Food is ubiquitous. Every individual requires its nutrients to live their lives. It chemically provides the human body with the needed glucose in order to convert ATP to useable energy in cells. This means a person literally cannot live without it. Though an immensely important aspect of food is a nourishing supplement; it is not the sole significance of food in human’s lives. Food is symbolic. Food connects people. It is a collective activity everyone must experience; thus meaning it allows people to relate more easily between each other. There is no universal type of food in each society due to the fact that the world is multicultural. Many different styles of food spawn from this diversity. Thus
“Food for us comes from our relatives… That is how we consider food. Food has a culture. It has a history. It has a story. It has relationships.” This quote was spoken by Winona LaDuke. Known for her work on tribal land claims and being an American environmentalist, Winona LaDuke discusses that food is culture. She also expresses how tribal relatives pass on their food recipes. Through generations, traditional foods are passed down to preserve culture. Consequentially, people have more respect for food when someone says, ‘This is my great grandmother’s recipe.’ Immigrants brought their culture, including their gastronomy, and recipes, from their homeland as a way to preserve and express their heritage and pass it on to their children. Moreover,
In the modern industrial society, being aware of what the food we eat come from is an essential step of preventing the “national eating disorder”. In Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, he identifies the humans as omnivores who eat almost everything, which has been developed into a dominant part of mainstream unhealthiness, gradually causing the severe eating disorder consequences among people. Pollan offers his opinion that throughout the process of the natural history of foods, deciding “what should we have for dinner” can stir the anxiety for people based on considering foods’ quality, taste, price, nutrition, and so on. In order to establish a stronger relationship between humans and food, and allow the humans to know what they are actually eating, Pollan uses different rhetorical analysis includes different appealing strategies and various literary devices, which contribute to persuade people to comprehend the deeper meaning behind the
In Michael Pollan’s essay “Escape from the Western Diet,” he directly to Americans about the western diet and why he believes they need to escape from it. The reason Americans should escape the western diet is to avoid the harmful effects associated with it such as “western diseases” (Pollan, 420). To support his view on the issue, Pollan describes factors of the western diet that dictate what Americans believe they should eat. These factors include scientists with their theories of nutritionist, the food industry supporting the theories by making products, and the health industry making medication to support those same theories. Overall, Pollan feels that in order to escape this diet, people need to get the idea of it out of their heads. In turn, he provides his own rules for escaping the western diet as well as the idea of nutritionist set forth by scientists.
In David Freedman’s essay How Junk food Can End Obesity, Freedman makes the claim to policy arguing that instead of demonizing processed foods, Americans should instead support the idea and production of healthier processed and junk foods. He calls on the public to recognize that while many products on the market these days are labeled as “wholesome” and “healthy”, consumers should learn to become aware of the fat and calorie content in these products because many times they have the same- if not more- fat and calorie contents as that of a typical Big Mac or Whopper. In his essay, Freedman primarily places blame on the media and the wholesome food movement for the condemnation of the fast and processed food industries saying, “An enormous amount of media space has been dedicated to promoting the notion that all processed food, and only processed food, us making us sickly and overweight” (Freedman), he further expresses that this portrayal of the
Nutritionalism is a topic that is widely researched around the globe, but even more so in America. The topic of healthy food is not only being researched but also heavily debated upon: whether one kind of food is any healthier than another. The debate surrounds an idea that food is the reason for many health disabilities. Because of the debate about food people have been formulating their own ideas and theories about the nutrition of food. Two articles about the nutrition argument are Escape from the Western Diet by Michael Pollan and Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating by Mary Maxfield. Each author presents three nutrition guidelines at the end of their essay for their audience to follow, but Pollan's obvious stance, strong
In this assignment I am going to talk about the sociological imagination on food and the aspects it brings with it. Before starting that large process I firstly will explain what the social imagination is and what the key points of the imagination are in able to fully understand the topic; food and its history, biography, and the relation it has in society. This is my first assignment for the module understanding contemporary society so please bear with me as I will do my best to explain it in a logic manner so everybody can understand it.
