Allergies

My sweet baby niece (who is going to be four in February and isn't really a baby at all anymore!) has severe food allergies. She eats almost exclusively chicken and rice, supplemented by nutritional formula. Well we were playing "car" last weekend, pretending to go to the sto' to pick up snacks. I asked her brother what he was getting and he said "macaroni and cheese!!", very excited about the prospect of imaginary mac and cheese. I asked Lucy the same question and she said, with the same level of enthusiasm as her brother, "CHICKEN!!"

The girl loves chicken. She eats it plain, with just a bit of olive oil and salt and thinks it is the greatest thing on earth. But when she said this, it made me a little sad, knowing she'll never get to enjoy some really awesome foods because they'll make her sick. But what would have made me more sad is if she had said mac and cheese because I know she won't ever be able to have that. At this point in her life, she really doesn't know what she is missing. She knows there are foods she can't eat, but it doesn't seem to bother her. To her, most all the food she gets to eat is at the height of deliciousness

But I know there will come a time when she'll know that she's missing out. Food being the social glue that it is, I worry about her when she starts going to school. There will be birthday parties and cupcakes and pizza parties and she won't be able to eat like her classmates and friends. Only time will tell how she handles this. It may be a struggle or it may not even matter that much to her. But to me, it is worrisome

At any rate, her relationship with food is already vastly different than my own. While I check the back of packages mostly out of curiosity and fascination at the way some foods are put together, her mother (and soon she) checks the ingredients to ensure there is nothing in there that will send her into anaphylaxis. She will grow up to have a hyper-awareness of what goes into her body, which ultimately isn't a bad thing, but I wish for her sake that it weren't because her life depends upon it.

pollan ii

Interesting article from him today in the NYT about a communal meal centered around a wood-fired oven: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/magazine/10dinner-t.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

pollan

Last night most of us in the Food class as well as a number of other Colgate students, faculty, and staff attended a lecture by Michael Pollan in Syracuse.  As Grace noted in her post prior to this one, the talk was excellent---funny, engaging, and thought-provoking.  As someone who has read his books and articles in the NYTimes, most of the talk was familiar territory---no big surprises---but he did a nice job of synthesizing a lot of his ideas into one talk that was easily accessible to anyone, regardless of their background.

Some observations/criticisms about the talk:

1. Good sized crowd at the Syracuse OnCenter, but also very white and middle class.  There was another performance at the center last night as well, a play inspired by a Tyler Perry character.  The crowd waiting outside for the Parry show was nearly 100% black and the crowd for Pollan looked to be very white.  Well, looks can be deceiving, but it wasn't hard to notice the contrast.

2.  More on the class angle---Pollan began his talk by walking out on the stage with a couple plastic shopping bags full of groceries he had purchased from a local Tops store.  He spent the first few minutes taking things out of the bag and talking about them and how they were examples of what he calls "edible food-like substances."  They included some of the likely suspects---Go-gurt tubes, fruit roll-ups, soda.  Many of them, as he pointed out, make weird nutritional claims, such as the ginger ale-green tea hybrid that promoted antioxidants or the lily white Wonder Bread somehow made from whole wheat (extra fiber!).  As he took each item from the bags and made jokes about them, it wasn't hard to miss his contempt for the processed food and for Tops as a grocery store.  People laughed heartily at the food-like cornucopia he laid out, and it made for a good demonstration of his points.  Still, I couldn't help feeling a little uneasy as all these people of means laughed at the food as though it was beneath them.  Pollan said many times that this kind of processed food and all its added salt and sugar is leading to an epidemic of diabetes---well, who is getting all these cases of diabetes?  It's largely the poor, and I don't think you're going to gain a lot of traction by making fun of what they eat.

3. Pollan was hard on nutritional science---he made a hilarious comparison between current research on nutrition and the state of surgery in 1650---primitive, messy, and something you wouldn't want to trust too much.  He noted that a lot of nutritional studies lack good evidence since they rely on self-reports of consumption, and in many cases these reports ask one to go back three months and list all the foods you've eaten.  But then Pollan also cited a number of nutritional and epidemiological studies to support his points about the perils of the Western Diet and the high incidence of disease associated with it.  It wasn't clear how he distinguishes between good and bad science, and it seemed overall like he was cherry picking the studies that supported his points.  Then again, I guess no one came to the lecture to hear him talk too much about methodology for an hour...

