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.
Let’s start this week with a rumination on the meaning of “sustainability” across languages and cultures. This piece, from María García Maldonado, Rosario García Meza and Emily Yates-Doerr, raises questions about how to think about this term while we are rethinking the tropes of modernity. From English, to Spanish, to Mam, in highland Guatemala, this brief-but-provocative article is part of Cultural Anthropology’s “Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen.”
The same companies that supply your campus food service probably also run food services for American prisons…and they do so, in many states, for very little money. This article looks at the monetary constraints that have been imposed on prisons, even as the U.S. incarcerates a growing population. Is there anything wrong with running a prison food service as for profit enterprise? Is it important for prisoners to receive good nutrition? Apparently these are not rhetorical questions.
On a more upbeat food service note, the National Museum of African American History and Culture recently opened in Washington, DC and it has a restaurant. Writers from Smithsonian Magazine provide an overview of some of the foods served there, along with their history, here.
How essential is online media to the success of restaurants? How much has the development—in just the last decade—of web sites and blogs devoted to chefs and restaurants changed the business of providing food to the public? This short piece from Grub Street (one of those sites) explores these questions.
There have been a number of articles about the dismal wages many restaurant workers make in the U.S. and about efforts to remedy that by moving away from tipping. But much of what we have read on this topic is New York-centric. Want to know more about how this is playing out in the rest of the U.S.? This article, from Helen Freund in the New Orleans Gambit is a good place to start. How is this debate going on where you live?
What kinds of organizations advocate for farmers in the United States? There are many, of course, with a lot of different political perspectives. Read this interview with Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union to learn about that particular organization’s approach to various food and agriculture issues.
Trade agreements have been getting seriously bad press in the current U.S. presidential campaign. It is possible, however, that not all trade agreements are bad. Read this short article about trade agreements on organic foods that recognize organic standards in other countries. And for a more in depth analysis, here is a link to the report referred to in the article.
You have probably seen all the advertisements for services that will deliver meals directly to you, with ingredients that you can easily prepare. Is this a healthy alternative to actually cooking? Is it a gateway to real cooking? Ankita Rao tries one service, then explores some other interesting ways in which people are being taught how and what to cook. Also, Krishnendu Ray is interviewed.
Many of you probably have deeply researched ideas about why some foods are kosher and others are not. But have you ever wondered how wine gets to be kosher? Or why most bourbon and some Scotch is kosher? From “The Alcohol Professor” (in this case, Amanda Schuster), a handy guide to and analysis of this fraught topic.
