While the readings this week explored different aspects of the eating experience, I think that everything discussed can be talked about within the frame of reference of Berry’s piece. Cooking is an art form…a dance, and it is an incredibly capable medium of expressing love and creating fond memories. However, with the era of microwavable dinners and fast food, we lose that personal connection. As Pollan points out, food nowadays can resemble some sort of scientific experiment, adding more strange ingredients in an attempt to increase tastiness and nutrition, but simple is better. We need to look for foods made with recognizable ingredients as well as commit to shopping local and in season whenever possible. When we are not invested in any part of the process of creating our food, we lose that gastronomic experience, and the food itself is degraded to a vehicle for calories and cheap, instant pleasure. I love Petrini’s commentary on how the Italian linguistics of “sapore” and “sapere” demonstrate the interconnectedness of flavor and knowledge to create taste. We have become so disconnected from our food that a) it is slightly heretical to consider some food products real food if we truly believe that food should be a wholesome and nourishing substance, and b) our lack of knowledge about the food system has allowed it to slip into a complex industrial nightmare in which the only music and dance is from the humming of cold machinery and hunchbacked laborers’ frantic hands. The United States of America has increasingly and significantly shifted our percent of income expenditure away from food. Why is it that we have so little regard for one of the most essential parts of life? The more I think about it, the more I am confounded by our system in which the people who toil in the fields to feed us are so ignored by the greater population and underprivileged that they can hardly afford to sustain themselves. I hope to be a part of the revolution, in whatever form it manifests, to take back our food systems and re-instill a respect for all beings involved in the process. I love Pollan’s discussion on mimicking French culture by paying more, eating less, and spending more time enjoying the meal. If we pay a bit more for food that is local, humane, ecological, and fair, we invest in the construction of a new food system in which those qualities can become the normal reality.
2 thoughts on “Tapping Feet Leads to Waltzing on the Dance Floor”
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Kelsey I found your post very interesting, because it struck several chords with me: Music, food justice, education, french culture. It connected me with some of my own personal experiences and thoughts. I agree that we as a society have lost a connection to our food, and in the consequences of this disconnection that you point out, specially the second one because it touches on the lack of knowledge about food systems, and, therefore, the need for food education. I think that the closer you are to the origins of our food, the more connected we are to it, but because not everyone can grow his or her own food, it is essential that people become more educated about their food and its connection to other issues such as inhumane labor conditions. The more we know and understand our food, the easier it will be for us to not only accept, but also appreciate and enjoy its simplicity, and for it to become “medium of expressing love and creating fond memories,” while also making us aware of the bigger picture. I also particularly liked your choice of words when you said that you hope to be part of the “revolution.” I think it is important to use this type of strong language and not allow it to dwindle down and compromise on “change” or “reform” when we need a REVOLUTION in the way we think and behave.
Your voice here is strong and engaging, Kelsey. This is conveyed by the way you touch base on telling details in Petrini’s piece: the interesting relationship between “sapore” and “sapere,” the contrast between American food-trends and the French tradition of cuisine. Most striking of all, for me, was your evocation of the distressing “dance” of industrial food-production evoked by the hum of agricultural and processing machinery and the hunched discomfort of underpaid laborers.
Alertness to how the things you learn, in your reading and your internship alike, also make you FEEL supports development of a fully human response to the issues. This blend of the intellectual and the emotional/personal is implied in Pollan’s phrase (drawn from Lévi-Strauss and applied to industrial meat-production) “food that’s good to think.”
I’m glad you’re part of the class this summer.
John