So, What is Food Studies?
Faced with this hilarious question over the holidays, most of my colleagues and I have decided on a great answer. For all them aunties and uncles out there who think I’m studying nutrition, and or who stare blankly at me when I say I’m a master’s candidate in food studies,
this is what it means…(more or less)
studying everything related to food nowadays in the academic realm means everything from seed to plate minus the cooking. All the processes, systems, and politics, all the cultural and scientific battles through personal, financial, ritual, and media relations, and oh yea the cultural act of EATING too.
It’s like studying computer science and the idea of the internet in 1978. We’re just a bunch of people who have banded together in foreseeing a cultural movement that’s been long coming, and by studying the cultural effects of science and technology through the lens of food, we are pushing new counter cultures out of the closet, and shaping a social movement against ‘the man’ and ‘the system’ through food. We believe, I believe, that every packaged tiny morsel of food has the ability to change and impact you as much as vitamins and minerals did when they were first discovered as nutrients back in the 1910-20’s.
And as I get more and more into the medical, economic, and business/entrepreneur spirit of the food industry this semester, a realm I am endearingly referring to as more “practical” in nature, I can promise you a lively discussion on my developing theory that food education is becoming more and more interdisciplinary, and more and more prominent.
Through exercising our right to chose what we can and cannot eat, what we should and should now eat, and what we want to eat, we as a society are exerting our power to manipulate the course of our lives.
Oh and we sure know how to throw damn good parties too. ;)
“Food, it’s what we do, we know how to make people happy” and we know how to stir up the pot too…
Cheers! to a new semester full of brain farting, mind blowing, scintillating and effervescent conversations ;)
xoxo J xoxo
