Philosophy of Food Class Notes Spring 2019

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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

  • 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:

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

  • Food Inc Notes As we review the movie, take notes to answer the following questions: 1) What are the distinctive features of an industrial approach to food? 2) What is the relationship of "organic" to "industrial"?

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


Sonnenbergs, C 5, "Trillions of Mouths to Feed"

  • Microbiota extinction -- not just from change in foods, less fermented foods, more sterile food and sterile environments. pets help with our microbiota.
  • Microbiota mechanisms:
  • direct response to diet, "recyclers",
  • life is hard for our M germs: no oxygen down there and transit time is fast. So they make SCFAs that can metabolize in the blood stream where there is oxygen.
  • Why feed the gut? Isn't that just more calories? (116) - No. people with high scfa diets lose weight, decrease inflammation, Western diet diseases. Back to the connection between satiety and nutritional health. (N - S - P)
  • History of research -- field doctors: Thomas Cleave, 70s "The Saccharine Disease" "Bran Man"; Denis Burkitt studies comparing Western and Africans on fiber, stool quality, and health. Overconsumption of refined carbs.
  • Carb chemistry/metabolism basics -- 120: also in our nutrition textbook chapters. Note unique types of saccharides in particular foods: read 121 and 126; insulin resistance.
  • Measuring MACs - the authors acronym for Macrobiotically Available Carbohydrates. - no standard measure of dietary fiber (note discrepancies from above.)
  • RDAs: 29/38 grams. Actual 15 grams/day. 126: Notes that not all complex carbs are available to the M.
  • research discovering enzyme in nori, a seaweed based sushi wrapper: found in Japanese guts. Helps digest fish. Note: Terrior. Local adaptation of the M.
  • 128: Dutch research on rich and poor M. richness of M better predictor of disease than obesity.
  • Gordon's famous 2013 FMT mouse research: need M and M-supporting diet. Note caveat 129. Can't just benefit from the microbes alone.
  • what's wrong with refined cereal seeds (130) (like Montgomery's account). Wheat bread vs. Wheat berries. The form of the food matters to the fiber count.
  • What about the Inuit?
  • What about excess gas?
  • 135: Note their dietary advice.

Sonnenbergs, C 7, "Eat Sh*t and Live" (Recommended)

  • This chapter is more focused on diseases that have been treatable with new knowledge about the M, and the limits of that research currently.
  • Gastroenteritis, infectious diarrhea, -- culprits like Giardia, Salmonella, and norovirus.
  • Immunological effects of the M: "colonization resistance" - mechanisms (165) - crowding out, bacteriocidal chemicals. Problematic nature of antibiotics in the M.
  • C. difficile (Cdiff) -- associated disease CDAD. 14,000 deaths in US a year. why antibiotics don't always help. spores.
  • 2013 Dutch FMT therapy for CDAD - 94% cure rate (note earlier researcher in 50s who tried this.)
  • Antibiotics -- Interesting that Americans not only eat the Western Diet, but take high levels of antibiotics. Effects of Cipro on M. -- decrease in volume (-10-100x) and diversity of bacteria (25-50% of species). Test subject had diverse responses. Some recovered M in several weeks. Some sustained damage. 2nd round of Cipro hurt everyone's M.
  • IBS and IBD - 177:
  • Difficulties with FMT as a therapy: dangers in introducing new bacteria into someone's gut. Might be hard to remove. (Like issue of releasing GMOs in environment.)
  • Limited results from FMT in humans for obesity treatment. or inflammatory bowel disease.

Some implications of Microbiome research

  • The form of the food you eat partly determines the kinds of nutrition you can get from it.
  • Nutritional information about the food is incomplete for assessing potential nutrition from the food.
  • Which part of you eats the food affects what kind of nutrition (and other benefits) you receive from it.

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

Intro: "This book exposes the ways in which food companies use political, government and professional support for the sale of their products."
  • Note opening picture of food industry: overproduction, connection to publicly traded companies creates need to sell more. [What is relationship between ownership type and production, capitalization, industrialization? Digress to woofing. More traditional farm structure might focus on sustaining real income rather than meeting investor expectations.]
  • On the other hand, this model worked well to meet nutritional deficits that continued well into the 20th century for many americans.
  • historic note: early 20th century still battled nutritional disease from inadequate calorie intake. Then shift to overconsumption.
  • 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. Could say "eat less sat. fat". (Note nutritionism.)
  • 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. A bit old school and reductive.
  • 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 (3200 in '70 to 3900 in the 90's), 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. (Note: Not just more protein. More of everything! Revise our protein hyp.)
  • 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)
  • Follow data: size of industry, timeline of tobacco company purchases of industry. Farm value vs. Marketing of industrial food. p. 18. Stop to consider explanations.
  • Social trends: female labor market participation, changes in perception of "cooking". Scratch cooking associated more with sub-cultures.



Food Biographies - a short ungraded writing assignment

  • Please write a paragraph in answer to the following questions by Thursday, January 23, 2019, 11:59pm.
  • Topic: What kind of eater are you? How would you describe your relationship to food?
  • 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"
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