July 21st Notes

How Did Your Grandparents Shop For/Grow Food?

- Some grandparents came from farming backgrounds, some came from cities, but still made food from scratch. Some used store-bought foods, but still used whole foods instead of processed products. Used classical American approaches to cuisine – didn’t necessarily eat native cultural foods.

- Class often comes into play in people’s food and shopping choices. The emergence of convenience foods after WWII for example – these foods were seen as desirable and obtainable for wealthier people. People living in the Depression had more of a subsistence, make-do approach to eating.

- Grandparents engaged in common practices of the time, like going to separate stores (butchers, bakers, etc.) to get foods; saw markets develop in the 1950s where all the food was under one roof. This prompted the mothers’ generation in turn to jump on the convenience bandwagon – fish sticks, boxed cake mixes, transitioning from having an icebox to a refrigerator. Remember a time when milk was delivered.

- It wasn’t that long ago that meat was not considered a primary food – it became more available to the average person after refrigeration and transportation improved.

- A recurring theme is the impact of the depression on values surrounding food – lard sandwiches in hard time, adding lots of water to orange juice made from concentrate, Scandinavian milk porridge, etc.)

- The excitement of novel foods in the 50s – Tang, Hamburger Helper, Space Food Sticks – “If the astronauts eat it, it must be healthy”. This exemplifies the enormous change that took place from the grandmothers’ generation to the mothers’ generation.

- Part of the backlash against cooking and making food from scratch came from the women’s movement. It vilified cooking as a form of servitude, and we still feel the repercussions to this day – women still struggle to balance careers with a healthy relationship with food.

- Coming from the Sugar Belt of Kenya: one grandfather did all the cooking while the grandmother did none; grew up with two cultures’ food traditions; Kenya now has Italian, British, German, Arab and Indian communities, all which exert an influence on local Kenyan food. “Poverty” food is eaten in rural areas, different vegetables, like kale and other leafy greens are poor people’s food, while meat is for the rich (chicken is an especial luxury – the poor eat it once a year). The higher socioeconomic status you are, the fewer greens you eat. People now shop at supermarkets, while the younger generation is rediscovering healthy native foods. When the feminist movement came to Kenya, young women often also sneered at cooking.

- OVERARCHING THEMES: status and class as determinants of food choices, status-issues causing certain foods to have an “aspirational” connotation, gender politics in the context of food and preparation habits; notions of “male” and “female” foods are tied to cultural values about gender (in Kenya, women do not eat gizzards because they are viewed as resembling parts of the female anatomy); gender as a determinant of the order of eating (males first, females second) in some cultures.

- CHANGES TO MAKE: eat less meat as a way to conserve natural resources; try to garden more; study more about other cultures’ foods; try to make one’s diet more varied with different foods

- NEXT WEEK: personal relationships to food and eating, paying attention to your own body, the taste of food and how much food appreciation is tied to taste and smell, cultural habits of what is “good” to eat

Meeting Notes - July 14th, 2008

TOPIC: Participants’ Personal Response to Food as Medicine

1. Wheat is a relative newcomer to European grains compared to rye, oats and barley; goal of eating less wheat and more traditional grains; developing relationships with farmers, buying grass-fed beef
2. Produce boxes – the joy of seasonal produce coupled with the joy of communal purchasing (families go in on buying the boxes); teaches you about what’s in season when, if you have an excess of food it forces you to figure out ways to share with others; links you with the farmer
3. Idea of connecting to Minnesota land, even if (or especially if) it’s your adopted home; we are isolated from our land; idea to invite different African elders to talk about traditional food – they are isolated and an opportunity to pass along their knowledge would be mutually beneficial
4. Have memories of buying a quarter of beef and sharing it among relatives; family gardening and sharing the vegetables; memories of traditional Norwegian fruit soup, made from dried fruit mixed with corn starch and sugar – served hot in the winter
5. More observant now about picking food and personal food habits, food as medicine, talking to people about food – more aware; met women with gardens who get together to exchange vegetables
6. Have been thinking about maintaining health through food, the ways that people knew to maintain bodily ph, help digestion, guard against colds, etc.; thought about the British preoccupation with bowel health and how that is a notion of balance; thinking about when you eat being equally important to health – we tend to eat larger meals as the day goes on, instead of starting with a large breakfast
7. Have been remembering some traditional health maintenance foods in Polish cuisine – fermented cabbage and other vegetables, the tradition of eating “surowka” with every hot meal, which loosely translates to “rawness” – this ties in to the belief that something raw helps digest cooked foods; fruit compote as a traditional way to end a meal, even in the economically difficult times under Communism

