"Hunger has a cure"

"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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Ballerina Food Ideology

In class today, we discussed food as a symbolic means, and the "technology of the self." As we reflected on our own relational transitions with food, I realized how affected my personal relationship with food has shifted throughout the different stages of my life.

Growing up, I was a dedicated ballerina. My studio pressured us into categorizing "good foods" and "bad foods," and to never enjoy the simplicity of fast food and candy, like many other young American children. I lived by the scale, constantly comparing my reflection in the mirror to the tall, slender figures of the professional ballet world. As my pink tights puckered, or when my black leotard tightened around my hips as I went through puberty, I reprimanded myself by obsessing calories, never being able to fully enjoy a plate of pasta or a Taco Bell run. My world revolved around the bare-all pink tights and leotard, and the stigma attached to "bad foods," which many of my high school friends enjoyed.

After graduating high school, I chose to veer away from the ballet path that had previously defined me and my food choices. I felt much more free, much more able to enjoy a meal as a social event, and not a dreaded shame. And, food became even more of a symbol of this freedom. Now, wine and cheese nights are a symbol of separation from the food shackles I left behind when I chose to leave the ballet world.

The Future of Food: An evaluation of the Current Trend of Food

Watching "The Future of Food," I was shocked to realize how little I know about the corporate power struggle over patenting seeds, and the farmers' fight to save seeds. Most suprising, I never understood the amount of power that genetically modified seeds gaveto the corporate "Gene Revolution."

In the documentary, one farmer argued that the corporate takeover over uniformed seed crops emulates the feudalistic system that drove immigrants away from Europe during the 18th and 19th century and led them to the United States to farm. I completely agree, and I worry about the future of our current food supply. The past two weeks, newspapers have run stories on the rising cost of food worldwide, and on a recent trip to Whole Foods, I paid $5.00 for a gallon of orange juice.

The scariest story I read yesterday discussed the strong ties between the stock market, the economy, and corporate players in the American food market. We are so intertwined in a cat-and-mouse game with the economy and our food sources, that we cannot stop the train. We need food, and we need a stimulated economy, so increased crop production with increased pesticide use leads to lower prices, which may lead to inflation, which scares everyone, which stops buyers from buying, which stall the economy, which negatively impacts the stocks for large corporate companies who provide pesticide and "pesticide ready" crops.

The more you learn about the current system, the harder it is to consume with a conscience. At least, that's my problem. I am a "poor college student," and beggars cannot be choosers. I am stuck trying to weave through processed and pesticide-free foods to find an organic medium...but even "organic" is a government label now. There are hardly ways to "eat locally" for many Americans who lack access and prope distribution in urban, low socioeconomic areas. We are trying, in all good intentions, to solve world hunger, but the implications leave us screwed way more that before.

Comfort Food: It comes with good company

Bento Boxes: the ultimate sign of a Japanese mother's love. And, as my classmates and I experimented with the different ways to show this created love through our own bento boxes, I was strangely comforted by the bento.

When Professor Anagnost first discussed the assignment, to create a bento box for a class partner, I saw no relevence in my personal life. In fact, I didn't see the point. But, as we scurried through the kitchen, all 30-something of us, picking out the right ingredients to create an aesthetically pleasing smiling face out of a rice ball, or a frog out of edemame, I felt excited.

Seth, my partner, and I finished our designs and exchanged boxes. It was like Valentine's Day in elementary school, which was the last time I decorated anything for any classmate to share. We say down with several classmates and exchanged compliments on the beauty of the others' bentos, and the foreign tastes. I laughed, I got to know people, and I felt comforted in the food.

So many breakfasts, lunches, dinners I eat alone, confined to the busy lifestyle and opposite schedules of many of my friends. To enjoy a meal, to languish in the company of others, it brought back a meaning to food that I had forgotten. It brought me appreciation.

Instead of my usual lonely, library dinner this weekend, I intentionally took meals with friends. Saturday, I spent an evening with my entire pledge class (28 girls), in an Italian restaurant for a birthday celebration. I found that, not only did I enjoy my food more, but that lonely aftertaste of a solo meal was replaced by the satiated satisfaction of good food and good company.

If anything came from the bento box activity, for me it was the rediscovery of a lost love with food. By forfeiting to the loneliness of eating alone, I surpassed the comfort that food gives me. But food is more than fuel, it should be an activity, and good company adds flavor; a little spice.

The American school lunch

The Japanese gender-associated culture surrounding the daily creation of the bento-box absolutely amazes me. Growing up, my mother made my lunch with love, leaving notes on the napkin, delighting me with the occasional ding-dong or twinkie. But, the pressure on me to finish the scraps of my wonderbread sandwhich never existed, and frankly, my teachers never cared when I finished my lunch, or when I did not.

The gender association with preparing a child's school lunch still exists to some extent in the U.S., but the introduction of school-provided lunch systems freed the shackles of many working mothers who did not have the time to filled a lunch box with love. But, in a way, it created a separation at the lunch table: those whose moms did, and those whose mom's did not. Strange to think about, but true. I remember the distinction between the soccer moms and the working moms. If your mom "stayed at home," you had the Wonderbread and Kraft singles sandwhich, oreos, wheat thins, and the banana/apple that was generally tossed with the garbage. The children who had working parents suffered the soggy green beans and oh-so-sloppy joes.

