"Hunger has a cure."
After reading "Want Amid Plenty," I flashed back to my days as a girl scout, collecting canned food, and truly believing that I could stop the hunger. But, as pointed out in the article, the hunger does not necessarily correlate with a need, but also the wanting that has been created by the inequalities in our society, and the higher placement of material possessions over necessary food products.
Hunger is shame. Not the being hungry, but the inability to provide the "right" foods, which are socially acceptable for a child in their school cafeterias. Our society's obsession with fixing the problem completely ignores the underlying confliction; we expect poor people to eat poorly and to dress poorly, but society ostracizes those who cannot keep up with the social norms. Those who eat fast food, or send thei child to school with an unhealthy ensemble for lunch are deemed "bad parents." You cannot choose to buy a child a trendy pair of shoes over food, but parents are faced with these decisions every day. And, with the high stress on material possessions in our society, parents feel the pressure to let their children feel "normal" by purchasing name brand products outside of their means. Maybe our work with food charities is our subconscious attempt to excuse are judgment of the less fortunate. We can rationalize their "flaws" by our good deeds.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The Organic Dems
This weekend, I reread the "Omnivore's Dilemma," and then tagged along on my parents weekly trip to Fred Meyers. I lolly-gagged a few feet behind them, picking up product after product reading the personal statement from the company CEO, the "family-run businesses." I frowned, I felt jaded, these claims are false! How have I let myself naively believe in the small red barn on the front of my butter box for so long?
I lost my appetite, but only out of shame. I've always considered myself an educated eating, but have always had faith that my food didn't lie. I stopped that train of thought right there-- its food, its politics. Politics! In my mind, I saw the sweep of organic craze as the democrats coming back to power, making promises, painting a picture that I followed like a creed. I believe in Nancy's organic yogurt like I believed in Nancy Pelosi's energy bill. But these high-powered promises cannot be maintained, politics always get in the way. There are voters, there are consumers. There is competition, there is a supply and there is always a demand.
But, in our optimistic naivete, we still demand the impossible, and expect that no food producer indulges in a little political/business scheme here and there. As Michael Pollan quotes in his book, "Everything eventually morphs into the way the world is." I hate to sound like a pessimist at age 19, but I am not. I still believe in Nancy Pelosi and the democrats, and I still believe in organic yogurt and organic foods (and not just the way the USDA defines "organic"). I just say that we need to take it with a grain of salt, just as we do a political race. The promise of a "free-range chicken" as we imagine it, is realistically impossible if it is found in a chain grocery store (it would take more hours than there are in a day to pander to that kind of treatment on a mass producing poultry plant). Just as world peace is hard to achieve in one senate term or even two presidential terms.
Bottom line: If you vote (which is just as important as eating!), vote wisely. If you eat (which we all should), take it with a grain of salt.
I lost my appetite, but only out of shame. I've always considered myself an educated eating, but have always had faith that my food didn't lie. I stopped that train of thought right there-- its food, its politics. Politics! In my mind, I saw the sweep of organic craze as the democrats coming back to power, making promises, painting a picture that I followed like a creed. I believe in Nancy's organic yogurt like I believed in Nancy Pelosi's energy bill. But these high-powered promises cannot be maintained, politics always get in the way. There are voters, there are consumers. There is competition, there is a supply and there is always a demand.
But, in our optimistic naivete, we still demand the impossible, and expect that no food producer indulges in a little political/business scheme here and there. As Michael Pollan quotes in his book, "Everything eventually morphs into the way the world is." I hate to sound like a pessimist at age 19, but I am not. I still believe in Nancy Pelosi and the democrats, and I still believe in organic yogurt and organic foods (and not just the way the USDA defines "organic"). I just say that we need to take it with a grain of salt, just as we do a political race. The promise of a "free-range chicken" as we imagine it, is realistically impossible if it is found in a chain grocery store (it would take more hours than there are in a day to pander to that kind of treatment on a mass producing poultry plant). Just as world peace is hard to achieve in one senate term or even two presidential terms.
Bottom line: If you vote (which is just as important as eating!), vote wisely. If you eat (which we all should), take it with a grain of salt.
I already wrote one blog about my first experience with Top Ramen noodles, but after a personal experience this weekend, I feel the need to expand.
Throughout my life, I have considered my family to be affluent, and have not felt the deep pang of hunger, and have never been fed unhealthy food to stretch dollers over caloric value. As a child, my rare trip to McDonald's tasted like a junk food heaven in comparison to the pantry stocked with soy products, vegetables, and the few-and-far-between can of Spaghetti-Os. But, everything changes.
