Movies & Documentaries About Food

We are gathering a list of films that deal with various aspects of food – whether in intimate family settings, or on a global political scale. Have any recommendations? Leave a comment and we’ll add more titles to our list!

1. Soul Food
2. Like Water for Chocolate
3. Big Night
4. Eat Drink Man Woman
5. Tampopo
6. Chocolat
7. Babette’s Feast
8. Super-Size Me
9. Fast Food Nation
10. The Future of Food

Meeting Notes - August 11th, 2008

Summarizing…

Over the course of this summer’s CHAT team discussions, we have developed some overarching themes and ideas about food and culture:

- being aware of how you are connected to your body when eating, sense of fullness, sense of what’s good to eat

- how does one teach such awareness to children and people who feel disconnected

- the importance of creating an atmosphere for digestion – slowing down, taking the time to eat, not eating under stress

- being conscious of food intake in terms of amount and frequency

- delving deeper into the concept of food as medicine, and which foods are medically useful in a given culture

- bearing in mind the importance of seasonality – what grows when, feeling that connection to the cycles of foods, paying attention to it, being aware that food in such a context can be an intermediary to higher consciousness

- realizing that food has historically been used as a weapon of oppression and how that can affect our food choices

- seeing the commonalities of foods and food practices between different cultures

- knowing that our food choices have a political, economic, and environmental impact, and using this awareness to try to inspire others to make changes in their lives

- understanding that thin line between food and pharmacology – how companies patent foods and their ingredients as “medicines”, no matter what their historical usage

- knowing that if your relationship with food is healthy, it is easier to live within your means, your health is better, and your overall state of mind is more grounded

- the ever-present conflict between the scientific/medical model of what one “should” eat versus a culturally/environmentally-aware way of “knowing” what to eat – analyzing this dichotomy can be a trigger for self-study

- the importance of not dwelling on the negative aspects of how our food is produced, sold, and consumed, but rather being constructive in what we say, how we act, etc.

Meeting Notes - August 4th

Personal Relationships with Food – Sensitivities and “Knowing” what to eat…

- Story of attempting to eat soy and soy foods while eating a vegan diet, and ignoring a feeling that it wasn’t “right” for the body. Finally acknowledging that soy is not a native part of the ancestral European diet, and relinquishing the need to what is “healthy” in the popular, marketing sense.

- Reading Diet for a Small Planet and undergoing the process of becoming a vegetarian; giving up sugar and experiencing the boost in energy and well-being that resulted. Undergoing muscle testing for food sensitivities, and discovering that a continuous consumption of corn chips had led to a corn sensitivity.

- Living with a constitution that has trouble digesting proteins – develop bumps on the skin from eating meat or dairy products, as well as spicy foods; now rely on grains and legumes – digest oatmeal especially well

- Story of growing up eating with a focus on quantity and not quality. Always ate very quickly while working as a cook in a restaurant as a young man, and that hurried approach carried over into adulthood. It has taken many years to learn to slow down and savor food as it is eaten. Also learned over the years to eat more seasonally – warmer, heavier foods in winter, lighter foods with less meat in summer. Time of day is also important – always have breakfast, and a large midday meal will cause sluggishness and tiredness.

- Eating seasonally in summer is made much easier when getting produce from a CSA farm share, but children eat less seasonally since there are certain foods they want year-round. Noticed that the day feels much better if breakfast is some sort of native ethnic food, like oatmeal, than something less native and more processed. Cutting out sugar from the family’s diet and learning to bake with honey, and maple and agave syrups. Used to drink gallons of coffee, but now feel very affected by caffeine. Crave chocolate often even though it leads to feeling unwell.

- Had a grandmother who warned against eating tomatoes without every really explaining why, but now know that many people have a sensitivity to nightshade vegetables. Sometimes wonder if mother would not have developed diabetes if she had never left Ethiopia and adopted a more Western way of eating. Here in the U.S. one can eat ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. When things are at their best, then meals are communal – food is different when eaten alone. Metabolism is sharply affected by spiritual and emotional context – food just “sits there” in the stomach when eaten in a state of sadness – the metabolism shuts down.

- Story of experiencing the emotional aspects of eating – has spent a lifetime taking care of others, children, an elderly mother, etc. When stressed get the urge to eat, especially comfort foods, bread, and chocolate. Have a full appreciation of the extent to which anxiety and depression affect eating.

- Isolation is something we continuously have to look at – “humans are healers of one another” – we are constantly dealing with aloneness

Meeting Notes - July28th, 2008

Today our CHAT team held a blind taste-test of various foods, some more exotic, and others more traditional. As part of our discussions about how we experience food on a sensory level, we had participants try foods while blindfolded, and describe their thoughts and feelings along the way. People found that eating when not taking in visual information heightened other perceptions, such as taste, smell and texture.

Here are the foods from the tasting:

Burdock Root – a crisp, mild root vegetable, somewhat similar in taste to jicama, burdock has a long history of medicinal use in various cultures for its cleansing and diuretic properties.

Red Banana – sometimes also called Jamaican bananas, these little red cousins of the yellow banana we all grew up with was surprising for its sweetness and lack of starchiness.

Rutabaga – also called a yellow or Swedish turnip, the rutabaga is a cross between a cabbage and a turnip, with a sweet, mellow flavor. Prepared the same way as mashed potatoes, rutabagas were a very traditional root vegetable in Europe long before the potato arrived from the New World and supplanted its position as common starch source.

Feta Cheese – familiar to most people as the crumbled white stuff in a Greek salad, feta is Greece’s traditional brined cured cheese made from goat milk, sheep’s milk, or a combination thereof. Tasters expressed how complex they found the flavor to be, as well as how tasting it alone is a very different experience when not mixed with other ingredients.

Multigrain Crackers – served as a palate cleanser after the feta, the crackers were noted for their simplicity and bare-bones wheat flavor.

Dragonfruit (dried) – the fruit of a cactus native to Central/South America, dragonfruit was by far the most exotic flavor for the tasters. In dried form it was a surprising mixture of sweetness, sourness, crunchiness from the seeds, and chewiness from the flesh.

Red Dandelion Greens – bitter and crisp, dandelion greens are usually found in bagged salad mixed. By themselves their bitterness really comes through, and while many gardeners perceive them as a nuisance, they are quite high in vitamin C, iron, and calcium.

Fit-Fit – a traditional Ethiopian dish, made from crumbled pieces of teff-flour injera cooked in tomato, onion and various spices. It was a wonderful way to end our tasting.