Abstract Food connects people and land, a link that the Italian Fascist regime exploited through their seizure of local culinary culture for the promotion of national demographic goals. This article traces the connections between the regime’s concurrent drives for food production and sexual reproduction. It will show the propagandistic potential of recipes, and also the limits of top-down dietary change

Abstract The disparity between rates of food insecurity experienced in households across Canada (8.3%) and in Indigenous households specifically (nearly half) is alarming. Many previous studies have demonstrated the physical, spiritual, mental, social and emotional benefits of consuming traditional foods (primarily wild animal food sources and wild edible plants), yet many Indigenous peoples in northern

Abstract This article explores the new food experiences of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the First World War, drawing evidence from scholarly works, archives and soldier accounts. Having come from a predominantly British food culture in Australia, the AIF encountered new tastes and eating habits in the Middle East and Europe, which they experienced in dual roles as soldiers and tourists

Abstract During the Covid-19 pandemic, the French Government imposed a strict lockdown from March 17th to May 11th 2020. These extraordinary times challenged the social norm of commensality, a practice that is particularly strong and engrained in France. How has lockdown impacted meal-sharing habits? How have the rules and norms of commensality withstood the weakening of social bonds caused by lockdown

Abstract “Who would have thought that out of all the dishes on our menu, Americans would go nuts for a salad mixed with a dark savory paste of fermented tea?” The demand for Burma Superstar’s laphet thoke (fermented tea leaf salad) came initially as a surprise to San Francisco-restaurateur Desmond Tan. By 2018 the restaurant’s fermented tea leaf salad was the fourth most popular restaurant item in

Abstract In this paper we use duoethnography (collaborative autoethnography) to explore food in our migration experiences between Australia and Scotland. In doing so we highlight how autoethnography is underutilized in food scholarship. Previous research on food and migration highlights how migrants maintain and adapt homeland foodways. By contrast, we show how young migrants from high-income countries

Abstract This article explores the complicated place of sugar in the display of family connectedness and health in a white, middle class Australian family. In the context of heightened anxiety about childhood obesity, we present the Baker family as a case study to explore the pleasures and tensions that sugar consumption produces in families. On their birthdays, each child has a luxurious “Hammer Cake”

Abstract Relying on auto-ethnography, I reflect on the role sourdough and bread-making practices have played during the COVID-19 pandemic. I explore the agency of a non-human entity—the sourdough—and the relations that emerge from nurturing it. In particular, I inquire what living relationally means for me—a professional migrant—in a time that is not only challenging, due to the pandemic and consequent

Abstract During the global COVID pandemic, cooking and baking have reemerged as popular at-home pastimes. In this essay, we focus on digital cooking classes offered by Airbnb. Responding to restrictions on physical mobility, as well as to the sudden demand for leisure activities which could be experienced from one’s home, in early April 2020, Airbnb launched a new service called “Online Experiences”

(2021). Italian Food Activism in Urban Sardinia. Place, Taste, and Community. Food and Foodways: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 108-110.

Abstract This essay will interrogate how hip-hop—a form whose sound is not only connected to but defined by ideas of place—uses food and place as discursive objects to construct notions Southern urban particularity. Reading soul food as both a national cuisine symbolizing Black resilience in the face of institutional racial violence and a local cuisine that can symbolize the particularity of place

Abstract The healthfulness of the populations’ diets has long been a concern in Scotland. However, despite policies aimed at improving the healthfulness of people’s diet, it remains poor. The failure of these policies to bring about desired changes is partly because the relationship between dietary advice, understandings of it and the healthfulness of food practices is complex. The Scottish Government

Abstract In August, 2020 in San Francisco, everyone, and every restaurant, was just trying to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, three clear plastic domes popped up in front of Hashiri, a Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant on Mint Plaza; Hashiri’s manager explained to reporters that these domes ensconcing wealthy diners were chosen to keep unhoused neighbors out of sight and out of the way. Around

Abstract Interest in home gardening has burgeoned since governments around the world imposed lockdowns to suppress the spread of SARS-CoV-2. This essay reflects on the growth of home gardens in the locked-down Philippines by analyzing discourses in two home gardening interest groups in Facebook. A particularly salient discourse revolves around the notion of being a “productive” home gardener in a time

Abstract We share in this reflection a selection of our own daily experiences and observations from Turkey and the U.S. of how Covid-19 has affected people’s relationship to shopping for food. We aim to show the multiple shifts that occurred in the mechanisms of trust that used to define how food is procured. We illustrate how disruptions in conventional and alternative food supply chains in both countries

Abstract This paper explores the history of jumbles, a type of cookies, through the duration of American history from the colonial period through today. The evolution of jumbles illustrates the ways that recipes have been continually adapted and put to a variety of political and social uses. In particular, this essay seeks to further debates in food studies over the nature of authenticity by exploring