A little over two years ago, I won my first Miss America title. My family rushed the stage, but my aunt didn't come up. I was so upset, my five-year-old cousin Lauren (my little inspiration), was no where to be found either. Everyone's faces revealed some uneasy hesitation, but no one told me. The next morning, I found out. Aunt Crystal had left the pageant and taken Lauren to meet her meth dealer. She left a few days later and we found out that she had accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in debt under my uncle's name, and left him to take care of Lauren. We never saw her again.
My parents took over Lauren's upbringing while my uncles worked to keep his finances from complete collapse. He did not know how to raise her, but he learned how to blow dry hair and he eventually learned that pink and red clash and that sandals are not okay in December. But, there was something that no one expected: for my uncle and Lauren, food became a luxury.
After our Tap Ramen experiment, I found myself so frustrated with the calorie accessability for low-socioeconomic families. It has always broken my heart, but until I went home this weekend, I didn't see the reality of this problem. It isn't that my parents don't try to keep my uncle and cousin's diet full of home cooked meals at any opportunity, but both of my parents work full-time, and having the time to eat healthy is just as important as having the accessability to healthy foods.
My uncle told me that he has been living off of Ramen noodles, and my heart sank. This is it. It isn't a generalization that I can analyze in a classroom, it is my uncle and my little Lauren. He says they are filling, and I explained that they are deep-fried and full of sodium. I don't think he wanted to know that, the not knowing is much easier than the knowing. I sat down with him and tried to determine what foods he could buy with his budget. He tries so hard, but I know his self-esteem as a parent lowers with every dish of Top Ramen or $.79 tacos at Taco Bell.
Top Ramen convenience eats away at hard-working families every day, and I know frustration in causes in my parents and my uncle. But, where can the socioeconomic nutrition transition shift now? Caloric accessability expanded with urbanization, and social stratafication creates the gap between the unhealthy and the healthy calories. Maybe it is optimistic, but I am working for the day when healthy caloric accessability overrides the fast food mentality so many survive on today.
Throughout my life, I have considered my family to be affluent, and have not felt the deep pang of hunger, and have never been fed unhealthy food to stretch dollers over caloric value. As a child, my rare trip to McDonald's tasted like a junk food heaven in comparison to the pantry stocked with soy products, vegetables, and the few-and-far-between can of Spaghetti-Os. But, everything changes.
A little over two years ago, I won my first Miss America title. My family rushed the stage, but my aunt didn't come up. I was so upset, my five-year-old cousin Lauren (my little inspiration), was no where to be found either. Everyone's faces revealed some uneasy hesitation, but no one told me. The next morning, I found out. Aunt Crystal had left the pageant and taken Lauren to meet her meth dealer. She left a few days later and we found out that she had accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in debt under my uncle's name, and left him to take care of Lauren. We never saw her again.
My parents took over Lauren's upbringing while my uncles worked to keep his finances from complete collapse. He did not know how to raise her, but he learned how to blow dry hair and he eventually learned that pink and red clash and that sandals are not okay in December. But, there was something that no one expected: for my uncle and Lauren, food became a luxury.
After our Tap Ramen experiment, I found myself so frustrated with the calorie accessability for low-socioeconomic families. It has always broken my heart, but until I went home this weekend, I didn't see the reality of this problem. It isn't that my parents don't try to keep my uncle and cousin's diet full of home cooked meals at any opportunity, but both of my parents work full-time, and having the time to eat healthy is just as important as having the accessability to healthy foods.
My uncle told me that he has been living off of Ramen noodles, and my heart sank. This is it. It isn't a generalization that I can analyze in a classroom, it is my uncle and my little Lauren. He says they are filling, and I explained that they are deep-fried and full of sodium. I don't think he wanted to know that, the not knowing is much easier than the knowing. I sat down with him and tried to determine what foods he could buy with his budget. He tries so hard, but I know his self-esteem as a parent lowers with every dish of Top Ramen or $.79 tacos at Taco Bell.
Top Ramen convenience eats away at hard-working families every day, and I know frustration in causes in my parents and my uncle. But, where can the socioeconomic nutrition transition shift now? Caloric accessability expanded with urbanization, and social stratafication creates the gap between the unhealthy and the healthy calories. Maybe it is optimistic, but I am working for the day when healthy caloric accessability overrides the fast food mentality so many survive on today.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Food Symbolism; The Pizza Anecdote
Pizza is more than a late-night quick fix for an empty stomach. The modern American pizza serves as a food icon for a stage in American life; the undergraduate years. I remember as a child seeing ads on TV of burnt out college students studying for finals and calling “Domino’s” for a 2 AM pick-me-up. $5 pizzas, so cheap, so filling! I looked to these television ads as a foreshadow of my own future. Someday, I would live off of pizza and love.
