the Mediterranean Diet to Fight Obesity in the U.S.
2. Food Fantasies in Contemporary U.K. Food Writing

I. Introduction
The presentations in this chapter look at how Mediterranean cuisines and ingredients (from Italy
in particular) have been influential in both U.S. and U.K. food contexts. Nutritionists, food
reformers, and food writers have looked to models of healthful lifestyles from the warmer
climates of southern Europe as a way to ostensibly promote better nutrition. However, their
recommendations also imply that broader elements of European culture are somehow ideal and
that they offer ways of realizing a fantasy element of the good life. The first presentation
summary traces how the U.S. has looked first to northern European, then southern European
cuisine, for guidelines. The second looks at how British food writing has turned in particular to
Italian cuisine for fantasy meals and ingredients. At the end of each sub-section are discussion
questions and an appendix with a glossary and additional information resources.

II. Topics
Topic 1. The Adoption of Mediterranean Diets to Fight Obesity in the U.S.
Based on the presentation Mediterranean Dreams: The Sacralization of the European Diet, E.
Melanie DuPuis (Professor of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz), which looks at the significant
influence southern European cuisine has had on healthful eating trends, particularly in the U.S.

A. The Fascination of the Mediterranean Diet
On a 2009 segment of Good Morning America titled Worlds Healthiest Diet: Whats the
Mediterranean Secret?, Dr. Marie Savard discussed a new study of the eating habits of
Europeans in 10 countries, called The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and
Nutrition, or the EPIC study.

The study showed that those who adhered to a diet high in fruits, vegetables, and fiber lived
healthier and longer lives. Asked to comment on this study, Dr. Savard stated enthusiastically, I
think the Mediterranean diet is the holy grail of diets. Its the one were looking to for
increasing survival: it lowers the risk of diabetes, heart disease, even cancers.


Source: DuPuis presentation
A Tuscan dish with white beans and dark, leafy greens, an example of the kind of
Mediterranean meals recommended by U.S. nutritionists

Surprisingly, the website publicizing the EPIC study results does not even mention the
Mediterranean diet. Instead, it only describes diets high in fiber, fruits, and vegetables, and low
in red meat. On the Good Morning America segment of the ABC News website, there is an
accompanying article, which says that the Mediterranean diet has become the poster child for
healthy eating but that also qualifies these claims with quotes from experts who say things like,
Well once you have a mostly plant-based diet and eat few processed foods, almost any variation
on this theme will be fine.

A majority of the worlds societies eat diets based mostly in plants with few processed foods,
one exception being northern Europe, where a diet adapted to the regions particular ecology and
culture tends to have more meat and dairy products. In other words, the basic ingredients of the
Mediterranean diet have been predominant in the eating habits of most cultures. Nevertheless,
instead of the simple advice to return to a more moderate dieta little more fiber, more fruits
and vegetables, less meatAmericans have become attached to the idea that a few ingredients
from a particular part of Europe will make them live longer, lose weight, increase their memory
abilities and improve their physical activity.

Even the name, the Mediterranean Diet, refers not to a particular cuisine but rather to a set of
modern nutritional recommendations based on the traditional dietary habits of the poor coastal
regions of southern Italy, Greece, and Crete.

Below are a graphic and chart from the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid presented by Oldways, a
Boston-based non-profit organization founded in 1990 and dedicated to improving nutrition and
promoting healthful eating practices.



Source: http://www.oldwayspt.org/

DuPuis argued that the Mediterranean eating standard in the U.S. is no longer just a set of dietary
guidelines but Americas own dietary dream. The idea of the Mediterranean diet, promoted in
various food and lifestyle magazines, promises a long and physically sensual life as a thin
person. This paradigm has been branded as the good life.

She then asked, What is the bad life? This has become known in nutrition-speak as the
Standard American Diet or S.A.D. It is composed almost entirely of sweets, fats, and meats
and is associated with making Americans sickly and overweight.


For example, American nutritional epidemiologist Barry Popkin argues that the Western diet
is causing the global pandemic of obesity. Popkins research focuses on the growing problem
of obesity in developing countries that have only recently faced hunger as their major nutritional
challenge.

New multi-country nutritional data shows the spread of S.A.D. throughout the world. This
Nutrition TransitionPopkins concept of the effect by which industrialization and
urbanization lead to decreased conditions of famine and malnutrition but also to chronic
degenerative diseases associated with urban-industrial lifestylesincludes a higher percentage
of fat and animal protein, accompanied by decreased physical exercise. The various studies that
document the increase in poor eating habits across the world tend to use the neutral language of
Western diet to describe them, but DuPuis pointed out that this diet is basically the Standard
American Diet.

Popkin describes the Nutrition Transition as an inevitable effect of industrialization,
urbanization, and globalization. The fat American body has become an icon of the unhealthy
lifestyle spreading to other countries, and is read as a symbol of the nations larger global,
gluttonous, economic world presence. Although Europe has experienced similar effects of
modern industrialism and urbanization, nutrition researchers have cited Europeans as an
exception to the increasingly unhealthful dietary habits associated with the modern lifestyle.

European obesity rates are still only roughly half that of American rates, and those of France and
Italy are closer to a third of American rates. DuPuis argued that the difference between Europe

and the U.S. shows that what matters is not just the content of foodavoiding degraded and
processed industrial ingredientsbut also food practices, such as, how one prepares the food,
portion size, and the circumstances in which meals are eaten. She mentioned the international
Slow Food movement as an example of dietary best practices that integrate enjoyment of a slow-
cooked meal in a social or familial setting with increased attention to the healthfulness and
quality of the ingredients themselves (we return to the Slow Food movement later in this
summary). At the same time, some studies show that the French diet is worsening and predict
they will catch up with Americans by the year 2020.


The chart above compares the percentage of various national populations whose average Body
Mass Index (BMI) is above 30, the minimum threshold for obesity. It shows that about 30% of
the U.S. population is not just overweight but obese, well above the percentage of other national
populations. BMI is a measure of body fat applied to adult men and women, based on a ratio of
their height to weight. The index categories are:

- Underweight =<18.5
- Normal weight =18.524.9
- Overweight =2529.9
- Obesity =BMI of 30 or greater

DuPuiss review of nutitional studies showed that resentment of the American diet (particularly
prevalent in France) contributes to a new form of anti-Americanism, linked especially to fast
foods. DuPuis introduced a term she called the gastro-geopolitics of diet a hybrid of
geopolitics and gastro-politics. While geopolitics refers to international relations that are

influenced by geographical factors (such as climate, topography, or borders), and gastro-politics
refers to the politics of the everyday allocation of food within the home, DuPuis attempted to
think about the gastro-geopolitics of diet as a way to connect the stories that people tell about
diets to their ideas about geography and national cultures.

B. The Historical U.S. Fixation on European Cultural Standards and Personal Health

DuPuis argued that stories told by American nutritionists, food writers, and food reflect the
predominance of the Yankee northeast as a historically dominant force in American culture,
and in particular, New Englanders use of Europe as a source of that authority.

Americans have always had a very complicated relationship with ideals coming from Europe. On
the one hand, U.S. society has looked to Europe as a model of civilization, but at the same time,
the American ideal of independence and a populist belief in the voices of ordinary people often
call for a break away from European aristocratic traditions. Another way to see this opposition is
as a conflict between high and low culture. The high category is associated with
European models of elite culture (e.g., Shakespearean plays, classical music, European art),
while the low comprises popular mass culture (e.g., movies, TV shows, best-selling novels).
This high and low divide has played out in food preferences as well.

DuPuis discussed how ideas of high culinary culture in the early U.S. borrowed from European
ideals of upper class luxury and civilization. For example, the nations first fine dining
restaurant, Delmonicos, established in New York in 1837, had its original menu in French and
became a model for similarly exclusive restaurants well into the twentieth century. Nineteenth-
century New England cooking schools and food reformers were especially influential in
establishing eating guidelines that were based on northern European cuisine, especially French
and British traditions. Promoters considered these traditions to be more civilized and hoped to
bring them to other regions of the U.S. They often focused on educating women and refining
home cooking. The Boston Cooking School was dedicated to training housewives rather than
professional chefs and was run by Fannie Farmer, whose Fannie Farmer Cookbook has become
an American classic.