Other notions/ideas:

- most cultures have traditions of periodic/seasonal cleansing and fasting; tied to spiritual beliefs about renewal and restoring balance

- soup as a healthy food that is consumed every day in many cultures

- Breakfast – we KNOW it’s important, no on really thinks breakfast doesn’t make a difference in how you feel and function – so WHY don’t we eat it, or place more emphasis on eating it?

- Ideas for future discussions – have mini-groups to discuss different ailments and how they are related to diet – insomnia, low energy, GI trouble, high cholesterol, etc.

CHAT Team Notes - July 7th, 2008

TOPIC: Food as Medicine

“Mechanization of Nature”

- food systems as controllable, standardizable entities

- dogma of “improving” on nature

- mechanization confronts nature, causing an inevitable breakdown with ensuing problems

- medicine, nutrition and food technology struggle to control problems caused by mechanization, leading to more problems

- science works in isolated contexts, without awareness or connection to wider social, environmental or economic systems

Cultivating Different “Ways of Knowing”

- what feels “right” to eat today?

- Is there an instinctive ancestral knowledge?

- If we cannot rely on modern messages of what to eat, HOW do we guide ourselves in other ways?

- How could/would a spiritual connection to food inform our consumption choices?

- How do you convey medicinal knowledge of food via a cookbook without simply listing ingredients and biochemical properties – this leads to an IDEA: a Workbook/Recipe Book

- The modern legal approach differentiates between Food, Medicine and Dietary Supplements – this conveys the notion that food inherently cannot be medicine

- There is a difference between “preservatives” in traditional food preparation methods vs. modern preservatives

Cultural Examples:

- the price of Ethiopian red pepper went up after it began to be used and marketed as food coloring

- millet & sorghum porridge is used as medicine in different African cultures

- bitter leaves & herbs are used medicinally throughout the world

- pumpkin in Kenya is sacred, associated with fertility, stealing it is taboo, pumpkin soup is given to the sick, new mothers, and the newly circumcised

- honey is used medicinally throughout the world, in Kenyan culture it symbolizes the sweetness of life, in Indian Ayurvedic medicine it is thought to have powerful healing properties

- fermented milk with bitter herbs are a medicine in Kenya

- all cultures have “routine” foods for maintaining health, in addition to “special” foods for specific maladies; in Scandinavia, oats, fish oils, milk/cheese, milk porridge all are “routine” foods

- many European countries use fermented vegetables for the maintenance of digestive health, for example sauerkraut and pickled beets

- tea is viewed as having medicinal properties everywhere it is drunk; in Wales it is viewed as being physically and emotionally soothing

- in Britain, beer & wine in moderation are seen as health-promoting; before water sanitation systems were put in places, beer and wine were often the only safe beverages, since water was often polluted and undrinkable

- laverbread, otherwise known as “Welshman’s Caviar” is a boiled, gelatinous seaweed – traditionally rolled in oat flour and fried with bacon, the Welsh view it as a general cure-all due to its high mineral and iodine content

- many of the herbs that are used in daily cooking (parsley, rosemary, etc.) have medicinal properties

- Many cultures use the seasonal and energetic properties of foods to decide how to use them medicinally – for example, Ayurvedic medicine uses different honeys produced at varying times of the year for specific illnesses

- fermented honey, or mead is used as a celebratory beverage in many cultures, while also having medicinal properties