Philosophy of Food Class Notes Spring 2019

Return to Philosophy of Food

1: JAN 15

• Introduction to the Course

• Welcome
• About the Course

• Disciplines sampled: gastronomy, food history, bio-history, evolutionary psych, economics, politics, nutrition, microbiology, soil agronomy, food ethics.
• Major Course Topics (see reading list): Microbiome, Macronutrition, Dietary Guidelines, Western Industrial Diet, Gastronomy, Food Philosophy, Food Histories, Plant Intelligence, Food and Animal Ethics, Environment and Agriculture, Food and Power, Food and Religion, Organic Diets.
• Major Course Research Questions

• Succeeding in the Course -

• Prep Cycle - Monitor time commitments and results early on.
• Keep Course Research Questions in Mind

• Course Management (Websites in This Course)
• Transparency and Pseudonyms

• Assignments and Weights (defaults) for your Grading Scheme

• Final Paper 20-25% .2
• Final Essays 20-30% .3
• Practicum 10-20% .2
• Q&W 20-40% .3

• Some Course Dates

• Student Food biographies 1/22
• Start optional Diet Review / Revision Phase 1 2/14 - 3/19
• In-class writing workshop with previous student writing
• In-class group writing exercise 3/12
• SW1 Due 2/19
• Start optional Diet Review / Revision Phase 2 3/19 - 4/18
• SW2 Due 3/21
• Journals completed 4/15
• SW3 Due 4/23
• Final Paper Due May 1
• Final Essays due on Final Exam Day

• Two potential small group exercises.

• 1. What is Food exercise

• 2. Food biographies.

Here are some prompts for you to consider as you prepare your food biographies:

• How would you describe your diet? What categories of foods will you eat or not? On principle or preference?
• Do you like foods related to your ethnicity? Do you cook?
• How important or prominent is food in your memory as a child or your current life or both?
• Do you engage in food related social media activity?
• Are you a good cook? Do you dance when you cook?
• Did your parents or guardians cook from scratch for you? Did they cook? Did you learn to cook?
• How knowledgeable are you about nutrition? Is your experience of food connected to concerns about nutrition and dietary disease or not so much?

2: JAN 17

Assigned

• View: Food, Inc. & (Recommended) Fed Up

• Focus: These mainstream and well-regarded documentaries will quickly put a critique of the US Food System on the table. Check movie availability. Take some notes on: 1. Facts that you are surprised by, think important, or are suspicious of.; 2. Questions raised by the movie; 3. Claims or thesis that the movie's documentary evidence seems to support. Note segments or narratives. Try to note some names.

• Sonnenbergs, C 1, "What is the Microbiota and Why Should I Care?"

• Recommended: View one of these gut movies:

• Medical Revolution The Gut Microbiome
• The Gut: Our Second Brain -- Please do try to watch this one. It has some remarkable graphics and the science reporting is very good as well.

Sonnenbergs, C 1, "What is the Microbiota and Why Should I Care?"

• How the world looks to a microbiologist! "Without microbes humans wouldn't exist, but if we all disappeared, few of them would notice." 10
• Introduction to the Tube and digestion
• Microbiota Case against the Western Diet

• Sets the history of human diet in context. Agriculture already a big change, but then industrial ag / industrial foods
• Adaptability of M remarkable. Makes us omnivores.
• Baseline M - cant' be health Western Diet eaters. studies of groups like Hadza -- far more diverse.
• 19 - Evolved Symbiotic relationship between us and bacteria --

• types of symbiotic relationship - parasitic, commensal (one party benefits, little or no effect on the other), mutualism.
• The heart warming story of Tremblaya princeps and Moranella endobia. (21) -- why we should be happy mutualists. Delegation and division of labor might create resiliance.

• 22-30 - Cultural History and History of Science on Bacteria -- or, how germs got such a bad name.

• Pasteur -- germ theory of diseases.
• The Great Stink 1858 London, Miasma theory disproved, Cholera bacterium, not isolated until near end of century. Dr. Robert Koch.
• 60-70's: Abaigail Salyers: early pioneer, 2008: Human Microbiome Project
• Contemporary research: gnotobiotic mice. early fecal transplant studies of [Dr. Jeffrey Gordon].

Food Inc & Fed Up

• Spending on Food by country

• Food Inc Notes

• Fed Up!

3: JAN 22

Assigned

• Sonnenbergs, C 5, "Trillions of Mouths to Feed" (111-136)
• Sonnenbergs, C 7, "Eat Sh*t and Live" (163-185)

• Nestle, "Introduction: The Food Industry and 'Eat More,' from Food Politics", 2013. (1-30).
• Student Writing: Food biographies

Food Biographies - a short ungraded writing assignment

• Stage 1: Please write a paragraph in answer to the following question by Thursday, January 23, 2019, 11:59pm.

• Topic: What kind of eater are you?

Here are some prompts for you to consider as you prepare your food biographies:

• How would you describe your diet? What categories of foods will you eat or not? On principle or preference?
• Do you like foods related to your ethnicity? Do you cook?
• How important or prominent is food in your memory as a child or your current life or both?
• Do you engage in food related social media activity?
• Are you a good cook? Do you dance when you cook?
• Did your parents or guardians cook from scratch for you? Did they cook? Did you learn to cook?
• How knowledgeable are you about nutrition? Is your experience of food connected to concerns about nutrition and dietary disease or not so much?