Sources: http://www.foodhistory.com/classics/farmer/bcsc.htm, http://www.cheftalk.com/products/the-fannie-
farmer-cookbook
The original and later editions of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

The nineteenth-century food reform movement, which eventually gave way to an emphasis on
nutritional science, presents an interesting mix of associations with high and low (or
populist) cultures. In one sense, food reformers like Catharine Beecher (1800-1878), Ellen
Swallow Richards (1842-1910), and Wilbur Atwater (1844-1907, often called the father of
nutrition science) were associated with high culture because they came from the well-
educated classes of New England, center of the nations cultural authority. However, the style of
eating they promoted as more refined, for being moderate, healthful, and spiritually in line with
good Christian living, was essentially a regimen of reduced meat consumption and larger
quantities of vegetables, associated for the most part with peasant or working class populations
in Europe.

Meat consumption was an issue that manifested the conflict between European traditions and
American dreams of prosperity and independence. Immigrants looking for a better life in the
U.S. held on to the idea that their wages should guarantee the American right of a meat-centered
diet. American leaders Presidents J ohn Adams (1797-1801) and Andrew J ackson (1829-1837),
both of whom envisioned the U.S. as a forward-looking nation breaking away from Old World
decadence, embraced the meat-centric mentality of the Western frontiersman, associated with
American vigor and abundance.

DuPuis also pointed out that there has always been a significant segment of the American
population that is not of European descent and that in particular, populations of indigenous,
African American, and Asian backgrounds have often remained skeptical of northern European
cuisine as the paramount model of the culinary good life. These populations diets have
traditionally been far higher in fiber, fruits and vegetables than that of the average American.


C. The Shift from Northern to Southern European Cuisine as Culinary Model
Returning us to the start of her presentation, DuPuis noted that beginning in the latter half of the
twentieth century, Americans shifted their culinary preferences from northern European to
Mediterranean diets (e.g. from Italy, Greece). The heavier cream sauces and meat-based diets of
the northern fare have today been replaced by the lighter, fresher fare and smaller portions of the
southern European diet. She then posed the question, How did we go from one dietary
recommendation to another?

DuPuis attributed an early reason for this shift to nutritionist Ancel Keys, who during and after
World War II, conducted research used by the military to manage provisions for its troops (K-
rations are named after Keys) and by governments to help resolve the problem of how to feed
starving, postwar populations in Europe.

Sources: http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19610113,00.html,
http://www.sph.umn.edu/epi/history/keys.asp
Scientist Ancel Keys on the cover of Time magazine Jan. 13 1961 and a photo of the K-ration
that he developed for the U.S. military for use during World War II.

In the 1950s, Keys also discovered the relationship between types of diet and heart disease
through a collaborative study with European researchers called the Seven Countries Study. The
study became famous for providing the first warning against the risks of high cholesterol. It took
several decades for cholesterol to become a more central American dietary concern, but when
this happened, the Mediterranean diet was touted as a solution. Keyss popular best-seller Eat
Well and Stay Well (1959), co-authored with his wife Margaret, includes recommendations and
recipes for healthier eating, still mainly based in the northern European cuisine that was more
familiar in American homes. Few of the recipes in the first edition were based in Mediterranean
cuisine, but the growing attention to its low-cholesterol benefits heavily influenced an updated

version published sixteen years later, titled How to Eat Well and Stay Well the Mediterranean
Way (1975).

Sources: http://www.amazon.com/How-eat-well-stay-Mediterranean/dp/0385009062, http://www.martha-rose-
shulman.com/cookbooks.htm
U.S. Praise of mediterranean diets, then and now: The Keys 1975 book and Martha Rose
Shulmans 2007 version.

This story helps explain how advice given to Americans about their eating habits has migrated
from northern to southern Europe as the source of recommended healthy eating. Today, Italian
cuisine, with its olive oil and dishes based in high-fiber beans, whole grains, and greens, has
become wildly popular with nutritionists, chefs, and other advocates of healthy living. It is even
marketed to Americans looking to lose weight. American food writers have also contributed to
what DuPuis calls the sacralization of Mediterranean diet, by which she means the
glorification of the Mediterranean diet as the perfect model for healthful living. She cited New
York Times food writers Frank Bruni and Martha Rose Shulman as representatives of this
prejudice. Shulman is known for her cookbook Mediterranean Harvest: Vegetarian Recipes
from the Worlds Healthiest Cuisine (2007).


Source: http://www.i-italy.org/15269/slow-food-fast-changes-we-met-carlo-petrini
The Slow Food movement, which originated in Italy and whose mascot is a snail, has drawn
more recent attention to the benefits of Mediterranean cuisine.

The influence of the international Slow Food movement, which originated in Italy, has also
drawn more recent U.S. interest in emulating Italian cuisine. However, Carlo Petrini, founder of
the movement in northern Italy, near Turin, a center of gastronomic tourism, does not promote
his home cuisine as the ideal diet. While U.S. versions of Slow Food emphasize looking to
European models, Petrini does not see the spread of Italian cuisine across the world as a
centerpiece of Slow Food. His aim, rather, is to dislodge contemporary perceptions of food as
mere units of calories or nutritional quantities and to reorient the culture of food production and
consumption toward an appreciation for whole meals that are integrated into the daily pleasures
of conscious and unhurried communal life. His vision, global in scope, is to focus food
production around local agriculture and artisanship. This is also one of the purposes of the annual
conference Terra Madre sponsored by Slow Food International, which brings together
international small-scale food producers to discuss growing practices and other economic and
political issues they encounter as a result of running smaller-scale operations

DuPuis agreed that the Mediterranean diet is indeed more healthful than the Standard American
Diet. However, she questioned the emphasis on the European diet as the only source of the good
life and asked why for instance, we dont look for models in other healthy world cuisines low in
saturated fat and high in fiber and fresh vegetables, such as those produced in J apan or regions in
Africa. She noted that even some regional American diets can provide alternative models to the
prevailing industrial diet of cheap, high-fat, high-sugar calories.

In sum, DuPuis presentation was ultimately a reflection on the relationship between food and
identity. She argued that the claim made by many U.S. nutritionists that American food is
intrinsically bad, implies a negative view of American culture in general. Nutritionists
advocating the Mediterranean diet do not operate in a politically and historically neutral space.
They enter rather, into a two-century-long American struggle over status and our relationship to

Europe. DuPois pointed out that while Slow Food may connect to rural, peasant cuisine in Italy
through its adoption of these cultures simple recipes and basic, fresh ingredients, in the U.S. it is
often viewed as an elite movement, whose high quality, organic ingredients are often expensive
or hard-to-find outside of major metropolitan areas. Even though connections to Europe still hold
cultural capital in the U.S., DuPuis encouraged us to look for models of healthy diets outside of
this one standard, whether in U.S. regional cuisines or in diets from other world regions, like
Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Appendix: Glossary and Additional Resources

More on the EPIC study can be found here: http://epic.iarc.fr/
Watch the episode here: http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7915630

ABC News article praising the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MensHealthNews/story?id=7911505]

You can find more recommendations drawn from the Mediterranean Diet at the Mayo Clinic
site: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mediterranean-diet/CL00011

More information on Oldways and their diet pyramid can be found on their website:
http://www.oldwayspt.org/

American nutritional epidemiologist Barry Popkin argues that the Western diet is causing a
global pandemic of obesity in his book The World is Fat (2008). Popkins research focuses on
the growing problem of obesity in developing countries that have only recently overcome hunger
as their major nutritional challenge. He coins the term Nutrition Transition, to refer to the
effect by which industrialization and urbanization lead to decreased conditions of famine and
malnutrition and a shift in simple diet-related health problems to chronic degenerative diseases
associated with urban-industrial lifestyles. See http://www.nutrans.org.

One can also get a good general introduction to Popkins work in this 2007 interview with
Scientific American magazine, found here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=8DFF8662-E7F2-99DF-
38E67664ABFF1D05

Gastro-politics is term coined by anthropologist and International Studies professor Arjun
Appadurai. It refers to the politics of the everyday allocation of food within the home.
For more on gastro-geopolitics of diet, See Arjun Appadurai, Gastropolitics in Hindu South
Asia, American Ethnologist 8, 1981, 484-511; and Appadurais website
http://www.appadurai.com.

