Philosophy of Food Class Notes

Reutrn to Philosophy of Food

JAN 19

• Course Content: A brief look at the major course research questions.

• Course mechanics:

• Websites in this course. alfino.org --> wiki and courses.alfino.org
• Roster information -- fill in google form
• Main Assignments and "Grading Schemes"

• To Do list:

• Send me a brief introduction through the "Tell Me" form on the wiki. (Soon, please.)
• Login to wiki for the first time and make a brief introduction on the practice page. (3 points if both are done by Friday.)
• After rosters are posted, login to courses.alfino and look around. Note "Links" for pdfs. Retrieve reading for Monday (and read it).
• Browse wiki pages.
• Get the book. Pollan, In Defense of Food
• Start printing pdfs. Highly recommended.

• The Prep Cycle -- recommendations for success in the course!

1. Read - Follow "Focus" notes on Reading schedule. Be ready for quizes.
2. Track study questions during and after class - use your note taking to express main ideas in your terms, link in-class notes to your reading notes. Remember, almost all assessments in the course are open book & open note.
3. Class -- Our pattern is to consolidate our understanding of the reading and then engage in philosophy on the basis of it.

This is the basic pattern for our coursework. From this cycle we then develop short philosophical writing and position papers using instructor and peer review.

JAN 24

Review of Three Food Documentaries

Philosophical Method

• We'll use Cowspiracy today to illustrate this point about philosophical method:

Philosophers worry alot about the way a claim is stated. The strength of a claim is related to the sorts and amounts of evidence needed to support it. So if you state your claim (the conclusion of your "argument" broadly) too strongly you can have a bad argument even though a slightly weaker or more qualified version of the claim may be the best supported view.

Food Inc Notes

Fed Up!

Cowspiracy

Nestle, "Introduction: The Food Industry and 'Eat More,' from Food Politics"

Intro: "This book exposes the ways in which food companies use political ernment and professional support for the sale of their products."

• we aren't critical of food industry -- assume they are interested in health.
• mentions tobacco analogy
• historic note: early 20th century still battled nutritional disease from inadequate calorie intake.
• her professional experience (3) with editing Surgeon General's report: no "eat less meat" - Government gave up producing the report in 2000. Authoritative advice would have required some "eat less" messaging.

• Side note: "New Dietary Guidelines Crack down on Sugar but red meat gets a pass," NPR Jan 7, 2016 [1]

• her thesis: "that many of the nutritional problems of Americans—not least of them obesity—can be traced to the food industry's imperative to encourage people to eat more in order to generate sales and increase income in a highly competitive marketplace."

• note her concise nutrition advice on p. 5ff.

• 7ff: stats on diet and mortality, childhood obesity. Note that she does endorse "energy balance" as legitimate (more so than in Fed Up, but she would agree with their point)

• 8ff: food production and consumption trends. more total daily calories, increased consumption of low fat foods, more restaurant food, where we are in relation to USDA advice. see p. 10. low variety of food in actual diets.

• 11: dimensions and trends in food industry and international - European diets are approximating US diet in calories from fat. "nutrition transition" idea that as cultures move from primary healthy diets to industrial diets they ironically seek more calories and want cheap calories. US less than 10% of income on food (see wiki links for more)

• Some food economics: percent of food value from farming across food types. Advertising spending on industrial food, using philanthropy for branding, new food products (25)

JAN 26

Pollan, In Defense of Food, first 4 chapters of Part 1

• background on previous work and personal food history.
• 5: example of failure of advice on fat and cancer, coronary heart disease. Failure of claims about fiber not reducing cancer risk., also on value of fish.
• best to understand confusion on nutrition as result of interaction of food industry, gov't and journalism.
• claim for Part One: most of the nutritional advice of the last 50 years has made us less healthy.
• surprising claim: It's a dangerous idea to think that food is just about health. orthorexics.
• 10: at. Four of the top ten causes of death today are chronic diseases with well-estabUshed links to diet: coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer. Even after adjusting for longevity.
• goal: advice for enjoying food.

• Chapter 1 - From Foods to Nutrients

• food disappearing in favor of "nutrients" - a kind of reductionism.
• William Prout, early 19th division of macronutrients into Protein, Carb, and Fat. Justus von Leibig, also studied soil, imp. or minerals.
• 1912: Casimir Funk, "vitamines" - goes back to "vitalism", also "amines" because nitrogen based.
• part of the story starts in 1977, with the first Fed comm on nutrition. blow back on recommendations 23. This led to a strategy of not referring to foods directly in terms of "more or less" but nutrients.
• also from 1950's "lipid hypothesis" - that fats from meat and dairy were responsible for much dietary disease.

