Below is my final essay! Thank you for joining me this quarter.
My winter quarter research was inspired by my original and arguably vague question “How does food make us feel?”. Brought about after a quarter of studying the intersections of food and gender, I was ready to look further into what it is about food that can inspire such visceral reactions of all kinds, joy, disgust, even fear. These reactions are one some level, an unavoidable part of our human chemistry. But alongside nature we must also look at the ways in which we have been nurtured with food, and the ways we ourselves have nurtured our relationships with food.
Combined with a query on the ways in which we absorb texts differently when read digitally, I used thirteen individual sources throughout the course of the project, a variety of books, research studies, scholarly journals, and published articles, each holding their place in the overall story of how food makes us feel. I wanted to begin to understand the relationship between food and feeling, and food writing in the digital and our response. I used ten individual sources throughout the course of the project, a variety of books, research studies, scholarly journals, and published articles, each holding their place in the overall story of how food makes us feel.
My first reading was the second chapter of Skim, Dive, Surface by Jenea Cohn, the text I use that pertains to digital reading and annotation. Using the hypothis.is software to annotate my texts over the past year or so has been an experience I have really enjoyed, it has made it’s way not just into my ILC but into most academic work I have done in recent months. This particular chapter was specifically on the comparison of a physical book vs a digital text in academic settings.
Cohns research, both that she has read and conducted, proves that digital reading is not the preferred method among students, there is an affinity for it among certain kinds of texts, those that are considered more analytical. Students have a preference, seemingly not based on the length, age, or subject of the text, it was more the format and the state of mind needed to consume it. As well as the identified academic preferences, there was also an emotional attachment that went further than grades. I wrote in my weekly update about my sister Spencer and her love of books old and new, she would be one among the devastated if we lost access to our physical libraries. She agrees with my final takeaway from this chapter, which is that we must chose the way we read our texts in the context of the text we are reading, but that for sake of record and accessibility everything should be digitized.
At one point Cohen pulls a quote from Psychologist Daniel Willingham (2017), as he discusses the attitude we have towards reading as adults based on how we were exposed to it in adolescence. “one source—probably the primary source—of positive reading attitudes is positive reading experiences. This phenomenon is no more complicated than understanding why someone has a positive attitude toward eggplant. You taste it and like it” This quote directly ties into what I am looking at this quarter, the nurtured relationship with food in relation with the nurtured relationship with digital reading. As children if we are forced over and over again to eat a food we don’t like, we don’t tend to develop a taste for it, same it seems with reading. But the same way that a child can develop a taste for a food they once didn’t like if it’s properly re-introduced, could we re-introduce reading to a generation that may be falling away from the practice and elevate digital reading as we do so?
As I moved further into the quarter I started to look more into our emotional responses to food. I wanted to uncover the impacts of diet culture in America, where the messaging in our food came from and how we react, and how the food makes us feel before we have even decided what to consume. Michael Pollan makes several compelling statements in his 2004 article, “The National Eating Disorder”, including “America’s food industry, more than happy to get behind
any new diet as long as it doesn’t actually involve eating less food…”. The basis of most of his claims in this article are that for the sake of profits, we manufacture highly processed foods that are easily adaptable to a cycle of dieting fads and trends. He easily backs this, referencing the sudden shifts in marketing from day to day, the same ingredient both a lifesaver and a toxin in the eyes of health magazines.
Pollan also references a study done across France and America, conducted in a collaborative cross continental study on food perception. In this study it is revealed the dramatic differences in the associations Americans have with certain pleasurable food, such as chocolate cake or heavy cream. While the French would be prepared with a word in association with the nature of the food (celebration for cake, whipped for cream) the Americans answers pertained to the unhealthy nature of the food. Pollan describes the “French paradox” which is the idea that though the French eat traditionally “unhealthier” foods than those that American dieticians would prescribe, they tend to be thinner as a country. He claims this to be to linked to their portion sizes and meal culture rather than their food choices, leading the problem of American obesity back to the way we set our dinner tables.
Throughout the quarter I found myself wondering how the fad diets messaging was reaching people, if it was a word of mouth social type reasoning, or if we were receiving some form of subversive messaging online or in the grocery store. While there are arguments for all of these, in Why the New Obesity Guidelines for Kids Terrify Me by Virginia Sole Smith I learnt about the new wave of diet culture specifically hitting children. These kids are not receiving their weight-loss advice from social media or some other unverified source, but instead from doctors. The American Academy of Pediatrics is now recommending “Lifestyle Treatment” for two year olds, weight loss pills at twelve, and surgery at just thirteen. It is my opinion that this style of medical treatment sets a precedent around our social implications of food that will lead to an unmeasurable amount of damage if left unchecked. The guidelines are countered by the Health At Every Size (HAES©) guidelines put out by the Association for Size Diversity and Health. Not only do these guidelines counter the strict regime of calorie restriction, high impact exercise, and medication, but each section is accessibility written and cited with multiple scientific sources.
The two readings combined allow me to look at another two articles, How a Pre-Wedding Diet Led to an Eating Disorder by Kelsey Herbers and Female College Athletes Say Pressure to Cut Body Fat is Toxic by Alanis Thames and Jonathan Abrams, with a lot more intensity. Both are stories of women who felt incredible pressure to lose weight, one for her college sports team and another for her wedding, and how easy it was to slip from dieting to an eating disorder without realizing. When we have a medical system that prioritizes weight loss over the actual health of a patient, it is no surprise that we are conditioned to push our bodies to the point of vivid discomfort in the name of a diet. Thinking back to the metaphor of the eggplant, you tried it and you liked it, or you didn’t. But what if you loved it, and were taught to be ashamed that you did so?
My hope for myself is that I can reconnect food and joy. My personal journey with food is long and detailed far from over. I tried the eggplant and I liked it, and now I am older and cooking it every which way to recreate those childhood tastes and smells. If we can change the social eating dynamic among our friends and family we can develop happy, healthy, social kitchens.