For more on the conflict between high and low culture in the U.S., seeSociologist
Lawrence Levines High Brow/Low Brow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America
(1968) a study of how American culture developed along these lines in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.


Nineteenth-century reformer Catharine Beecher (1800-1878) was a teacherand the sister of
abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowewho advocated educational reform and promoted the role of
women as teachers. Her best-known book, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), is
recognized by U.S. historians as the first to lay out the principles of good housekeeping, and to
define the sphere of womens domestic duties by recognizing the actual value of womens labor.
In this work, Beecher identifies cooking as an integral part of what DuPuis calls the good life.
A later version of this book, co-written with her sister and titled The American Womens Home
(1869), envisioned unemployed, educated, and unmarried women of the North as missionaries of
a sort, bringing good Christian living to the rest of the country.

DuPuis views Beechers work as a precursor to the early twentieth-century field of euthenics
(derived from the Greek root meaning to be in a good state), or, the science of controlled
environment. The field was introduced by pioneering engineer

Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1910) was an M.I.T. engineer (one of the first female engineers)
and the founder of euthenics, the science of controlled environment, that later gave rise to the
discipline of home economics. Richards ideas linked the management of food practices to a
more environmentally and individually, conscious way of life. Link:
http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/three-chapters/the-disappointing-first-thrust-of-euthenics.html

The Fannie Farmer Cookbook is a classic American cookbook originally published in 1896 as
the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by head of the Boston Cooking School Fannie Farmer.
Farmer would go on to open her own cooking school, Miss Farmers School of Cookery,
dedicated to training housewives rather than professional chefs. More information can be found
at the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities website:
http://massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=11.

Wilbur Atwater (1844-1907), often referred to as the father of nutrition science, brought his
European training to bear on his American work, in which he used calorie studies to create the
most efficient workers diet. He concluded from these studies that the American worker ate too
much meat, and became in so doing part of a long tradition of nutritionists writing for popular
audiences in magazine and newspaper articles that advocated eating more vegetables and less
meat. For more information, see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19056813

Read more about Ancel Keys and his nutrition studies at these sites:
Time magazine 1961 cover story on Keys, Medicine: The Fat of the Land:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,828721,00.html

Lecture by Yale professor Kelly Brownell: http://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/the-psychology-
biology-and-politics-of-food/content/transcripts/transcript-7-hunger-in-the-world-of-plenty

American Radioworks program on the Minnesota Starvation Project:
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/wwii/a1.html

Slow Food International is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that
was founded in 1989led by Italian writer and food activist Carlo Petrini with delegates from
15 countriesto counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and
peoples dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our
food choices affect the rest of the world. Slow Foods approach is to bring together pleasure and
responsibility in what it calls eco-gastronomy, thus paying attention to criteria like taste and
quality but also environmental and social impact. Today, the organization has over 100,000
members in 132 countries. Link: http://www.slowfood.com/

Topic 2. Food Fantasies in Contemporary U.K. Food Writing
Based on the presentation Impossible Foods? Postwar U.K. Cookery Culture and the Horizon
of the New, by Andrew Warnes (Senior Lecturer in American Literature, University of Leeds).

A. The Fantasy of Accessible Food
Warnes reflected on the way that British food writers fixations on hard-to-find ingredients, often
associated with Italian cuisine, fuel fantasies of travel to the exotic places one might find them
in, even while their ideas about food are presented as widely accessible to all British audiences.
Warnes looked at the modern recipe and the prime position it grants, at least in the British
example, to some hard- or even impossible-to-find ingredient. His aim was to trace a connection
between the breakdown of class hierarchies that occurred in postwar Britain and the appearance
of populism in contemporary British food culture. Warnes argued that while the populist rhetoric
of food culture suggests that anyone can appreciate good food and cook fabulous meals, there is
a somewhat disguised but pervasive presence of elitism and privilege in the food writing and
cookbooks that set the tone of contemporary British foodie culture.

Warnes observed that present-day British food writers seem to obsess over obscure or high-
quality ingredients that are not available at the vast, cornucopian supermarkets serving the
everyday British shopper, such as the chain Sainsbury (similar to Safeway in northern
California). These profiled ingredients either come fresh from a small farm or are more widely
found in Italy or southern France, locales that are generally inaccessible to London-dwellers who
do not have country estates, cannot travel to Italy, or cannot afford the premium prices for
fresher, more high-quality food brought into the city. As a result, Warnes argued, much of the
British food writing that presents itself in an almost American mood of inclusivity, in fact
presumes a certain level of privileged access to these ingredients, even if unconsciously. It thus
acts more as consumerist fantasy than actual how-to guides to eating well.


Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/5318782/Elizabeth-
David.html
Influential mid-century British food writer Elizabeth David

The association of Mediterranean food with fantasy rather than practicality in the U.K. is heavily
influenced by the work of one of Britains most famous food writers, Elizabeth David (1913-
1992). Davids A Book of Mediterranean Food was published in 1950, while the British public
was still coping with postwar food shortages and rationing. The British newspaper The
Independent writes:

Most readers could only dream of trying out the crisply instructive recipes. Olive
oil was sold at the chemist's shop, garlic did the devil's work; but she includes in
her book a method for stuffing a whole sheep. She ushered not only olive oil and
garlic, but also aubergines [eggplant], courgettes [zucchini], and basil on to the
stripped-pine tables of 1960s kitchens. ( Elizabeth David: And you thought
Nigella was sexy..., The Independent, J an. 14, 2006)

While the ingredients that sent David into raptures were initially unavailable to the majority of
readers, the interest she promoted for Italian and southern French cuisine soon created new
demand for them. Consequently, ingredients such as olive oil, eggplants and zucchini became
more widely available. Warnes suggested that Davids work had a necessary escapist appeal
during these hard years: Amid the austerity of 1950s Britain, then, it doubtless felt pretty
natural, even necessary, to use the recipe as an opportunity to restore lost ingredients to the
English table and perhaps introduce some new ones in the process. He then concluded that the
more recent phenomenon of recipes that fixate on obscure or hard-to-find ingredients combines
Davids historical influence and Britains postwar food hardships with the drives of a
consumerist culture that continually seeks out new and better products.

B. Food Fantasies in Recent British Food Writing
Warnes tracked a pattern in contemporary British food writing that involves appealing to a mass
audience with practical advice about healthful cooking and eating but without acknowledging a
certain inaccessibility or element of fantasy in the related lifestyle. Giving the example of olive
oil, he noted the tendency of authors to mention a desirable and widely-available ingredient that
then suddenly slips out of reach as the author shifts to an even better, harder-to-attain, version.

Warnes characterized this move as one that begins in familiarity before moving smoothly and
silently to the reinstatement of exclusivity. He recounted the experience of:

. . . discovering that the olive oil I bought from Sainsburys wasnt as good as the
extra virgin olive oil Nigella Lawson was extolling, or that the extra virgin oil I
then went and bought wasnt as good as that from a single estate, or that single
estate Greek wasnt as good as single estate Spanish, and that both were inferior
to single estate Tuscan. And so on.

Warnes went on to discuss four examples of contemporary U.K. food celebrities and writers
whose work reflects this fantasy element of food writing.

1. Nigella Lawson

Sources: http://www.foodnetwork.com/nigella-lawson/bio/index.html,
http://www.foodnetworkstore.com/ProductDetail.aspx?R=252874&ccaid=FNFNRSS252874
British celebrity food writer Nigella Lawson, author of food and lifestyle books like How to Be
a Domestic Goddess.

British food writer Nigella Lawson is known for her best-selling books of the late 1990s and
2000s, including How to Eat, Nigella Express: Good Food Fast, Feast: Food to Celebrate Life,
Forever Summer, and How to Be a Domestic Goddess. These books not only offer recipes, but
also construct entire lifestyles around the notion of good living through good eating. In the U.S.,
Lawson is also known as a Food Network personality, hosting the series Nigella Feasts and
Nigella Express and similar programs on the Style channel and E! Entertainment Television
network. She has cultivated the persona of an outsider to the establishment of chefs and food
professionals and endorses a more casual, time-saving approach to food made by the home cook.
Warnes suggested however, that her attention to the pleasure obtained from high-quality
ingredients contradicts the idea that the lifestyle she celebrates is accessible to the everyday cook
and in the everyday world.