With gratefulness tucked into our hearts, My family stood in a circle in the small kitchen, hand in hand. My great grandfather spoke a prayer of thanks for our health and prosperity while fumes of food danced around our noses. After we whispered “Amen”, I took a fervent glance at
“Why Everyone Should Stop Calling Immigrant Food ‘Ethnic’” by Lavanya Ramanathan (features reporter) and “Stop Thinking And Just Eat: When ‘Food Adventuring’ Trivializes Cultures” by Ashlie Stevens (food and culture writer) are articles published in the American daily newspaper “The Washington Post” and British daily newspaper “the Guardian”, respectively. Both articles aim to communicate to readers on the connection between food adventuring and culture. Through application of personal experiences, experts’ views and pathos, Ramanathan argues on how the phrase “ethnic food” is labelled to foreign cuisines and the discrimination that revolves around it. Stevens points out how people tend to summarise entire culture of a country to a particular cuisine or food trend through the use of pathos, ethos and credible evidences. Although there is credibility to both authors’ view, Ramanathan’s argument focuses more on emotional appeal while Stevens’s is more logically inclined.
In articles titled “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ethnic” by Lavanya Ramanathan and “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes cultures” by Ashlie Stevens, different perspectives on the role of food adventuring in cultural appropriation are offered. In her article, Ashlie advocates food adventuring and believes it is an ideal way to facilitate cultural appropriation. On the contrary, Lavanya’s article is highly critical of cultural appropriation and she emphasises on omission of the word ‘Ethnic food’ and encourages people to appreciate food as it is. Even though Ashlie’s work is written in simple language, she fails to convey her stand clearly because of the flaws in structuring of the passage. Similarly, Lavanya’s article portrays her stand clearly but is unable to reach the readers due to the use of complex words, intricate examples and analogies. Both Lavanya’s article and Ashlie’s article appear to be equally weak as they fail to understand the potential readers, to have an efficient style of writing and to provide credible evidence to substantiate their claims.
The theme of the text set is to discover the different types of foods eaten around the world. Students might only be aware of Americanized versions of cuisine, such as Americanized Chinese food or Mexican food, and not be aware of authentic meals eaten by other cultures. Reading about food around the world can also help students learn about different ways people eat, while some students in the classroom eat using forks, other students use chopsticks, or even use their hands to pick up food and do not use utensils.
The article discusses the role of food as an instrument of identity and a channel of contact through cultures. This is discussed drawing from three cases of Italian food culture hybridization spanning from the early 20th century to the first decade of the 2000s: the role of Italian food in Italian-American identity as depicted in Leonardo Coviello’s work; the meeting of Southern and Northern food cultures following the Italian internal migrations in the ‘50s and ‘60s; the food practices of international migrants in the context of the global flows of people and commodities in present day Italy. In this regard, food plays an essential role in the rebuilding of a familiar context in which migrants can feel temporarily
The article titled “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ‘ethnic’” by Lavanya Ramanathan (2015) delivers stand against ethnic food in American is a proof of culture appropriation. And “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes cultures” article by Ashlie Stevens (2015) centres the thesis on the idea that food trend is a practice that people do not appreciate food with its context. They are published at the Washington Post website and the Guardian website, respectively. Both authors share perspectives that food adventuring is a form of culture appropriation. Even so, Stevens is more persuasive as source of information as she engages in strong use of ethos and has better supporting statements to strengthen her stand.
Before enrolling in this class, I wouldn’t ever have imagined how interconnected food and culture was. Better yet, I wouldn’t have thought that I would find the concept interesting. My knowledge of food went as far as, I need it so I eat it. However, as the class went on and I was introduced to theories and ideas by people who had spent their lives researching this topic, I began to notice patterns in the way that I eat, or more specifically the way that my family eats. Much like everything else that we do, it varies from the typical American diet.
Food is a tool that connects every human to one another. Through the use of food people create new relationships and grow a connection that can prosper their future. Using the platform of relationships and medium of food, few literature texts have carved a path to show character’s individual growth. Looking beyond literature’s existence only in books there are multiple sources such as movies and shows that showcases characters nourishment. Specific texts that prove the understanding between food and humans are shows Suits and Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah, movie Cheeni Kum, and book Their Eyes Were Watching God. These texts not only focus around the lead characters being placed in a relationship, but also how the relationship and food anchor