MAR 16

15. MAR 16: Unit 4: Food Culture

Assigned Work

• Barber, Dan. Chapter 12: "Land" from The 3rd Plate (158-173) (15)
• Ruhlman, "How the A&P Changed the Western World" (29-42) (13)
• SW3: Neurogastronomy and Dietary Change

SW3: Neuro-gastronomy and Dietary Change

• Stage 1: Please write an 800 hundred word maximum answer to the following question by Monday, March 21, 2022, 11:59pm.

• Topic: In our last unit, we studied gastronomy, neuro-gastronomy and some behavioral theories of overeating in order to understand how humans become attached to their diets and eating patterns. In this essay, please summarize, with as much detail as possible, the key lessons from this unit. Save the last 25% (200 words) of your essay to identify several practical ways of using this knowledge to change your diet, whether to prevent overeating or to make other positive changes.

• Advice about collaboration: Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes, and your own notes, verbally. Collaboration is also a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs in the class. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way. You will lose points if you do not follow these instructions:

1. To assure anonymity, you must remove your name from the the "author name" that you may have provided when you set up your word processing application. For instructions on removing your name from an Word or Google document, [click here].
2. Format your answer in double spaced text, in a typical 12 point font, and using normal margins. Do not add spaces between paragraphs and indent the first line of each paragraph.
3. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student ID number in the file, but not in the filename. Save your file for this assignment with the name: Gastronomy.
4. To turn in your assignment, log into courses.alfino.org, click on the Gastronomy dropbox.
5. If you cannot meet a deadline, you must email me about your circumstances (unless you are having an emergency) before the deadline or you will lose points.

• Stage 2: Please evaluate four student answers and provide brief comments and a score. Review the Assignment Rubric for this exercise. We will be using the Flow and Content areas of the rubric for this assignment. Complete your evaluations and scoring by Friday, March 25, 2022 11:59pm.

• To determine the papers you need to peer review, open the file called "#Key.xls" in the shared folder. You will see a worksheet with saint names in alphabetically order, along with animal names. Find your saint name and review the next four (4) animals' work below your animal name. If you get to the bottom of the list before reaching 4 animals, go to the top of the list and continue.

• Use this Google Form to evaluate four peer papers. Submit the form once for each review.

• Some papers may arrive late. If you are in line to review a missing paper, allow a day or two for it to show up. If it does not show up, go back to the key and review the next animal's paper, continuing until you get four reviews. Do not review more than four papers.

• Stage 3: I will grade and briefly comment on your writing using the peer scores as an initial ranking. Assuming the process works normally, most of my scores probably be within 1-2 points of the peer scores, plus or minus.

• Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [1]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. You must do the back evaluation to receive credit for the whole assignment. Failing to give back-evaluations unfairly affects other classmates.

• Back evaluations are due Wednesday, March 30, 2022, 11:59pm.

Pre-supermarket culture in Italy

• [Digression on pre-supermarket food culture in Italy.]

• Some terms for pre-supermarket shops.
• Some images of Italian supermarkets and remaining small shops today:

• Herbs
• Traditional mercato in Bologna
• Remaining panificeria in Florence, Street food - tripe sandwiches!
• Traditional Pasta Fresca, Bologna.
• Typical Italian supermarket meat section: 1, 2.

Ruhlman, "How the A&P Changed the Western World"

• Modern supermarket: 40-50,000 items. Strong market pressure not to miss consumer preference. In '75 only 9,000.

• Some evidence that lots of choices undermines rational decision making 31. 15 types of eggs. not just small, med, large.

• Background of stores against which rise of "A&P tea company" took place. George Gilman, Great American Tea Company, then Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. Started with a brand of tea. Higher profit margin than groceries.

• Three innovations: brand, premiums (gifts for purchases made), trading stamps. baking powder a novel product (note, not in Italy). Other early competitors: Grand Union. Brands: consistency, purity (closed containers).

• Importance of branding. Old grocer sold unbranded staples, only competed on price. Canning and boxed foods allow for branding. (Commercial paper bag and cardboard box created during this time.) Also allows for centralized food processing. A&Ps opened at 7 stores a day for a while. Also led to modern supply chain.

• A&P: 1900: $5million, 1925: $350 million, Today: $4.8billion. Power of scaling up supply chains.

• Early 20th century: self-service. Piggly Wiggly. [2]
• 1930s: shopping cart.
• 1920s: refrigeration (allowed for meats and frozen foods). p 41: King Kullen -- sig: bigger store, located off main street. 1930. Depression era.

Barber, Ch 12, "Land" from The 3rd Plate

• Two stories of "terroir" -- gastronomy & ethics

• Eduardo and his geese -- How does Eduardo come across to you?

• In earlier segment, Eduardo is touting the fact that his foie gras does not require force feeding the geese.
• Is the slaughter humane in your opinion?
• Connection between humane slaughter and taste -- pig story 160

• Monesterio and jamon -- [[3]]

• Jamon iberico de bellota (acorn)-- espression of the land. connection with Spanish identity.
• food religion point: 163 eating pork during the islamic occupation showed you were christian.
• the "dehesa" is the locale for the terrior of jamon iberico. enclosure for pasture of sheep built after the reconquista. grass and oaks protected by law. note relationship between the pigs eating pattern in this environment and the arrival of the acorns.
• note the physical limits of the terroir for jamon. note only geographic, but 4 acres/pig. Can't scale this up.

• These gastronomic stories would certainly count as "extravagant" for Fairlie. Note also that they exemplify terrior. and even moral terrior. Cf to the tonnara in Med.

• Remaining pages of the chapter point out the other rich products of the dehesa. The land is very productive. Even the oak trees provide valuable cork. So there is a kind of intensive agriculture here, but it is very specific to what the land and history could create.