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way:

1. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. Put a word count in the file.
2. Format your answer in double spaced text in a 12 point font, using normal margins.
3. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "Food Bio".
4. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Q&W dropbox.

4: JAN 24

• Gastropod episode, "The End of the Calorie"

• Focus: The Gastropod episode will give you alot of information about the way the "calorie" came about as a unit of measurement and the complexity of measuring food energy.

• Moss, Michael. Chapter 4, "Is it Cereal or Candy," Salt Sugar Fat. (pp. 68-93)

5: JAN 29

• Nix, Stacy. Chapter 2: "Carbohydrates" Williams' Basic Nutrition and Diet Therapy (pp. 13-30).

6: JAN 31

• Moss, Michael. Chapter 8, "Liquid Gold," (pp. 161-181)
• Nestle, Marion. Chapter 1: From "Eat More" to "Eat Less" 1900-1990 (pp. 31-50).

7: FEB 5

• Nix, Stacy. Chapter 3: Fats Williams' Basic Nutrition and Diet Therapy (pp. 31-46)

*Writing Workshop with previous student writing

8: FEB 7

• Pollan, Michael. Part 2: The Western Diet (pp. 83-136)
• Nestle, Marion. Chapter 2, Politics Versus Science -- opposing the food pyramind, 1991-1992 (pp. 51-66).

9: FEB 12

• Nix, Stacy. Chapter 4: "Proteins" Williams' Basic Nutrition and Diet Therapy (pp. 47-63).

*Group writing exercise

10: FEB 14

• Barber, Dan. Introduction The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food, (1-22).
• US Dietary Guidelines
• The Lancet, Carcinogenicity of consumption of red and processed meat
• Acad of Pediatrics on Vegetarian and Vegan Diets.
• (Optional) Diet Review / Revision Starts - finish 1st round by 3/19

11: FEB 19

• Montanari, Massimo. Food is Culture, (1-26).

• SW1 due

• Nix, Stacy. Chapter 4: "Vitamins" Williams' Basic Nutrition and Diet Therapy (pp. 94-126).
• Vitamins - quiz (questions ahead of time)

12: FEB 21

• Jonathan Silvertown, Dinner with Darwin, Chapters 1-5.

13: FEB 26

• Dinner with Darwin, C5-8

14: FEB 28

• Rachel Lauden, Cusine and Empire Introduction and Chapter 1, "Mastering Grain Cookery, 20,000 to 300 bce", p. 1-55

15: MAR 5

• Ethics Day 1
• Chamowitz, What a Plant Knows. Chapter 1, "What a Plant Sees"
• Chamowitz, What a Plant Knows. Chapter 5, "How a Plant Knows Where It Is"
• Lecture: Summary of UNFAO report and some criticisms
• Alfino, "Report of the Mission to Colony B"

16: MAR 7

• Ethics Day 2
• Fischer, Bob, "Arguments for Consuming Animal Products" (241-266)

17: MAR 19

• Bread Day
• Barber, Dan. Chapter 30: "Bread" (pp. 382-409)

• Diet Review and Revision Exercise (optional) Phase 1 ends. Phase 2 begins - finish by April 18

18: MAR 21

• Andrews, Geoff. Chapter 2: "The Critique of 'Fast Life'" The Slow Food Story (pp. 29-47).

19: APR 26

• Montgomery, David. Chapter 1: " Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations(pp. 9-25);

• Montgomery, David. Chapter 2: "Skin of the Earth" Dirt(pp. 9-25);

20: APR 28

• Gopnik, Adam, "Who Made the Restaurant?" from The Table Comes First, 2012, (pp. 13-57).
• Diamond, Jerome. "Agriculture's Mixed Blessings" (180-191)

21: APR 2

• Montgomery, David. Chapter 3: "Rivers of Life" (pp. 27-47)
• Montgomery, David. Chapter 4: "Graveyards of Civilizations" (pp. 49-81)

22: APR 4

• Soler, Jean. "The Semiotics of Food in the Bible" (55-66)

• Focus: Soler take us deeper into both the dietary regimes of the Judeo-Christian tradition, as well as some philosophical considerations that might go into choosing a diet based on "trophic level".

23: APR 9

• Montgomery, David. Chapter 7:
• Montgomery, David. Chapter 8: "Dirty Business" (pp. 179-215);

24: APR 11

• Wallace, Cuisine of Contact (1-31)

25: APR 16

• Montgomery, David. Chapter 10: "Life Span of Civilizations" (pp. 233-246)

26: APR 18

• Montgomery, "Green Manure" (90-114)
• Lecture: Some Agrarianism. Fairlie.
• Pinker, "Sustenance" (68-78)

27: APR 23

• Barber, Dan. Chapter 12: "Land" (pp. 158-173)
• Estabrook, Barry. "Hogonomics" (142-149)

*SW3 due

28: MAY 5

*Ethics Day 3

• McPherson, Tristram. "The Ethical Basis for Veganism"