While I rarely indulge in the late-night pizza calls, some of my best memories of college center around a large pepperoni pizza, “Sex and the City” reruns and about ten hungry girls. Pizza takes the pain away from a bad midterm, is a celebration after a long week, is the perfect consolation after a bad break up, and its mouth-watering smell brings girls out of their rooms and into the lounge for a good, long chat (I live in a sorority house).
Currently, I am studying the affect of the global nutrition transition and global marketing schemes on developing countries, and am often disgusted with the business ploys set out to feed developing nations Taco Bell, KFC, and McDonalds (which now serves BILLIONS, if you didn’t know). And, I can’t tell if my draw to pizza as a social definition of my undergraduate experience stems from my exposure to marketing at a young age, or if marketing firms responded to an influx in young adult consumer, a chicken-or-the-egg deal.
But either way, their effectiveness within the U.S. is reason to believe their global success may bring drown the whole world in an ocean of oils and fats. Unfortunately, the allure of the late night pizza isn’t going away any time soon, and if anything, the spread of westernized media will increase the unhealthy late night eating patterns we see in the U.S. Really, that is an anecdote for the current global nutrition transition.
While I rarely indulge in the late-night pizza calls, some of my best memories of college center around a large pepperoni pizza, “Sex and the City” reruns and about ten hungry girls. Pizza takes the pain away from a bad midterm, is a celebration after a long week, is the perfect consolation after a bad break up, and its mouth-watering smell brings girls out of their rooms and into the lounge for a good, long chat (I live in a sorority house).
Currently, I am studying the affect of the global nutrition transition and global marketing schemes on developing countries, and am often disgusted with the business ploys set out to feed developing nations Taco Bell, KFC, and McDonalds (which now serves BILLIONS, if you didn’t know). And, I can’t tell if my draw to pizza as a social definition of my undergraduate experience stems from my exposure to marketing at a young age, or if marketing firms responded to an influx in young adult consumer, a chicken-or-the-egg deal.
But either way, their effectiveness within the U.S. is reason to believe their global success may bring drown the whole world in an ocean of oils and fats. Unfortunately, the allure of the late night pizza isn’t going away any time soon, and if anything, the spread of westernized media will increase the unhealthy late night eating patterns we see in the U.S. Really, that is an anecdote for the current global nutrition transition.
Authentic “Americanized” Food
In yesterday’s class, we discussed the origin of “authentic” Italian food. Before the reading and class discussion, my ideas of Italian food came from “The Lady and the Tramp” and the Olive Garden “All-you-can-eat-breadsticks.” I had never thought about how historical events correlate with the available resources for creating a cultural cuisine.
While Italian food traditionally did not consist of the pastas, cured meats, meatballs and deep dish pizzas, I don’t believe that my association of these foods with traditional Italian cuisine is inaccurate. Just as war and poverty in Italy created their tradition of simple, delicious cuisine, limited resources and tight-knit immigrant communities in America created a new brand of Italian cuisine, just as authentic, just as ethnic, but only flourishing with a different set of resources.
My grandma immigrated through Ellis Island from Scotland in 1928. She lived in New York in a diverse immigrant community with her sister and parents, and developed close relationships with several other immigrant families. She often tells me how many of them depended on the creation of new food merchandise as a means for survival (While there wasn’t much of a market for Haggis, other family’s had better luck in their restaurant entrepreneurship). These dishes are labeled “Americanized.”
I understand the need to identify these foods with their country of origin, but isn’t the ethnicity more important? These foods are Italian if they are created by Italians given different resources. What is “American” food anyway? Is are Americanization of food a means to compensate for a lack of cuisine identity? Or has are cuisine identity fallen into the cracks of a McDonalds mentality? Unfortunately, I fear it is the latter.
While Italian food traditionally did not consist of the pastas, cured meats, meatballs and deep dish pizzas, I don’t believe that my association of these foods with traditional Italian cuisine is inaccurate. Just as war and poverty in Italy created their tradition of simple, delicious cuisine, limited resources and tight-knit immigrant communities in America created a new brand of Italian cuisine, just as authentic, just as ethnic, but only flourishing with a different set of resources.
My grandma immigrated through Ellis Island from Scotland in 1928. She lived in New York in a diverse immigrant community with her sister and parents, and developed close relationships with several other immigrant families. She often tells me how many of them depended on the creation of new food merchandise as a means for survival (While there wasn’t much of a market for Haggis, other family’s had better luck in their restaurant entrepreneurship). These dishes are labeled “Americanized.”