Post Pollan Thoughts

The Michael Pollan lecture was a treat. He was funny, engaging and entertaining.

Pollan spoke on the Western food culture. Ours is in fact the most focused on eating well (orthorexic) and simultaneously the least healthy in terms of chronic diseases and obesity. In Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel, I read that the rate of childhood obesity in Mexico increases as the population gets closer to the US boarder, where our food trends have eked over. Our food culture, he made clear, is socially constructed-- think of all the fad diets and changing "enemy" nutrition. But how do we decide what is healthy? What value do we place on different nutritional aspects? How is it possible that such different diets, from solely protein in Africa to maize and other produce in South America, allow for fully functioning and healthy humans? There is not one nutritional recipe for health. There is one nutritional disaster though, in the form of "edible food like substances" in our grocery stores.

In Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle she laments that Americans have no food culture. In peer countries, certain foods and spices that come specifically from that geographic region define the cuisine. Americans do not experience culture rooted in food because we would rather ignore seasonality and distinct geographic produce in order to support monoculture and have fruit on the table all year round. Kingsolver decides to live off her land for one year. The health of her family increases and the family connects by growing, preparing and eating food together.

One problem with our food trends and the edible food like substances is they are cheap. Too cheap to pass up! On a limited budget, one is going to try and get as much bang for the buck as possible. It should be noted that at the Hamilton Farmer's Market, healthy food options are made more available to those on a limited income. This summer I worked at a booth with an EBT machine. Where you could previously only use cash, the EBT machine allowed the swipe of the "food stamp" card in exchange for tokens that could be redeemed at participating vendors. So, many are recognizing the need to evaluate our food trends and the ability to change our food culture depends on identifying the availability of healthy food options.

Memories of Food

There are a number of ways to trace your own personal history. You can go back through family photo albums and trace the fashion and hair. You can do it with music, by listing the songs that represent special times in your life. You can do it with home videos (as embarrassing as they may be). And you can do it with food. Food has a unique power to evoke the past; to remind us of occasions, both good and bad, and those long gone. Food has created a bond in my family. It is an integral part of who we are, and how we relate to each other. I think of my father every time I flip a pancake and of my grandmother every time I eat bagels and lox.

Our family meal was not just dinner. It was a time of sharing, laughing, and talking about anything. While dinner was not the same time every night, we always made a concerted effort to eat together. It was always a sit down (never in front of the TV) meal and we all took a role in some aspect of the meal whether it be shopping, meal planning, cooking, setting the table, or cleaning up.

When I think of food growing up here are a few things that come to mind:

-Baking chocolate chip cookies on snow days with my sister

-Eating the dough of Pillsbury pre-made sugar cookies (so much for baking them)

-Returning home famished from sports practices and walking into the house seeing dinner on the table

-My mother’s chicken soup-an instant cure for when I’m sick

-Waking up to the delicious, sweet smell of Aunt Jemima pancakes that my dad made every Sunday, complemented with local Maple Syrup of course.

-The joint effort by all my family members to make potato latkes from scratch, which resulted in all of us smelling like potatoes for 4 days straight

-Tuesday Taco Nights

-Roasting chestnuts over an open fire, but my dad always having trouble maintaining the fire

-S’mores at camp

-Frozen thin mints and Mallomars

-Chinese take-out on Christmas

-My grandma’s cookies. Just the smell of cookies at a bakery takes me back.

-Tuna sandwiches my mom packed me for lunch at school, which were seen as “uncool” compared to all the Lunchables my friends had.

-Standing under a blueberry tree at my cousin’s summerhouse in Fire Island, grabbing blueberry after blueberry, with the juices dripping down my arms.

-Watching my Dad sharpening his carving knives for cutting the turkey on Thanksgiving

-Ordering pizza instead of the leftover food that we were supposed to eat whenever my mom went on a business trip. We would always try to keep it a secret from her, although that never worked since the pizza box wasn’t quite strategically hidden in the garbage every time.

