April 3, 2016: Hello FoodAnthro readers, the past week has been overflowing with food news. If you have something you’d like to contribute for future weeks, please email it to LaurenRMoore@uky.edu.
First, there was a response to links featured in the last roundup, the NPR story about Rick Bayless and When Chefs Become Famous Cooking Other Cultures’ Food. In response, there were articles calling for acknowledgement for all the Mexican cooks who also cook other peoples’ food: Let Us Now Praise OC’s Mexican Cooks; and It’s Okay to Cook “Other People’s Food,” But You Better Be Ready to Talk About It; and, finally, for readers who really want to wade into this debate, The Problem Isn’t Rick Bayless Cooking Mexican Food-It’s That He’s a Thin-Skinned Diva. We can end the battle of Bayless with Civil Eats’ thoughtful piece Beyond Talk: Searching for Real Solutions to Food Appropriation
The James Beard Foundation announced its nominees for the 2016 James Beard Award, and then Longreads followed up with Six James Beard Finalists You Might Have Missed: A Reading List
Civil Eats interviewed Jonathan Gold, subject of the new documentary City of Gold, and only food writer to have ever won a Pulitzer Prize: Jonathan Gold on Sustainability, Food Tribalism, and Eating “Lowish” on the Food Chain
Priceonomics had an interesting piece on the American food industry and the power it wields in our politics and nutritional advice: The Food Industrial Complex
The Huffington Post offered the article Here’s How 8 Different Countries Officially Define What ‘Healthy Eating’ Is, which–you guessed it–compares nutritional advice from across the world and argues that the advice is more similar than it is different.
The Dish argued that Food is made by people and, therefore, food issues are fundamentally socio-political–and our national conversation around food should change to reflect that.
In the same vein, there was a series of Riveting Photos of Migrant Workers Remind Us Who Really Harvests Our Food–and, in a nice change of pace from many photo essays about migration and food-related labor, these photos come from around the world.
While this is from February, rather than the last week, there was a great essay On Being Black in the Kitchen: Edouardo Jordan on the lack of black chefs in fine dining published in Lucky Peach.
The Boston Globe reported on efforts to fight childhood hunger by distributing produce in an elementary school: How to help fight childhood hunger? Open a market inside a school.
Southern Foodways Alliance wrote about The Georgia Peach in Black and White: Civil Rights in the Shadow of Georgia’s Signature Crop, which ties the peach to Georgia’s messy racial politics–worth reading, and includes great photos.
Over at The Salt, there was an article about how Your Quinoa Habit Really Did Help Peru’s Poor. But There’s Trouble Ahead.
Civil Eats has their own food news round up, which you won’t want to miss: All the News That’s Fit to Eat: BPA is Still in Cans, Whole Foods’ Move to Slow-Growing Chickens, and CA’s Minimum Wage Boost
Politico reported on how U.S. Companies Make Case for Keeping Cuba Organic, and how U.S. markets could benefit from a ready source of organic bananas and coffee
There was an article about gender in the food industry–specifically, that Food Tech is Just Men Rebranding What Women Have Done for Decades. Soylent? Remember Slimfast?
Finally, some humor to start your week off on the right foot:
At The New Yorker, I’m Finally Taking Responsibility and Blaming All My Problems on Processed Foods
And, a Tumblr that has recently gained traction and has been turned into a sad? hilarious? hilariously sad? book: Dimly Lit Meals for One
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