I understand the need to identify these foods with their country of origin, but isn’t the ethnicity more important? These foods are Italian if they are created by Italians given different resources. What is “American” food anyway? Is are Americanization of food a means to compensate for a lack of cuisine identity? Or has are cuisine identity fallen into the cracks of a McDonalds mentality? Unfortunately, I fear it is the latter.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Top Ramen and Diet Coke: Oh-so-UNsatisfying
My free-write after tasting Top Ramen noodles washed down with diet coke:
I have never tasted Top Raen instant noodles before today. Maybe it is because I was expecting the worst after seeing others' initial reactions, but I love the way the sodium settles on my tongue. Oh, but now I feel sick. The noodles are so heavy in my stomach, and my mouth still tingles from the chickenized broth and the bubbled diet coke.
The MSG makes me feel ill. The initial sensation was satisfying, but now it feels heavy. The combination of fizzy and salty appeased my natural cravy for salty and sweet, but now, it feels like a pang of guilt settling inside of me, very unnatural and unhealthy.
The weirdest sensation was tasting the "chicken" seasoning and subconsiously convincing myself of its nutritional value, as an automatic association with protein. It is scary to me that I assume nutritional value based on a chemically induced "taste."
I have never tasted Top Raen instant noodles before today. Maybe it is because I was expecting the worst after seeing others' initial reactions, but I love the way the sodium settles on my tongue. Oh, but now I feel sick. The noodles are so heavy in my stomach, and my mouth still tingles from the chickenized broth and the bubbled diet coke.
The MSG makes me feel ill. The initial sensation was satisfying, but now it feels heavy. The combination of fizzy and salty appeased my natural cravy for salty and sweet, but now, it feels like a pang of guilt settling inside of me, very unnatural and unhealthy.
The weirdest sensation was tasting the "chicken" seasoning and subconsiously convincing myself of its nutritional value, as an automatic association with protein. It is scary to me that I assume nutritional value based on a chemically induced "taste."
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Hoppin' Johns
This week in class, my group was in charge of preparing a vegetarian Hoppin' Johns dish. For me, it was a nostalgic task, bringing me back to my childhood when the women in my family filled the kitchen with the smell of chicken-fried steak, cornbread, chicken dumpling soup, mash potatoes, collared greens, and hoppin' johns (my mouth is watering!). My mother always encouraged me to help with the cooking, but I prefered playing in the pool with my cousins. So, during this group project, I was thoroughly surprised with my drive to take initiative, as I sought out the taste from my childhood.
We chopped and diced our vegetables, carefully following the directions given to us. We drew out every task and even designated a "stirrer" and a "chopper." But, much to our dismay, our first taste test revealed a not-so-hoppin' john: "It's...so bland!" we all agreed. I tried to call my grandmother for some emergency spice advice. No answer. Then, out of no where, my southern instinct took hold; I realized that there is no such thing as a hoppin' john recipe. It is made in every southern kitchen uniquely, depending on the available ingredients, and distinct tradition of that family. I remembered the one ingredient my aunt always stirred in, paprika! After scavenging the kitchen for some garlic, black pepper, and paprika, we dumped, dashed, poured to our hearts content. Somehow, I actually knew what I was doing, and our group was doing it well!
The finished product tasted incredible, but different than what I expected. I felt upset at first, but remembered again that every kitchen creates a different hoppin' johns, and thousands of miles away from my family, I had reestablished that connection, and tasted my own twist on tradition.
We chopped and diced our vegetables, carefully following the directions given to us. We drew out every task and even designated a "stirrer" and a "chopper." But, much to our dismay, our first taste test revealed a not-so-hoppin' john: "It's...so bland!" we all agreed. I tried to call my grandmother for some emergency spice advice. No answer. Then, out of no where, my southern instinct took hold; I realized that there is no such thing as a hoppin' john recipe. It is made in every southern kitchen uniquely, depending on the available ingredients, and distinct tradition of that family. I remembered the one ingredient my aunt always stirred in, paprika! After scavenging the kitchen for some garlic, black pepper, and paprika, we dumped, dashed, poured to our hearts content. Somehow, I actually knew what I was doing, and our group was doing it well!
The finished product tasted incredible, but different than what I expected. I felt upset at first, but remembered again that every kitchen creates a different hoppin' johns, and thousands of miles away from my family, I had reestablished that connection, and tasted my own twist on tradition.
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