Abstract Food miles is a concept developed in the 1990s as a critique of the negative social and environmental consequences of transporting foods over very long distances. While intended to draw attention to a contemporary problem, the movement of food has a long history to which the concept of food miles can be usefully applied. Drawing upon government correspondence, statistics and personal journals

Abstract This article analyses food schools in Copenhagen. Organized differently from the majority of Copenhagen schools, twelve food schools have chefs on site and involve pupils in preparing, cooking, and serving the daily meals. Four food schools formed the empirical basis of a qualitative study conducted in 2016, which involved interviewing pupils, food school coordinators, management, and chefs

Globalization has advanced at an accelerated pace during the 20th century. This is also true for the expansion of East Asian cuisines in Germany, which is the major theme discussed in the yearbook ...

Abstract Artisan cheese enthusiasts often celebrate the preservation of tradition, while the marketplace in heritage foods pays a premium for products cast as traditional. But ethnographic research with cheesemakers revealed a complex dynamic between continuity and change. Practices that some considered essential to tradition were considered dispensable—even problematic—by others. While external forces

Abstract Over the last few years on Thursday evenings, the main streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel’s largest haredi (ultra-Orthodox) cities, becomes a culinary meeting place. The Eastern European Jewish cuisine sustained by the haredi kitchen attracts non-haredi visitors to a society that tends to keep to itself. This article presents an ethnographic investigation of a new culinary scene that brings

Abstract Using food and meals as a basis of approach to a subject establishes almost instant relatability. It can lead to amazing insights, but with the power of this insight comes an equally powerful ability to form cruel judgments and even create myth. Such is the case with Howard Hughes and his compulsive activity regarding meals, especially the size and quantity of the peas served with his customary

Abstract Although food waste is gaining attention as an issue of environmental, social, and economic concern, this topic has only been taken up minimally by food scholars, despite its apparent relevance to food systems scholarship. Through a literature scan of nine food systems journals, we identify and characterize all instances of “food waste” and “food loss” mentions. We find that reference to this

Abstract We confront the expiration date whenever we shop, eat or discard food. This label has changed our foodways in profound and unforeseen manners, on the one hand increasing food safety while on the other reducing our sensory ability to judge food, thus leading to an increase in food waste. Only by understanding how the quality and expiration date of a product are interrelated and co-constructed

Abstract Food insecurity is a significant problem in the U.S., disproportionately impacting people with disabilities. Yet, little scholarship exists about disability and food, particularly on people in institutions, with even less from disabled people’s perspectives. This article presents two ethnographic examples from different types of “community placements.” These first-hand accounts by disabled

Abstract This study looks at the ways in which Israeli female chefs interpret professional cookery and mobilize their position to form feminine restaurant spaces, in which they instill their professional agenda. Israeli female chefs, we argue, maintain that their gender grants them professional flexibility to construct cooking spaces where alternative working norms apply and certain privileges, such

Abstract This contribution analyses the problematics underlying how food related matters act as evidence of parental neglect in child protection work in Iceland. Our intention is to cast a critical light upon child protection workers’ judgments about the foodways practices of parents under investigation and what this says about the child protection system. Neglect on the basis of malnutrition is a

Abstract This article considers the emerging Bolivian gastronomic discourse as a project fraught with tensions. On the one hand, the discourse surrounding Bolivian cuisine, as presented in urban restaurants, highlights a new kind of nationalism that promotes regional cooking and innovation. This process has elevated indigenous ingredients, such as quinoa, chuño (freeze-dried potatoes), and llama meat

Abstract We utilized key informant interviews to examine traditional diet (TD) perceptions among members of the Hispanic Caribbean (HC) community in New York City (Dominicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, n = 23). While the cuisines share many similarities, the interviews revealed differences in how the TDs were evaluated. Cubans emphasized the unhealthiness of their TD, while Dominicans and Puerto Ricans

Abstract When it comes to food, eating and technologies, convenience is constructed as contradictory: on the one hand as a practice that saves time and effort, and on the other hand, an easy and often “unhealthy” choice, contributing to obesity rates. Moralizing, classed and gendered discourses around health and obesity mean that convenient options are rarely portrayed as “good choices”. Through ethnographic

Abstract In a qualitative content analysis of The Vegan Society’s quarterly publication, The Vegan, spanning 73 years and nearly 300 issues, the trajectory of one of the world’s most radical and compassionate counter cuisine collectives is presented and critically assessed. The Vegan Society’s history provides a case study on the ways in which social movements negotiate difference and conflict. Specifically