For me, having a homemade lunch served as a daily, comforting reminder that my mommy loved me, and would be waiting at the bus stop in minus 3 hours. And while I did not appreciate the fruit or carrots tagging along with my sandwhich and cookies, I now understand the significance of their place in my lunch. The lunchbox in America reflects a mother's nutritional ideology and gives her an opportunity to stay connected with a child's developing dietary habits. Parents who lost this opportunity due to heavy work schedules, lost this influence in their children's life. Thusly, the plight of the American dietary ideology perhaps stems from the lessening of parent involvement in daily nutritional decisions of their children.

My mother's influence still sticks with me today, and it still serves as that small comfort, even so far away from home.

The Social Etiquette of Heartbreak

After reading the article, "The boy who becomes a Muni bird," I found myself reflecting on my own communal and emotional relationship with food. I have never thought much about the social taboos of food etiquette, and really, how standardized can food etiquette be in such a culturally heterogeneous society? But still, heterogeneity aside, I think we have come to some means of a social-wide taboo agreement.

For example, there are few times when binge eating a pint of ice cream is socially acceptable, and it is somewhat sexist. A male can never really eat the pint without some feminine stigma attached, and for women, the acceptance depends on a recent break-up or something of the sort. But, publicly gulping a pint of Ben and Jerry's may lead to "shame face," without proper excuse.

Personally, I have fallen victim to the pint. My junior year of high school a boy broke my heart. After he brutally dumped me over the phone at 1:oo AM, I ran to the kitchen sobbing, found the ice cream and binged my sorrows away. My world was over, and I never thought I'd be the same. After I ate that ice cream, I had no appetite for several days, and my only comfort was Kelly Clarkson.

While I have since gotten over him (if I hadn't, it would be pathetic, right?) my taste memory still jogs back to the heart-wrenching night, when my heart broke for the first time. Now, my social etiquette filter lowers for those lonely, inconsolable girls I see every now and again. Food unites us all, I guess.

Like Cubans, College Students Make Do

"The choices are about values'...Which is true, at least for us, at least for the moment. And when the choices are about values, we generally pick the easiest and cheapest way, the one that requires thinking the least. Inertia is our value above all others. Inertia was the one option the Cubans didn't have; they needed that meal a day back, and given that Castro was unwilling to let loose the reins, they had a limited number of choices about how to get it..." -Bill McKibben


I read this quote from Bill McKibben's "The Cuba diet: What will you be eating when the revolution comes?" as I chowed down an overcooked, over-processed leftover chicken sausage that I had scavenged from the kitchen fridge for dinner. The chalky after taste washed down with tall glass of raspberry crystal light no longer phased me. In fact, the 3-day old pizza I discovered yesterday seemed heavenly in comparison to the slightly moldy apple I had eaten for lunch earlier. Really, my meals consist of whatever I can find, and have time to shove in my mouth while I am studying. I have lowered my standard from mom's home-cooked chicken fried steak with fluffy, hand-whipped mashed potatoes to the archetypal college food ideology; the grab bag diet.

As I processed my thoughts with the processed sausage, it hit me: I am a post-revolution Cuban. College is my Castro. As Cubans saw their daily caloric intake decrease with the collapse of the Soviet Union and their imported source of calories, they substituted, struggled, and self-subsisted. My first few months of college, my body literally went into shock with the new dietary changes. I passed out, my iron-levels dropped, I became a sickly, weight-gaining, very perplexed girl. Eventually, I adjusted and learned. Now, my community farm consists of a refrigerator full of housemates' food, shared by many, scavenged by all.

But, the Cubans took away a more valuable lesson than that of the modern-day college student: nutritional value still matters. While their meat intake levels still dangle below the pre-revolutionary statistics, their general 2300 calorie/day intake represents a well-rounded diet consistent with proper nutrition. Perhaps because we assume our college days are limited, we do not generally see the value in staying nutritious. Even as a student of nutritional anthropology, I am constantly amazed at my personal dietary choices. I have even found myself justify excess saturated fats and calories with additional minutes on the elliptical. But, I am making do, one chicken sausage at a time.

Oh Spaghetti, if only I could love you.

"Oh, Spaghetti. If only I could love you." I sighed this to myself at many a dinner table during my life. I know it sounds juvenile, but my distain for the long-loved American favorite stems from my older sister's childish teasing.

Really, I use to like the stuff. I remember the satisfying slurp at the end of a long noodle, and how relaxed my mom was after the short preparation and the approving consensus of the family at dinner time (a very rare occasion). But one night, as my mom sloshed a ladle of tomato sauce onto my noodles, my sister informed me of the true origin of my coming meal. "Micki," she whispered, "Yanno those noodles are worms from the garden, and that sauce is their bloody guts! You shouldn't eat it."

"No they aren't," I retorted, so sure of my preschool-level ability to decipher her lies. But, just then, my mother served my dish. Oh no, Oh no, Oh no. I had never noticed the soggy carbs as their true form: slithering worms! I felt betrayed, disgusted, ashamed. I ran, I don't remember where, or how much trouble I got in for screaming down the stairs at my astonished mother. But, I do know that that moment defined my relationship with pasta forever. To this day, I want to love, but am caught up in the memory of that fatal evening. Oh well, maybe someday we will be reunited in a harmonious dinner, complete with garlic bread and red wine. Until then, I stick with the penne.