-My sister and I racing lobsters in my house not connecting the fact that they would soon be boiled and eaten by us.

As you can see, food not only nourishes our bodies and can taste delicious, but it is a tie that binds memories.

Sugar Part II

I am sorry to report that the sugar high that carried me through last week made me so distracted that I was unable to post a blog about my week without sugar until now. Never fear, it had a lasting impression and the thoughts are still (relatively) fresh in my mind.

To begin, I must admit that I didn't make it all the way through my challenge. During a Sunday study cramming session I succumbed to the 1 lb. bag of Twizzlers in a package from my grandmother. While I regret that I didn't make it through my avowed week of no sugar, worse crimes have been committed, and I still think I learned a great deal. So without further ado, lessons learned from a week with no sugar:

1. Sugar is in A LOT of food. When I first began my week, I was prepared for many unprocessed foods I would have to live without--they were intuitive. No cake, no ice cream, no cookies... these things seemed obvious. However, as I began to scrutinize the ingredient lists of many of my packaged-food staples, I realized how much sugar was part of my daily life. It began with my breakfast cereal (even Special K has high fructose corn syrup as its second ingredient), continued to my salad dressing (my only option was olive oil and vinegar), and even made its way into my afternoon granola bars. I had to go to Hamilton Whole Foods to find granola without sugar, and even there only the local varieties use honey as a sweetener. Throughout the entire week, I found that there was sugar lurking in well over half of the processed foods I rely on as a college student, whether as a preservative or a sweetener. It was only when I switched my weight over to unprocessed foods that I was able to find satisfying snacks.

2. Sugar at the end of every meal is a habit for me. Though Mintz denies that a craving for sugar at the end of every meal is a biological tendency, my Twizzler-ravaging self would tell you otherwise. I found that overwhelmingly, the end of every meal marked a craving for sugar that I would have to satisfy with a piece of fruit or, on desperate occasions, a spoonful of honey. I found it amazing that a habit that is socially formed, such as the ritual of dessert, could be so ingrained in my daily life--my meals are just not complete without it.

3. I don't think about what I eat. The search for sugar in everything I put in my mouth over the past week has made me think more than ever about every piece of food that enters my body. Whether it involves reading the ingredient list on a granola bar or quizzing my house's chef on the ingredients of every meal, looking for sugar made me think about every meal, where it came from, who prepared it, and how it got to me. It made me realize that every time I eat something I am having a distant interaction with many people, in many parts of the world, whom I have never met. This, for me, was the best part of this challenge. The food we eat is such an important part of who we are, and putting a critical-thinking spin on my meals was fascinating. I'll definitely be up for the next food challenge (as soon as I get my week's fill of Twizzlers).

Home Sweet Home

So I went home this weekend, (which is why this blog post comes later than I intended) and I found home to be just as lovely as I had left it. I'm from Canandaigua, New York, the westernmost (and best) of the Finger Lakes. But this is a food blog, so of course I'm here to talk about the food I ate while at home. The highlight of the weekend was my mother's chili, which I requested in extra large quantities so both my boyfriend and I would have a supply to last. My mother is an excellent cook. Not in the fancy souffle sort of way, but in an everyday, something thrown together sort of way. She cooks by ear, (mouth, nose?) rarely following a recipe. As such, her chili is never the same twice. This seems to go against the idea of comfort food, that it is dependable and you always know what you're getting. But with Mama's chili, it is always good and always tastes like her chili, even if the meaning of that changes with each batch.

I know I am not alone when I associate going home with food. We all seem to have certain food traditions that we can't separate from the feeling of being at home. I think this is especially important for me and other like me for whom the idea of home is rapidly evolving. Of course there is the flux, the in-betweeness of living the better part of the year away from my life long home while I'm here at school. But then there are also other changes afoot in my life. My father's job has come with an imminent threat of relocation. By the time I graduate college, moving home with my folks will probably mean moving to a place I've never been. And that's kind of scary. But it is made less so by the fact that the things that define home do not have to be tied to a geographic location. Important things, like my mother's chili, do not have to reside in one place for the rest of their life. In some odd way, the comfort I take in comfort food is that it is dynamic, untethered and always accessible, regardless of where the kitchen table stands.