2. Rose Prince, The New English Table

Source: http://www.roseprince.co.uk/
Food writer Rose Prince and her book The New English Table.

Rose Princes 2008 book The New English Table was promoted by the publisher as a source of
recipes for affordable and easy good food produced in environmentally friendly ways. It
encourages the use of ingredients grown primarily in England, such as watercress and red Duke
of York potatoes, as well as foods like cobnuts that might not be commonly known, even among
rural English families. Princes food philosophy bears many similarities to northern Californias
local, sustainable food movement, as well as the international Slow Food movement. Her website
lists the following general principles that guide her approach:

- Buying seasonal produce from a known source
- Choosing higher quality ingredients but compensating by using all their parts (bones,
stalks, crusts)
- Keeping informed about the food system and where her food is coming from
- But also paying attention to the pleasurable aspect of food (The website offers this Prince
quote: I sin occasionally. We humans are made that way; we fast and feast; feast and
fast. I adore my wine.)

Warnes quoted a description of purple broccoli from The New English Table as an example of
the move from familiarity to fantasy:

I could write poetry to welcome purple sprouting broccoli.... It hit[s] the shops
just at that moment when potatoes are getting big and carrots enormous; the frosts
are killing the softer vegetables and no other way can be found to eat squash....
Supermarkets sell plenty, but the delay as broccoli travels from farm to depot... is
reflected in its slight toughness and reduced sweetness.Warnes argued that this

description begins in a democratic spirit, as it sings the praises of one of the
commonest English vegetables, only to then start deriding the commonest English
way of acquiring it, in a standard supermarket. He added that while Prince voices
a strong preference for farm-fresh broccoli, in a country where most gardens are
small and suburban and where allotments are becoming ever harder to acquire,
growing it yourself, for the majority of Princes readers, isnt really an option.
Readers are welcome to emulate Prince but will likely have to purchase the
inferior mass market version of these broccoli.

[Editors note: Perhaps in response to critiques that food writers and celebrities promote food
regimes that are inaccessible to average British families,, Princes most recent book Kitchenella
(September 2010) advocates simple and economical ways to shop and prepare food for families
and friends. Farmers markets, which offer middle-ground options between supermarket produce
and home-grown food, have also become increasingly popular in both the U.K and U.S.]

3. Nigel Slater, Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch

Sources: http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv-entertainment/tv/todays-tv/2009/09/09/nigel-slater-s-simple-suppers-115875-
21658109/, http://www.nigelslater.com/tender.asp
Nigel Slater and his 2009 book of vegetables and recipes Tender: a Cook and His Vegetable
Patch.

Nigel Slater is an influential food columnist for The Observer, the Sunday supplement of The
Guardian daily newspaper. He has written several cookbooks, and Warnes called his most recent
one, Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch (2009) a tour-de-force of fantasy food writing.
The book is the first in a two-volume seriesthe second is dedicated to fruitthat is part
memoir, part cookbook, and based on the fruits and vegetables that Slater decided to grow in his
home garden. Though he refers to his land allotment as a vegetable patch, Slater features fifty
vegetables, fruits, and nuts in this two-part collection.


Warnes characterized the following Slater passage on courgettes (better known in the U.S. as
summer squash or zuchinni) as a thinly disguised exercise in culinary and travel fantasy:

In an ideal world, the courgette you buy in the shops or at the market would come
complete with its cheerful yellow flower. The blossoms, opening at dawn, last
only a day, and in the relentless sun in my garden even less, collapsing in a soggy
blob by nightfall. No wonder the shops never had them for sale with their golden
trumpet attached. Yet I have seen them sold that way on the canal boats in Venice
and in small greengrocers shops in the backstreets of Florence too. Occasionally
they pop up at the farmers market here, a rare and show-stopping find.

Source: http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/805333/squash-blossom-recipes
Squash blossoms

Yellow-orange squash blossoms, though common on farms, command a premium at farmers
markets, where they are packaged carefully in plastic containers and often sold for $1 to $3 per
blossom in U.S. farmers markets.
Warne argued that Slater suddenly transforms a common vegetable into part of an unattainable
fantasy ending in Italy, a popular exotic yet familiar vacation destination for the wealthier
British:

Again, here, theres a kind of Trojan Horse effect; exclusivity gets smuggled into
the democratic space of the modern recipe. Slater, after all, begins in everyman
territory. Courgettes are plentiful. Courgettes are cheap. Courgettes grow so well
in the English summertime that, after a while, all but the most passionate zucchini
fan grows tired of them. But this sense of a common and unifying experience
comes undone as a Mediterranean memory then appears from nowhere to sweep
Slater off his feet. Put another way, although Slater begins by reminding us all of
the sad fact that this is not an ideal world, by the end he is lost in a fuzzy Italian
scene that sure as hell feels like one. Again, then, in this recipe we begin inside
the circle, the circle of culinary pleasure. A known and enjoyable [food] is
paraded before us. Its praises are sung, and our taste buds stimulated. But then
as soon as we respond, as soon as we reach out to touch itthis courgette morphs

into another kind of ingredient, sheds its familiarity, and moves away from our
fingertips.

4. Tom Parker-Bowles, food columnist for the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail
Warnes concluded his presentation with a fourth example: an excerpt by food columnist Tom
Parker-Bowles on spaghetti bolognese, referred to informally as spag bol by stepson of Prince
Charles. Bowles describes spag bol as the British slang term for a popular, cheap student
version of what Italian immigrants in the U.S. invented as spaghetti and meatballs, a combination
not found in traditional Italian cuisine. He also associates this humble dish with his own
familys visits to Italy:

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1220337/TOM-PARKER-BOWLES-Spaghetti-
Bolognese-popular-eat-Italy.html
Photo of spaghetti bolognese, or spag bol that accompanied Parker-Bowless column in the
Daily Mail.

There are few culinary concoctions quite as joyless as the student spaghetti
Bolognese

J ust thinking about it still chills me to the gut. The recipe went as follows:
mutilate an old, overweight onion into jagged shards, then cook in cheap oil until
the edges are burnt and the centre still rock-hard. Then mangle a moribund clove
of garlic and add to the melange, ensuring that you cremate every last piece, to
really bring out that all-pervasive bitter tang.

Open an industrial-sized pack of economy mince, all grey and gristly, and throw
that in too. The vast quantities ensure that the meat boils in the pot rather than
browns, resulting in a truly rubbery texture.

A big splodge of ketchup, a mugful of tap water and a fistful of dusty herbs, plus
a few more minutes sweating on the stove, complete this ostensibly Italian classic.

Add a clump of claggy, overcooked wholemeal pasta and top with hideous-
smelling Parmesan style dust. And there you have it: 'spag bol a l'Inglese'a
carnivorous dirge, a dreary study in mince-based drabbery.

I'd like to go on to describe the perfect spaghetti Bolognese. But sadly I can't,
because, in the words of food writer Matthew Fort, 'spaghetti Bolognese is about
as genuinely Italian as Tommy bloody Cooper'.

He's right. Although Bologna is famed for its rich meat ragus as well as a glut of
homemade pastas, they would never be served with spaghetti. . . .

. . . The queen of Italian gastronomy, Anna del Conte, has her own view on how
spaghetti Bolognese came about.

'When the Italians emigrated to the USA just before World War I, they'd take with
them foods that would last the journey, long bundles of spaghetti and the like.
And when they arrived, they added meat to the classic tomato sauce. So spaghetti
Bolognese was born, and the American invention eventually made it over to
England.'

It became so popular that it even returned to parts of Italy. Our family used to
spend part of the summer on the southern Italian island of Ischia. There, every
night, we children would feast on spag bol (damned fine it was too), miles
removed from the classic ragu of that area, alla Napolitana, a tomato-based sauce
filled with large chunks of beef and pork. If the chefs were amazed by our
request, they certainly didn't let it show.

So what makes up a proper ragu alla Bolognese?. . .

. . . While beef from retired dairy cattle was the traditional ingredient of Bologna,
cooks and grandmothers outside the city would add prosciutto, chicken livers,
fresh pork, even game.

