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