Temj

DEC 2

Food Philosophy

Major Questions

• What is Food? What is Food desire?
• What is Eating?
• How does Food Culture change us? How have we been changing Food Culture?
• Why is Food Ideology so irrepressible? What drives it?
• Who are the baddies? [1]

• Justice issues
• Health issues
• Environmental issues
• Other Food ethics: consumer responsibility, vulnerable populations (kids and dietary disease prone)

Tannahill, Food in History, Chapter 4: First Civilizations

• Pattern of Empire, Food, and Early Agriculture: soil degradation, conquest, food crisis, famine
• 1st almanac: 2500bc
• grain cakes, leavening, bread and beer. Note imp. of wheat threshing technology to making leavened bread.
• Pastoral nomads vs. Agriculturalists. resurrection myths vs. dynamic warrior gods.
• Meat, blood, and diet in the Bible and religion

• specific hypothesis: Bible originally enjoined vegetarianism (?)
• general hypothesis: Food and diet are tied to conceptions of purity. original vs. current triggers

Gratzer, Terrors of the Table, Chapter 10, Fads

• more on biblical vegetarianism: 17th century theorists, Tolstoy, Shelley, 7th Day Adventists
• Graham, (Caleb Jackson's "Granula") Kellogg and the invention of modern cereals
• Johanna Brandt's grape cure, fasting, veg, raw food, museli, uric acid, Salisbury steaks (3 lbs a day with warm water!), yogurt, Fletcher, vitamins, laetrile
• Note: pace of fads seem to increase with discovery of vitamins. Note: celebrated scientists not immune.

Moss, Salt, Sugar, and Fat

• Focuses on story of the "cereal wars" -- 1st sig. late 20th effort to take on industrial food industry.
• Reprise of cereal invention (note dyspepsia was the problem to cure, but was itself a dietary condition)
• Growth of industry: 1970 to 1980s: 660 million to 4.4 billion.
• Dentist (Ira Shannon) blows the whistle, nutritionists agree: is it cereal or a confection? Is
• Politics of the Cereal Wars: Gov't regulation, social engineering, addiction, marketing to kids.
• Business strategies: direct marketing to kids, relabeling, changing appeal (sugar as brain food), p. 85: consumption capitalism (read)

Pollan, In Defense of Food

• Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants

• A lot of what is in the grocery store isn't really food (evaluate in discussion)
• Changes in Food Culture:

• displacement of traditional authorities with gov't, science, and industry advice. "Nutritional Industrial Complex"
• upper middle class food culture: gourmet recipes and variety
• when, where, and how of eating has changed.

• Pollan's claim: Food is also about community, spirituality, our relationship to nature.
• Story of the McGovern Commission: start of politics of nutritionism. "No bad foods" and "No Bad Diets" become politically necessary beliefs.
• Nutritionism: the reductive and uncritical use of nutritional science to support an ideological and unhealthy view of the nature of food and the way to make food choices.
• Nutritionism leads to a food politics in which food producers can manipulate our consumption choices by engineering food which is fundamentally unhealthy but which appears as a relatively healthy choice.
• Food fads are fueled in part by nutritionism: cholesterol, fortified unhealthy foods, lipid hypothesis.

Possible Paper Prompt

Evaluate the critique of the modern American food system implicit in the video and reading for today's class. Is there a problem with our food system? If so, what are the main sources of the problem and what should be done about it. If not, where do you find a basis for skepticism or criticism of the critics?