. . . all proper ragus of this kind should be cooked slowly, to allow the tough cuts
to melt into silken strands of unctuous delight.

The difference between this bewitchingly mellow, profoundly flavoured sauce
and the wretched spag bol is so marked they may as well exist in entirely dierent
realities.

For real Bolognese bliss, ditch the ersatz student muck and revel in the very real
charms of a proper Italian ragu.

According to Warnes, Parker-Bowles account of discovering the real ragu in Bologna
describes a relatively high-class vacation complete with a private Italian cook for a single family.
Moreover, in describing spag bol derisively as a cheap meal from his student days, he

disregards the fact that it may still be the weekday staple of many working class readers. This
example underscores the frequency with which these U.K. food fantasies turn to Italy as the site
of the comfortable exotic, whose cuisine and foodstuffs are seen as less snobby than French food
but still faraway enough to suggest exclusivity.

C. Appendix: Glossary and Additional Resources

Background for Connecting the U.K. Situation to Local Contexts in Discussion
A similar critique of exclusivity and an obsession with expensive or hard-to-find ingredients has
been leveled against the Slow Food movement as well as other food reform movements that
promote organic and sustainable food production. In the U.S., Chez Panisse chef Alice Waters
has been a controversial figure in this respect, both operating an expensive and exclusive
restaurant in Berkeley while also providing food education to hundreds of schoolchildren
through the Edible Schoolyard project at the MLK Middle School in Berkeley. U.S. food writer
Mark Bittman, who writes The Minimalist column for the New York Times, represents a more
overtly populist approach to food, making his recipes simple with accessible ingredients in books
like the How to Cook Everything and the Food Matters cookbooks. Those who are interested in
the mix of social justice and food reform,might confront Warness assumption that fresh produce
cannot be made available in affordable ways in urban centers with the assertion that small plots
of city land can indeed be made to yield fruits and vegetables. One might further discuss how the
fantasy element of food persists in the media, through such outlets as The Food Network, in
mainstream food magazines like the now-defunct Gourmet, Food + Wine, Saveur, and Bon
Appetit, and in gourmet cookbooks like Thomas Kellers French Laundry cookbook or J udy
Rogerss Zuni Cafe cookbook.

Elizabeth David:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/elizabeth-david-and-you-
thought-nigella-was-sexy-522928.html]

Nigella Lawson: http://www.nigella.com/

Rose Prince: http://www.roseprince.co.uk/

Nigel Slater: http://www.nigelslater.com

Read full text of Tom Parker-Bowless Daily Mail column here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1220337/TOM-PARKER-BOWLES-
Spaghetti-Bolognese-popular-eat-Italy.html

60 Minutes episode on Alice Waters Crusade for Better Food
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/13/60minutes/main4863738.shtml

CHAPTER 3
Food in Political and Historical Contexts

Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
II. Topics
1. German Vegetarianism from the 19
th
2. Food Politics: Effecting Social Change Through Food

I. Introduction
This chapter draws upon two presentations that addressed the ways personal food choices can be
determined by political considerations, and also complicated by larger historical issues. At the
same time, the speakers both cautioned that the connection between food choices and politics is
not straightforward. For example, while individuals who choose a more ascetic, vegetarian or
vegan diet often hold to liberal and humanitarian principles, the case of Nazi interest in
vegetarianism presented by Benjamin Wurgaft manifested an extreme contradiction in the
principle of empathy toward living things. Similarly, some of the politically progressive
communities described in Warren Belascos talk sustained practices of inequality that
contradicted their utopian ideals.

II. Topics
Topic 1. German Vegetarianism from the 19
th
Based on the presentation Against Corpse Tea: Nazi Vegetarianism and Nazi Biopolitics by
Benjamin Wurgaft (Andrew W. Mellon Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical Studies
and Philosophy, The New School).

Central questions for this section include:
- How was vegetarianism connected to 19
th
-century social reforms and romanticism
throughout Europe?
- How did vegetarianism become a tool for nationalism under the Nazis?
- What is the relationship between food production and national security?

A. Against Corpse Tea: Overview of Nazi Vegetarianism
The title of this paper derives from an anecdote collected by one of Hitlers biographers: offered
a bowl of chicken broth, the Fuhrer reportedly rejected it, calling it corpse tea. Wurgaft began
by stating, While there is ongoing debate over whether Hitler himself actually was a vegetarian,
my subject is not so much Hitlers own dietary practicesalthough they will play a rolebut
rather the discourses surrounding vegetarianism specifically and meat consumption more broadly
during the Third Reich. His presentation focused on the ways the Nazi regime promoted a
national program of vegetarianism and reduced meat consumption in Germany throughout the
1930s and mid-40s. After Hitler assumed power in 1933, the national diet was evaluated by
various committees, including the Reich Study Group for Public Nutrition and the Nazi Party
Committee on Public Health. These studies were concerned primarily with keeping national

food production autonomous and the German population healthy and pure. Vegetariansim was
linked to the construction of idealized Aryan bodies and a rejection of traditional German
eating habits, which Nazi propaganda associated with the foreign decadence and corruption of
the Weimar Republic that preceded it. Wurgaft noted:

The vegetarian answer to the Fleischfrage, or meat-question as it was known to
many National Socialist party ideologists, nutritionists, doctors and eugenicists,
was promoted as part of an array of biopolitical practices we know all too well,
including eugenics and genocide, and a number of practices that are less often
discussed, including remarkably progressive environmental policies, anti-smoking
laws, the promotion of natural, or biodynamic foods, and what Robert Proctor
has termed a full-fledged War on Cancer.

The Nazi governments interest in vegetarianism might seem surprising given that German
culinary identity has historically involved substantial meat consumption. Indeed, Wurgaft
acknowledged that a meat-free diet was never part of a widespread Nazi platform. While those in
elite Nazi circles, including Hitler, advocated vegetarianism, propaganda aimed at everyday
citizens called merely for a reduction of meat in the diet. However, the Nazi interest in
vegetarianism was also influenced by late-nineteenth-century social reform movements, which
saw vegetarianism as a more natural and harmonious form of eating that connected the individual
both to the environment and his countrymen. Hitler himself was influenced by these ideas on
vegetarianism, in particular by the writings of German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883).
Although there is debate over whether Hitler consistently abstained from meat, it was, according
to Wurgaft, his self-representation as a vegetarian in speeches, interviews, and letters, that
influenced party ideology rather than his actual eating practices.

B. Connections to Earlier Cultural Movements
The interest of the Nazi government in food production and eating choices is related to the
Lebensreform (literally Life Reform) movement that arose in Germany and Switzerland in the
late-19
th
and early-20
th
centuries. Proponents included Austrian philosopher and social thinker
Rudolf Steiner, known in the U.S. for developing the Waldorf educational system that was
based in the principles of anthroposophy (a philosophy that seeks to integrate mental and
physical well-being through natural means).


Source: http://www.rsarchive.org/RSBio.php
Austrian philosopher and social thinker Rudolf Steiner

The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (a sourcebook containing hundreds of primary documents
from the Weimar period in English translation) describes how reform movements like the
Lebensreform and the Wandervogel youth culture organization began to advocate a new
relationship to the body and a return to naturewith practices such as vegetarianism, nudism,
and living on land communesin response to growing industrialization and urbanization. The
authors write:

Despite the potential for progressive criticism of hectic, inhuman modernization,
most of these groups followed a reactionary course in their longing for the utopia
of a premodern world. The futile search for purity, for example, led some to
propagate rabid racism (spouting forth theories about the superiority of an Aryan
race) and anti-Semitism; others, in their contempt for materialism and bourgeois
values, prefigured the hippie culture of the 1960s. (The Weimar Republic
Sourcebook, 673)

The assumption that vegetarianism was a more natural way to ensure harmonious relations
with animals extended back into the mid-19
th
-century vlkisch movement, a populist movement
influenced by German Romanticism that celebrated native folk and organic traditions as part of a
growing pride in the national culture. Wurgaft quoted Gustav von Struve, a politician associated
with this movement, who asserted that an ethics of empathy for other humans rested on
empathic relations with non-human animals.