• Chapter 2 - Nutritionism Defined

• Gyorgy Scrinis -- 2002 claim.
• Nutritionism puts the scientists in charge. leads to thinking about foods as "good" or "bad" based on their nutrients. you find this in the history of nutrition. 29ff. Liebig made "protein" a master nutrient. Others, like Kellog and Fletcher, would promote carbs. Good place to see limits of nutritionism is in baby formula. Still no match for the real thing.

• Chapter 3 - Nutritionism comes to Market

• nutritionism works well with marketing of food. margarine, for example. starts as cheap fat, but then marketed as healthier. industrial foods can be redesigned as nutrition fads change.
• early history of food adulteration. Sinclair's The Jungle, 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Objections to "imitation" rule. (note other controversies: milk, real). Thrown out in 1973. If an imitation food is nutritionally similar to the food it imitates, it doesn't need to be called imitation. Opened the door to lots of chemical substitutes.

• Chapter 4 - Food Science's Golden Age

• diet fads tend to favor foods that can be reengineered. Some of that can be done with animals by feeding them differently, but mostly this favors industrial food over whole foods.

Montanari, "Food is Culture"

• Creating One's Own Food

• q. 3: roughly, now that we're in a postindustrial age, we look at agriculture as "natural" and traditional, but from the perspective of those adopting, it wasn't. - but they experienced ag as a break from nature. against nature, but also a breakthrough and innovation. ...gave us power to rule nature (later ideas about space and time).

• demography of agriculture is amazing.dates for ag in diff regions (5), "invention of agriculture...matter of necessity tied to population growth"

• cites Franz Braudel, who made a version of this thesis. Agriculture organized everything (roughly). see list. economy, religion (make side point about warrior / ag gods). Civitas and civilitas depend upon agriculutre!

• Bread, breadeaters, marks break from nature. Bread is an invention from nature (sidepoint: can sustain life, man can live on bread alone, it just isn't pretty.). Interesting reference to mythology of bread and woman in Epic of Gilgamesh (short term research oppportunity).

• Fermented drinks - like bread, break from nature.

• germ idea about culture: culture is produced where tradition and innovation intersect

• Even Nature is Culture -

• two oppositions: 1. ag and hunt/gather goes through plant and animal kingdom. but 2. sedentary/nomad favors plant over animal (in fields vs. forest opposition, plants are identified with culture, hunting with nature)

• gods/myths of agricultural societies: stories of Persephone, rice in asian narratives, corn in Mayan legend. hunting practices treating bones of animal as sacred, basis for rebirth. Germans have their grand Miale!

• thesis: opposition between nature and culture somewhat fictitious. something like: civilized man uses nature (food structured) in the primary myths to separate him/herself from nature.

• p. 11: difference btween Greco-Roman and German food systems. Germ of European food system in the clash between these cultures (note that Romans saw German meat culture as barbaric. Romans would have eaten meat, but not as primary food (note, later, Christian calendars with meatless and fasting days). Christianity coming from Med culture, has bread and wine as liturgical symbols. Unification of these cultures produces European food culture, balancing bread and meat. Implications for gastronomy.

• Playing with Time

• no seasons in Eden or Land of Cockainge.
• Food culture developed by prolonging and stopping time, through species variation and food storage. examples 14-15. "man made putrefaction a means to a useful end" cheese, cured meats.

• Playing with Space

• goal of transcending spatial limits to food, transpo. Nice story from the Mantuan court of Gonzaga. "good horse and a full purse". involves concept of "terroir".

• Conflicts

• food systems are not nec. harmonious (esp. given what is at stake in a food insecure world). Medieval system was a class based system of control of food production. Peasant rebellions over restricing forest access. Robin Hood. famine image: scene of farmers at the city gate starving. conflicts between lords also about food, cities taxed area villages in food. Irish food famine of 1846 due to English control of food. (can't live on potatoes).

• examples of movements of food in global trades cultures. For Columbus ( int. term "Columbian exchange") and age of conquest, exploitation was avowed purpose.

JAN 31

Montanari, "Food is Culture" "Fire > Cooking > Kitchen > Cusine > Civilization

Fire > Cooking > Kitchen > Cuisine > Civilization

• cooking essential to human being. (note other resources) . Western story of Prometheus (30), the hearth identifies human being (abode).

