State of the Field: Food History, Food Studies, and Food Writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-635
Author(s):  
Jonathan Rees
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-77
Author(s):  
Victoria Burns

This article addresses the deviations between the authorial figure of M.F.K. Fisher and the woman who crafted her, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. It considers M.F.K. Fisher's reputation as a figure in food studies and explores the potentially problematic implications of the overwhelmingly celebratory response to Fisher's metaphorical approach to food writing in her memoir, The Gastronomical Me. By considering Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher's complicated, often negative relationship with food, as highlighted in her journal entries and interviews, the author argues that The Gastronomical Me presents a disembodied protagonist who sidesteps corporeal and gender-specific implications of the sensory-driven, unapologetic eating she promotes. Considering the genre of life writing, the historical context in which the text was published, and Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher's background, this article calls for The Gastronomical Me's treatment as an imaginative recreation of lived experiences (one that could more accurately be named The Gastronomical She), rather than a fact-based example of life writing. Viewing the memoir in this manner allows readers to distinguish M.F.K. Fisher more clearly as a fictionalized version of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, an outlet for which metaphorical views of hunger and consumption afforded Mary Frances space to escape from cultural pressures and personal struggles with her body.


Author(s):  
Nilanjana Debnath ◽  

Food Studies has been a prominent part of Interdisciplinary Studies in the West from the 1980s and it is catching up in India as well. A close study of recipes and other forms of food writing can offer insights into the everyday culinary negotiations and the constitution of a cultural ‘tradition’ of taste. These insights of gastropolitics may help us better understand the functioning of subliminal hegemonic technologies and everyday resistance to the same. In our era of postcolonial globalization, where domination and subjugation happen through micro-politics of power, our readings of food writing may open new doors of reading and theorizing heritage and history.


2017 ◽  
Vol 119 (12) ◽  
pp. 2945-2958 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janandani Nanayakkara ◽  
Claire Margerison ◽  
Anthony Worsley

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the food system professionals’ opinions of a new senior secondary school food literacy curriculum named Victorian Certificate of Education Food Studies in Victoria, Australia. Design/methodology/approach A purposive sample of 34 food system professionals from different sub-sectors within the Australian food system was interviewed individually in late 2015 and early 2016. Interviews were analysed using the template analysis technique. Findings Most participants appreciated the extensive coverage of food literacy aspects in this new curriculum. However, many suggested amendments to the curriculum including pay less emphasis on food history-related topics and pay more focus on primary food production, nutrition awareness and promotion, and food security, food sovereignty, social justice, and food politics. Practical implications A well-structured, comprehensive secondary school food literacy curriculum could play a crucial role in providing food literacy education for adolescents. This will help them to establish healthy food patterns and become responsible food citizens. The findings of this study can be used to modify the new curriculum to make it a more comprehensive, logical, and feasible curriculum. Moreover, these findings could be used to inform the design of new secondary school food literacy curricula in Australia and other countries. Originality/value The exploration of perspectives of professionals from a broad range of food- and nutrition-related areas about school food literacy education makes this study unique. This study highlights the importance of food professionals’ opinions in secondary school food-related curricula development.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol E. Harris ◽  
Barbara G. Barter

AbstractAs health threats appear with increasing regularity in our food systems and other food crises loom worldwide, we look to rural areas to provide local and nutritious foods. Educationally, we seek approaches to food studies that engage students and their communities and, ultimately, lead to positive action. Yet food studies receive only generic coverage and tangential attention within existing curricula. This article, reporting a pilot study located at Canada's geographic and cultural edge, focuses on local knowledge about past and present food practices. Objectives are to test pedagogies that bring all students greater opportunities for engagement and learning about their physical environment and food history, and that can be applied to rural and, with modifications, urban settings. Three critical, place-base pedagogical approaches — experiential, discovery and arts-based — to classroom teaching and learning are discussed, as well as implications for educational leadership, teacher training and curriculum development.


2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Martha Finch

Each week in my religion and food course during Spring 2016, a student or I brought foods related to the religious group we were studying into the classroom for all to try. With the first dish they tasted, students asked, “So what makes this food ‘religious’?” This question formed the central theme throughout the semester as we wrestled with what religion is in the context of food and foodways: the network of material aspects (food itself; practices like growing, distributing, cooking, eating; sensory experiences such as taste) and conceptual aspects (ideas, meanings, metaphors, symbols, values such as taste) of food in a particular social/cultural group. The familiar and unfamiliar foods elicited visceral reactions from students. This essay argues that paying closer attention to religion as an independent interpretive category and especially to food itself, as a material agent eliciting powerful sensory effects that precede religious ideas and enable those ideas, provides an alternative to dependence on common food studies’ interpretive categories and on the Protestant-influenced focus on food as abstracted symbol or metaphor of ‘meaning.’


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 832-838
Author(s):  
Roshna Sukheoji Bhutada ◽  
Renu Rathi ◽  
Devyani Dasar

WHO declared Covid 19 /SARS -COV-2 as a global pandemic.Till date, there is no medicine for COVID-19. If the Infection arises in the body then the defence mechanism activated against infection. A recent study suggests that temporarily augmenting the body's immune system in the early stages of COVID-19 can help patient to avoid severe symptoms as it is rightly said prevention is better than cure. Ayurveda approaches to develop physiological reactions to facilitate immunity. Planning of diet is most important to boost immunity.As per many researches to provide supplementary food which contains Zinc, Vitamin C,Vitamin D and immunity boosting foodsuch as citrus natural products, custard apple, apple, papaya is among the Fruits. Vegetables include broccoli, onion, garlic and green leafy vegetables. Nuts, ginger, turmeric, pepper, egg yolk, shellfish, mushroom. The need of the hour is a quick boost to immune system to keep it fit, fighting. One should get the right amount of nutrients from the diet, supplementation regimen to boost immune system.In this review, there are few common supplements and super food studies have been included. It might be a torch bearer as sample menu and their alternatives are given for a normal adult. Needy may change contemplated according to age, sex, body mass index and daily physical activities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 686-687
Author(s):  
Caroline Durand
Keyword(s):  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document