C. Government Concerns Over National Diet in the Third Reich
The Nazi interest in promoting a more healthful national diet arose from two main factors: i) out
of these earlier movements toward more natural lifestyles and a connection with the
environment and also ii) from foods relation to a particular idea of German nationalism.

i) Vegetarianism as a matter of natural harmony and national health
Similar to earlier German reform movements, Nazi leadership promoted vegetarianism as a way
of connecting to the soil, the environment, and the German agricultural heritage. Wurgaft cited
historian Corinna Treitel, whose work shows how National Socialists reinterpreted pre-Nazi
German ideas about nature:

[Treitel] has shown that the ideal of farming and eating naturally was
assimilated to the regimes racial, political and economic goalsand that there
was nothing in the rhetoric of eating naturally that resisted what Treitel calls the
biopolitics of fascist modernity. The proponents of natural eating marshaled not
only economic arguments but also claims that their practice would enhance both
racial health and the expansion of the German empire. And biodynamic farming,
like the reduced-meat diet, was understood by its proponents as a key to both
those goals.

Wurgaft called further attention to the Nazis interest in the environment by pointing out that in
1934-5, the Nazi government passed a comprehensive set of environmental protection
legislation, as well as laws against animal cruelty, while it continued to persecute human
individuals considered to be degenerate.

During the Third Reich, the National Socialist government launched the most aggressive
advertising campaign for healthful eating in German history. They promoted unprocessed foods
and discouraged excessive consumption of fats and sugars. Government-circulated pamphlets
and posters outlined balanced diets, which emphasized grains and fresh fruits and vegetables
over meat. A manual published by the Hitlerjugend, or Hitler Youth organization claimed, Too
much meat can make you sick!

This attention to national diet was one expression of the Nazi leaderships belief in a connection
between health and a pure race, also known as racial hygiene. Responding to unprecedented
rates of stomach cancer in Germany during the 1920s and 30s, the Nazified German Doctors
Association asserted a causal connection between meat-consumption and cancera link that has
not been substantiated according to presentday scientific standardsand recommended reducing
meat in the national diet as part of its mass campaign to end cancer. (More background on this
can be found in Robert Proctors The Nazi War on Cancer.) Nazi oncologists such as Erwin Liek
also believed that the population must be kept free of substances like morphine and alcohol that
he considered to be cultural poisons for the way their recreational use hurt the moral fabric of
the population. and saved from unhealthy diets in order to preserve the purity of genetic stock.
Wurgaft argued:

Indeed, Lieks work was of great consequence for National Socialist nutritionists
because it bridged the gaps between individual health, public health, and racial
health. If one took Liek seriously, it meant effacing the boundary between private
and public: if food choice had great consequences for society, it would not really
be individual choice.

One Party slogan sings:


Your body belongs to the nation!
Your body belongs to the Fhrer!
You have the duty to be healthy!
Food is not a private matter!
(cited in Proctor)

ii) Nationalism and Eating Practices
This idea that Food is not a private matter! and that personal eating habits are a matter of
national duty show how the Nazi regime linked nutritional principles to the cultivation of a
coherent and healthy German national identity. Food consumption was also related to issues of
national autonomy. During World War I, German dependence on imported meat had made the
country vulnerable to blockades, which led in turn to widespread malnutrition and starvation.
State propaganda also criticized imported delicacies enjoyed during the Weimar Republic as a
sign of corruption by foreign decadence.

Nazi propaganda display promoting healthful eating habits
image credit: Wurgafts presentation (will email for better reference)

The above display is from an exhibit entitled German People-German Labor, an example of
Nazi propaganda promoting a German diet based on local foods and reduced meat content. A
segment of the display entitled Remaking the German Kitchen celebrated the blending of self-
sufficiency, economic independence, and a deeper connection to German soil with the promotion
of foods that could be produced locally, such as quark, dark bread, and apples. The logo of the

Ministry for Food and Agriculture also included the slogan blut und boden (blood and soil),
thus implying that national bloodlines, or identity, were inseparable from the literal land
designated as the homeland.

D. Conclusion
Wurgafts intent in this presentation was not to compare todays vegetarianisms with that of the
Nazis, nor to resolve the controversy over whether Hitler was as strict a vegetarian as he claimed
in public. He looked instead at the ideologies behind the Nazi promotion of vegetarianism in
order to challenge present-day assumptions about the connection between food and politics.
Asking whether and how Nazi Germanys Fleischfrage, or meat question had any relevance to
Americans in the present day, he cautioned that the answer should not merely be a cautionary
tale of how vegetarians can be bad people too but that it should rather encourage us to
question the way we often, perhaps unconsciously, think about the connections between culture
and ideology, food choice and politics. He added:

While our food choices are indeed political, their political content changes over
time. As the story of Nazi vegetarianism shows, there is no inevitable or causal
connection between vegetarianism and a politics of human empathy.
During the past few years the conversation about food politics has blossomed,
with authors such as Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and Marion Nestle debating
the environmental, economic and public health costs of systems of food
productionand others, like Alice Waters, announcing that a revolution of
organic gardening and slow cooking can change society. At the core of the food
politics conversation has been the view that food choices are political choices,
and that we can learn something about a persons political consciousness by
observing what they consume. Given the current discourse on food politics, in
which the high correlation between dietary choices and political positions is
mistakenly read to imply causation, it seems useful (as an intervention) to
examine the surprising food choices of some of historys worst villains.

Consequently, vegetarianism does not necessarily entail holding other progressive viewpoints.
Wurgaft challenged additional prevailing assumptions about food and politics, such as the idea
that a progressive pro-organic and pro-locavorist movement tends to forget the poor, or that big
agribusiness cannot pay for its GMO crimes by making positive contributions to global food
problems. Thinking through historical concerns about how best to maintain a harmonious
relationship with the natural world may also help us clarify current anxieties about how
genetically modified foods are intervening in the existing food system.

E. Appendix: Glossary and Additional Resources
The Weimar Republic was Germanys parliamentary republic government established in 1919
after the German Revolution. It lasted until the Hitler and the National Socialist party were voted
into power in 1933.

Biopolitics or biopolitical practices refers to the ways in which modern governments have
taken an interest in regulating the health and bodies of individuals as a matter of managing the

general stability of their populations. This making political of biological issues on a large scale
depends upon modern practices of collecting statistics, such as birth and death rates and
epidemiological information. More information and background on philosopher and social
historian Michel Foucaults ideas on biopolitics and biopower can be found here:
http://www.generation-online.org/c/cbiopolitics.htm

For more information on the Lebensreform movement and pre-Nazi Germany, see The Weimar
Republic Sourcebook, one of the best available collections of primary sources in English on
Weimar culture, especially the chapter The Cult of the Body: Lebensreform, Sports, and
Dance. Anton Kaes, Martin J ay, and Edward Dimendberg, The Weimar Republic Sourcebook,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

For more information on Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy, see The Rudolf Steiner Archive,
http://www.rsarchive.org/

For more on Nazi approaches to cancer research and treatments, see Robert Proctor, The Nazi
War on Cancer,

For more on the Nazi interest in natural eating practices, see Corinna Treitel, "Nature and the
Nazi Diet," Food and Foodways, 17 (2009): 1-20.

Topic 2. Food Politics: Effecting Social Change Through Food
Based on the presentation Saving the World With a Clean Plate, by Warren Belasco
(Professor of American Studies, University of Maryland).

A. Connecting Food Reform Movements Through History
In his presentation, Belasco considered the ways different food reform movements have affected
peoples decisions about eating beyond basic considerations of taste and convenience. He
defined convenience as the availability of particular ingredients, tools, energy, time, and
skills, as well as the ability to afford them. Food reform movements have emphasized a third
factor influencing decisions about eating: a sense of responsibility. Belasco defined
responsibility in this context as a willingness to pay the full costs of ones meal. These full,
or true costs of a product extend beyond the market price the consumer pays at the time of
purchase, to what economists call externalities; the wider, often unseen, long-range
consequences of producing and consuming it. These include environmental damage and the
suffering of animals or laborers who work long hours for low wages and few, if any benefits.