• Not true that cuisine is only about cooking. raw food methods. Chinese critic of western gastronomy as based too much on cooking. meanings of "Cucina". transition from womens' domain to men's.

Pollan, In Defense of Food, part two of section one

• Chapter 5 - The Melting of the Lipid Hypothesis

• 30 years of bad advice about fats. cites an example of a scientific "retraction" of the lipid hypothesis. 43. transfats are apparently dangerous, but they had been encouraged early by advocates of lipophobia. ratio between types of fats matters. (mention "The Queen of Fats" O3/O6 fats) low fat diets are not associated with weight loss either. replacing fats with carbs might lead to weight gain.
• science journalist Gary Taubes credited with exposing lipid hypothesis, especially in Good Calories, Bad Calorie.
• scientist sought to confirm the lipid hypthesis in the 50s by looking at diets that are low in fat among people who do not suffer CHD. But that's pretty selective. Such diets may also be moderate in calories or combine other foods that offer protections.

• there are correlations between high cholesterol and CHD and between diet and chol levels, but not clear that's a complete causal relationship.

• Chapter 6 - Eat Right, Get Fatter

• so we did eat more low fat foods, but we got fatter. we reduce the % of fat by eating more non-fat calories. (hence the importance of the "eat more / eat less" impass in food politics)
• Pollan argues that nutritionism is partly to blame. Fat became a "bad" nutrient and since the dietary guidelines couldn't tell people to eat "less" of anything, it told people to eat more "low-fat" and non-saturated fats.
• Nutritionism solves the problem of the "fixed stomach" only so much food is needed.

• Chapter 7 - Beyond the Pleasure Principle

• cites research on American food culture suggesting that we are more focused on abundance of calories that savoring.. haute cuisine is often looked upon as effete. Food Puritanism. (linking nutritionism to our susceptibility to follow nutritional and to our culture).

• story of Kellog and Fletcher -- protein was the bad nutrient.

• yogurt enemas, chewing songs,

• Kellogg: "The decline of a nation commences when gourmandizing begins."

• scientific food culture in the US might also have been appealing as part of the process of assimilation. Nutrient based diets are culture neutral.

• Chapter 8 - The Proof is in the low-fat pudding

• carbs may have made us fat by distorting our insulin responses and leaving us hungrier. (Note the importance of "satisfaction" here.)

• we have reduced mortality from heart disease, but it's not clear that underlying rates of CHD have dropped. smoking reduction also contributes.

• Chapter 9 - Bad Science.

• claims that nutrition science is hard because nutrient by nutrient analysis is practical, but simplifies the interactions of actual metabolism. Different individuals and populations metabolize differently. Your microbiome affect nutrient absorbtion and production as well.

• example: some whole foods diets have been correlated with cancer avoidance, but it doesn't follow that there is a single nutrient or class of nutrients that does that. Speculation about anti-oxidants, vit E beta-caroteme, ...etc. But then some evidence that beta-carotene alone can increase cancer risk.

• example of chemicals in thyme.

• sometimes science is limited by only being able to study chemicals it has the tools to measure. This was true of cholesterol at one point.

• examples of effects from combinations of foods: carbohydrates in a bagel will be absorbed more slowly if the bagel is spread with peanut butter; Drink coffee with your steak and your body won't be able to fully absorb the iron in the meat. The olive oil with which I eat tomatoes makes the lycopene they contain more available to my body.

• hard to know if disease is caused by too much of a bad thing or too little of a good thing. a meat diet may be harmful intrinsically (as in the China Study hypothesis) or because it crowds out fruits and veg, which might have offset the risk factors of the animal protein.

• problem of context - lifestyles connected to food may be relevant -- Med diet based on mid-20th Crete islanders. Veganism studied among 7th day adventists. "confounding effects"

• long term observational study in "Nurses' Health Study -- problem -- everyone's eating roughly the Western diet, so hard to detect improvements.

• large scale intervention study. Womens' Health Initiative. seemed to show that low fat diet didn't help, but hard to tell. manipulating a single factor isn't very precise in this case. (kind of an example of nutritionism in research design). food-frequency questionaires. issues with.

• Chapter 10 Nutritionism's children -- our general confusion about foods as a result of generation of nutritionism.

(Note: the best data on the western diet might be the epidemiological, the natural experiment that is the Western Diet)

MAR 9

==MAR 14==Spring Break ==MAR 16==Spring Break