A brief digest of food and nutrition-related items that caught our attention recently. Got items you think we should include? Send links and brief descriptions to dberiss@gmail.com or hunterjo@gmail.com.
Sorting out the costs and benefits of fish farming in the Mississippi Delta is at the heart of this fascinating article from Brett Anderson that appeared in Landscape Architecture Magazine. The focus is mostly on the work of Forbes Lipschitz, who teaches at Ohio State University, using photography of landscapes to think about food production. This would be a useful article to use in contrast with articles that insist on the superiority of organic agriculture.
On a related theme, this interview with Dr. Jillian Fry, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future Public Health & Sustainable Aquaculture Project, addresses some similar themes, while focusing on different ways of evaluating the impact of fish farming. In fact, comparing these two articles ought to make us think carefully about how evaluations are done.
While we are reading about types of farming, here is a provocative opinion piece on farming as a modern occupation, a high-tech industry, a piece of history, a part of globalization, a lynchpin of communities, and much more. Clearly, farming is good to think.
Urban agriculture has been proposed as a way of dealing with a variety of problems in contemporary societies. As it happens, there is a journal, Urban Agriculture Magazine, devoted to the topic and you can read the latest issue for free. You may be able to read all the issues there too. Enjoy.
The 2016 Faces of Hunger Short Film Festival took place a few weeks ago, but the films that were shortlisted for prizes are still available here. These are all powerful, sometimes a bit hard to watch, but nevertheless worth watching. Not sure how long these will be available, so watch them soon.
Restaurant economics are either pretty simple or very complicated, depending on who you ask, but either way, the reality is that a lot of restaurants go out of business every year. This article contrasts the economics of fine dining with that of fast casual or fast food, showing the issues confronted by both.
Here is a manifesto on restaurants and race. Ranging from fine dining to fast food, the author raises questions and demands action on making restaurants and dining in general more inclusive and more culturally aware.
Did you know that cafeteria workers at Harvard have been on strike for the last three weeks? They may have reached a settlement, but it is nevertheless worth reading about what it is like to be a very low-wage worker struggling to pay health insurance premiums at the richest university in the U.S.
On a related note, you may want to know if slaves produced the food you are eating. This article provides an overview of a recent study that graded twenty of the largest food and beverage companies on their use of forced labor. You may want to put down your lunch while you read it.
Good news! You can keep going to the dentist even after you are dead. Sort of: dental anthropologists may dig you up and take a look at your teeth to figure out what you ate. Ok, maybe not you, but people in general. Neat stuff, from NPR.
To be an anthropologist is to be constantly amazed and fascinated by the thinking and behavior of humans. The rest of the world often returns the favor by being amazed by the fact that anthropologists are amazed by ordinary things. In this instance, Dr. Kirk French at Penn State is offering a course on the anthropology of alcohol (“Booze and Culture”) and this article from an alternative student web site explains it. You may want to go have a drink with some humans after you read this.
FoodAnthropology 