To illustrate this point, Belasco quoted naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau:

Romantic rebel Henry Thoreau put it succinctly in Walden (1854), an account of
his own attempts at radical personal reform: "The cost of a thing is the amount of
what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the
long run." Urging conscientious citizens to consider the long run effects of their

behavior, Thoreau invoked the ethic of intergenerational equity found in many
conservation-minded cultures, as when the Iroquois vowed, "In our every
deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven
generations. (Thoreau quoted in David Orr, Earth in Mind: On Education,
Environment, and the Human Prospect, Washington, D.C.: 1994, 172.)

Belasco identified two major concerns put forth by the modern food reform movement about the
industrial food system:

1. Poor quality of food. Food produced on a mass scale is frequently bland, mediocre,
artificial, and full of additives and toxins

2. How it is produced. Large-scale corporate farming, processing, and distribution ruin the
environment, exploit farmers, animals, and workers, colonize distant countries, and favor
richer consumers while depriving the poor of their rightful share of the bounty.

The contemporary U.S. food reform movement pits itself against what reformers perceive as the
negative effects of modern life: When viewed through the lens of we are what we eat, modern
food becomes a largely negative metaphor for modern life itself: too fast, too easy, and too
cheap. As a consequence, the idea of moving forward for these critics of the industrialized food
system is often influenced by a nostalgic preference for the pre-modern past, when life was
supposedly slower, tougher, and more valuable.

This critique of the negative effects of modern progress opposes the more dominant
cornucopian ethic, which aims to produce more food for less money. Under these principles,
technological innovation, territorial expansion and business rationalization are key to the
disproportionate growth in agricultural productivity, compared to the rise in population.

B. Reform Movements in the Jacksonian, Progressive, and Countercultural Eras
While many of the fears about our modern condition intensified toward the end of the twentieth
century, Belasco analyzed three different historical periods in U.S. history during which similar
concerns caused various reformers to tie their ideas about food to political and social principles.
What follows are brief overviews of these periods, accompanied by examples of individual
reformers in each period.

1. The Jacksonian Era (1830s-40s). The decade under President Andrew J ackson (1829-1837),
also known as the Era of the Common man, was marked by increased political participation as
the right to vote was extended to all white men and states eliminated property requirements to
hold political office, and . However, the period was still far from progressive, as women and
free blacks remained disenfranchised, and the U.S. government initiated the enforced
resettlement of Native Americans west of the Mississippi River.


Source: http://www.ivu.org/history/usa19/graham.html
Food reformer Sylvester Graham

The key food reformer of this era was Sylvester Graham (1795-1851), an American
Presbyterian minister who preached temperance and stressed whole-wheat flour and vegetarian
diets. Graham is best known today for developing the graham cracker, made from graham flour,
a type of whole wheat flour made in turn from a combination of fine-ground white flour and
coarse-ground wheat bran and germ.

2. The Progressive Era (1890-1920). Overview from the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic
site website:

Progressivism began as a social movement and grew into a political movement.
The early progressives rejected Social Darwinism. In other words, they were
people who believed that the problems society faced (poverty, violence, greed,
racism, class warfare) could best be addressed by providing good education, a
safe environment, and an efficient workplace. Progressives lived mainly in the
cities, were college educated, and believed that government could be a tool for
change. Social reformers, like J ane Addams, and journalists, like J acob Riis and
Ida Tarbel, were powerful voices for progressivism. They concentrated on
exposing the evils of corporate greed, combating fear of immigrants, and urging
Americans to think hard about what democracy meant.
(http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/progressive-era.htm

Writer Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was the most significant single figure in food reform during
this period. Sinclair came to be closely associated with muckraking journalism, known for
investigating questionable practices and corruption in the corporate and political spheres. His
most famous book is The Jungle (1905), which exposed the exploitative, unsafe, and unsanitary
conditions of the American meatpacking industry, and led to reforms in federal food safety
regulations like the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.


Source: http://museum.nist.gov/object.asp?ObjID=45

3. The Countercultural Movement (1960s-70s).
This period witnessed increasing political and social unrest. Racial violence and the 1960s Civil
Rights movement, as well as a general loosening of cultural values in response to the rigid social
norms of the 1950s. These combined with widespread anti-war sentiment in the 1970s that began
with Vietnam War protests and later extended to opposition to U.S. involvement in Latin
American politics. During this time, counterculture youth also began to live in collectives,
striving among other things for affordable alternatives to the centralized and over-processed
industrialized food system.

Source: http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Category:1960s
1969 Anti-Vietnam War protestors in San Franciscos Golden Gate Park


While Belasco offered Sylvester Graham and Upton Sinclair as examples of key reformers
during the earlier two periods, activism happened on a more collective level during the 60s and
70s. One example of influential reformist collective action was the Peoples Food System, a
network of food production, distribution, and retail collectives in San Francisco and Oakland that
eventually led to the wider adoption of health and ethnic foods (e.g. tofu, brown rice, black and
pinto beans) throughout local homes and mainstream supermarkets. Frances Moore Lapps
1971 Diet for a Small Planet was highly influential in its promotion of vegetarian eating habits
along with sample recipes. (See bibliography in Appendix)

C. Pre-conditions Leading to Food Reform
Belasco identified four interrelated pre-conditions that motivated food activists in various
historical contexts to take up the cause of responsible eating:

1. A large food supply system. Each period noted in the previous section was marked by rapid
expansion of the food system, resulting in distancing, a condition in which producers and
consumers are more or less unknown to one another. Reasons include territorial expansion,
imperial conquest, urbanization, capitalist development, and technological advances. The sudden
separation of producers and consumers triggers fears that businesses will use their size and
relative anonymity to take advantage of consumers and workers.

Belasco illustrated the causes of this situation as they played out in each period. In the
J acksonian era, steamboats and canals enabled Eastern bakers to purchase wheat from unseen
Midwestern suppliers rather than from local millers who had to be more accountable for what
they put in the flour. In the Progressive period, transcontinental railroads produced arrogant
corporate trusts. In the 1960s suburbanization replaced farms and further separated eating and
food production. The most telling metaphor was plastic, which was used to describe not just
the food, but an empty modern artificiality and alienation.

2. Strong information infrastructure. An active media gives voice to consumer anxieties about
the food system and spreads interest in unseen consequences and alternatives through news
stories, reports, memoirs, novels, and cookbooks. Each period had highly competitive news
industries the virulent penny press of the J acksonian era, the yellow press of Progressive
muckrakers, and the insurgent underground press of the 1960s.

3. Distrust in basic foods. Concern about the food system often arises when staple foods, such
as beef, wheat, and corn in the West, suddenly seem threatened or threatening, either because of
tainted food batches that cause national scares or because their availability is diminished. A
recent U.S. example is the August 2010 nationwide egg recall, following the discovery of eggs
on the market with shells contaminated by salmonella. Such events and their related anxieties
cause more scrutiny of the previously unexamined practices of the food system.

4. General domestic worries. A national atmosphere of anxiety, often arising from tense
political, economic, or environmental conditions, makes people more receptive to disturbing
news and forecasts concerning the food system and increases a sense of urgency in public calls
for action. The J acksonian period was marked by cholera outbreaks that overwhelmed booming

cities. In the Progressive Era, fear of germs from immigrant communities and factory workers
generated anxieties about the food supply they were instrumental in producing. The 1960s food
reform movement gained momentum from political activity surrounding growing racial violence,
environmental pollution, and anti-war protest.

Belasco observed that during such periods of intensified worrying the archetypal stories about
how to keep a plate clean tend to get dusted off and reissued. Below are eight types of reformers
that have arisen between 1830 to the present day, followed by some thoughts on the
consequences of their various activist strategies.

D. Eight Food Reformer Archetypes
1. The Boycotter. Defined as the precision protestor, this person avoids a particular product in
order to not support its production, thereby calling attention to the social injustices relied upon
and exploited to sustain its presence in the marketplace:

During the 1830s & 40s, abolitionists targeted sugar produced by slaves. During
the Progressive era some reformers boycotted meat to protest monopolistic greed
and worker exploitation. In the 1960s and 70s civil rights activists targeted
segregated or discriminatory public facilities, including restaurants, while grape
and lettuce boycotts supported farm worker unionization efforts. (Belasco )

2. The Frugal Parent or Honest Accountant. This least romantic of activists looks at
statistics and government regulation in order to balance the books of intergenerational equity.
This means calculating wider impacts of food choices such as the true cost of food, which
might include counting food miles to measure the distance that a product travels to reach the
consumer and thus weigh its impact on the climate and available energy resources. As a frugal
parent, this reformer values responsible and sustainable behavior and tries to effect change on a
policy level. Examples include progressive era USDA chemist Harvey Wiley or liberal consumer
crusader Ralph Nader.

3. The Survivalist. This type moves away from modern civilization to live in a more self-
contained situation, learning survival and naturalist skills such as hunting, gathering, roasting,
and sowing by hand:

In 1845 Thoreau retreated in exhaustion from abolitionist agitation to the pastoral peace of
Walden Pond. The boom in outdoor camping and hiking during the Progressive period was,
in a sense, another form of survivalist regeneration. And so too in the late 60s did some
radicals attempt to reset the revolution in the wilds of Vermont, Mendocino, and
Appalachia. (Belasco)

The settled Survivalist often develops into the two following variants: Yeoman Farmer and
Utopian Communist.

4. The Yeoman Farmer. Belasco called this farmer a somewhat more evolved version of the
survivalist, someone who has moved away from subsisting solely from his survivalist skills
(hunting, gathering, sowing by hand) to settling his plot of land more fully by engaging in more

developed forms of agriculture. In the colonial period Thomas J efferson saw himself as a man
of the land and endorsed an American grow-your-own ethic. However, even during the
J acksonian period, larger farms that traded their goods on a world market were already
increasingly the norm. The farming methods of small, family-owned plots of land had already
become a nostalgic idea:

The Progressive Era also produced a back-to-the-land movement that appealed
particularly to alienated urban intellectuals like Helen and Scott Nearing, who
retreated to Maine from radical politics in the 1920s and whose account of their
experiment in vegetarian self-sufficiency, Living The Good Life (1954) inspired
the neo-agrarian counterculture of the late 1960s. In turn some of those aging
hippies stayed on the land long enough to profit from a renewed demand for
organic produce and meat in the early 21
st
centurymost famously the
evangelical-libertarian peasant, J oel Salatin, lionized in Michael Pollan's The
Omnivores Dilemma (2006). (Belasco)

5. The Utopian Communist. Belasco calls the Utopian Communist the collective version of
the Yeoman Farmer. Often following the principles of one idealistic leader, groups of people
bound together by shared opposition to the prevailing order of the modern world established
alternative communities able to feed and sustain themselves. These communities were also
accompanied by literary reporting that spread their ideas and popularized their diets. Each of the
three periods that Belasco outlined experienced high rates of utopian community formation.
Brook Farm, near Boston, was an alternative community established in the 1840s and influenced
by the spiritual and moral ideas of Transcendentalist Charles Fourier. In 1843, fellow
Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott founded the Fruitlands commune near Concord,
believing Brook Farm to be not pure enough. San Francisco in the 1970s saw the rise of food-
oriented collectives, like the Peoples Food System, which distributed food first through
communal households and later through storefronts according to principles guided by health,
social considerations, and political concerns. Unlike the other communities cited, this wasnt a
rural movement but an urban utopian endeavor. The emphasis of these communities on health
food and vegetarianism made its way into the mainstream food system by the 1980s, when
previously specialty items like wheat bread and brown rice could be found at larger supermarket
chains.

However, many of these utopian communes maintained traditional gender roles, in which women
still performed most of the cooking and gardening. Belasco asserts that such gender disparities
were a primary reason for the eventual failure of many communal experiments. Moreover, the
success of these communes was often tied not so much to their collective principles and practices
but to the continued presence and charisma of the commune leader, as in the examples of Charles
Fourier and Amos Bronson Alcott above.

6. Yogis. This reformer archetype is a leader possessing unusual spiritual magnetism, the
consummate mindful eater who promotes ascetic eating habits. Alcotts Fruitlands utopia was
strictly vegan and his vegetarian Transcendentalism influenced those outside of the commune
even after its dissolution. Sylvester Grahams disciples J ohn Harvey Kellogg and Horace
Fletcher also preached ascetic self-discipline in eating habits. Their ideas and work were

depicted in Upton Sinclairs Fasting Cure (1911). The current Slow Food movement, which
preaches an unhurried, conscious approach to eating, invoked eating mantras similar to those
heard during the 1960s and 70s counter-culture movement. In 1971, Stephen Gaskin, a key San
Francisco countercultural figure who later moved to Tennessee and co-founded one of the more
successful hippie communes, The Farm, voiced this meditative philosophy in a poem: How to
Slow Down: Find a little bit of land somewhere and plant a carrot seed. Now sit and watch it
grow. When it is fully grown pull it up and eat it.

7. The Pleasure Artist. This city cousin of the Yogi turns the concept of mindful eating
toward pleasure in eating and drinking well. Like the Yogi, the Pleasure Artist endorses modest
portions and critiques the excesses of the larger culture but does so according to the belief that
when eating high quality, good-tasting food, one does not need to eat as much. The Pleasure
Artist thus adapts the concept of survival from the Yogis spare eating to live into a more
self-indulgent ethos of living to eat, albeit not too much and within budgetary limits. This kind
of living is associated with bohemian communities of artists and writers, such as 19
th
-century
Romantic poets, Pre-Raphaelites, and gourmands, who believed that the preservation of refined
taste would protect people from the rapidly growing, dishonest factory food system and
hopefully return food production to a sturdier craft (artisanal) basis. Even in the late
nineteenth century, culinary authenticity became a value and urban progressives favored cheap
foreign restaurants in ethnic neighborhoods like Little Italy and Chinatown, even if their
spaghetti and chop suey would not have been considered authentic by standards in Italy and
China.

Berkeley chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse has become one of the most visible proponents of
this combination of food reform and pleasure, as is the Slow Food movement led by Italian Carlo
Petrini [see Chapter 1 for further background on the Slow Food movement].

Source: http://www.chezpanisse.com/about/alice-waters/
Chez Panisse founder and chef Alice Waters

8. The Homefront Patriot.

While most of the other food reformer types are associated with socialist pacifism and other
elements of leftist politics, this last type is an example of a reformer whose concern for
conservation and locally produced foods arises from a sense of wartime patriotism and need for
security. During World War I and II, the U.S. saw a rise in home victory gardens, in which
families grew their own fruits and vegetables. Eleanor Roosevelt grew a model victory garden at
the White House, an idea revived by current First Lady Michelle Obamas White House
vegetable garden.The theme of food security has most recently been associated with post
September 11 nationalism. Belasco gave the two images here as examples of how traditional
patriotic images and slogans have been revived and integrated into the Buy Local movement.

Source: http://www.makingthishome.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/buy-local-poster.jpg

Source: http://greenearthgrowers.net/Homeland_security.jpg

E. Appendix: Glossary and Additional Resources
For more on the August 2010 nationwide egg recall, see the Reuters article U.S. concerned
about egg recall, no comment on probe,
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67Q4SW20100827, August, 27, 2010.

For more on the Peoples Food System see essay at FoundSF historical archive:
http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=People%27s_Food_System

Belasco provided these additional sources for background on his presentation:
Belasco, Warren. Food, Morality and Social Reform. In Morality and Health. ed. Allan M.
Brandt and Paul Rozin. New York: Routledge, 1997, 185-199.
Belasco, Warren. Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 2
nd

revised ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Belasco. Warren. Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006.
Coveney, J ohn. Food, Morals and Meaning: The Pleasure and Anxiety of Eating. 2
nd
edition.
London: Routledge, 2006.
Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip
Consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Green, Harvey. Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport, and American Society. New York:
Pantheon, 1986.
J ohnston, J ose, and Shyon Baumann. Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet
Foodscape. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Kamp, David. The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation. New York:
Broadway Books, 2006.
Lappe, Frances Moore. Diet for a Small Planet. New York: Ballantine, 1971.
Levenstein, Harvey. Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Lien, Marianne Elisabeth, and Brigitte Nerlich, eds. The Politics of Food. Oxford: Berg, 2004.
Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002
Nissenbaum, Stephen. Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988.
Wharton, J ames C. Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

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FOOD: HISTORY AND CULTURE IN THE WEST

Institute of European Studies and EU Center of Excellence 2010 Food

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