Abstract Cocineras tradicionales—traditional female cooks—are women of Mexican indigenous descent who embody the status of food tradition bearers and the “ethnic” components of Mexican foodways. In the climate of enthusiasm generated by the 2010 nomination of “traditional Mexican cuisine” as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO, cocineras tradicionales are esteemed social figures and both a driving

Abstract This article examines how Gourmet, the nation’s most influential food magazine, covered Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War. Between its first article in 1969 and its last issue in 2009, Gourmet published 56 pieces on the region’s nine countries over 40 years. The tone and scope of this coverage changed very little, demonstrating how Gourmet failed to evolve in its stated purpose of using

Abstract Culinary nationalism is not unique to Japan, although its performance by the Japanese government has received significant attention and criticism as exemplified in its so-called “sushi police” program. This and other counterpart programs were explicit attempts to “authenticate” Japanese food abroad, which the government eventually rescinded in response to backlash from within and outside Japan

Abstract This text introduces the articles prepared for this special issue with the general theme of trust in food. It briefly explores the reasons why people worry about their food, and then surveys the historical literature. This introduction proposes a five-stage model of a process of ‘trust–distrust–trust,” which could be applied almost anywhere and at almost any time. A brief presentation of the

Abstract This article examines the interplay of science, meat, and animals through a reappraisal of the trichinosis outbreaks during a critical period in the development of a meat inspection regime in Imperial Germany. Taking a more domestic approach than previous treatments, it questions why solutions to the problems of this parasitic disease moved from the hands of physicians, who initially called

Abstract In general, the perception of food additives tends to be negative. Contemporary research has indicated that consumers have limited knowledge of the origins and composition of such substances, which are seen as unnatural and unhealthy. This article centers on the representation of food additives as a matter of key importance to the public’s conceptualization of them. The method was to make

Abstract Trust can be defined as the suspension of suspicion, the absence of calculation, and the belief in reciprocity. Its gold standard is rooted in personal intimacy. Yet societies where direct social contact becomes fleeting, impersonal, and instrumental, and where power is usually delegated, cannot bank on proximity to sustain exchange. While acknowledging that other mechanisms help coordinate

Abstract This article considers the Planta food scare that gripped the Netherlands in 1960. A new synthetic emulsifier had been added to a brand of margarine—called “Planta”—and a large number of people became seriously ill. The article uses the food scare as a point of departure to illuminate Dutch food culture and culture as a whole. It addresses the cultural and regulatory aspects of the scare.

Abstract We investigate trends in food education in French secondary schools through a diachronic study of school biology curricula and textbooks produced over the past 50 years as they convey a sense of “danger” or “trust” in the foods pupils eat and the foods and food systems they learn about. Our results show that a vision of “sanitized” man and the implicit valorization of industrial and medical

Abstract This article focuses on the evolution of the relationships between food marketing communication and public education in France from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Firstly a broad historical reconstruction of the extension of food marketing communication to the sphere of public school is proposed. References to school in advertisements aimed at children in the postwar

Abstract 3D printing technologies are beginning to be employed to fabricate new food products. One of the more unusual and potentially controversial adoptions of this novel food technology involves the use of laboratory-cultured meat or insect-based ingredients to support ethical consumption, food security, and environmental sustainability initiatives. In this article, we discuss findings from our

Abstract In this article, we focus on how taste is used in contemporary food education. By critically discussing a series of academic studies that design and evaluate taste education programs for children, we argue that most of the literature on taste education demonstrates a reductive understanding of taste and is essentially mistrustful of children’s taste rather than developing children’s ability

Abstract Despite centuries of colonialism, Yucatec Maya women and men retain a rich body of specialized culinary practices with roots in the pre-Columbian past. Recently this intangible heritage has become the focus of a variety of forms of culinary tourism, some of which are local enterprises that bring much needed cash into small rural communities. This article presents details about how a small

Abstract In this exploratory case study, I examine how the embeddedness of alternative food networks shapes consumers’ purchasing behavior. Data include nine interviews, observation, and content analysis concerning the independent, Vermont-based seafood company, Starbird Fish. I find that social ties between Starbird Fish’s owner/head fisherman and its customers mediated consumers’ purchasing behavior

Abstract The Peruvian Andes are home to incredible biodiversity, which has sustained human life for thousands of years. However, consumption patterns are shifting as a result of neoliberal policies that influence food accessibility and dietary delocalization. As women are often disproportionately affected by these trends, this study takes an ethnographic approach to understanding dietary delocalization

Abstract Across the globe, people are working to document, revitalize, and in some cases, commodify heritage cuisines. Possibilities to engage in these projects for Sámi cuisines in Sweden are numerous, including the creation of cookbooks, artisanal food products, and culinary training programs. The goal of this article is to illustrate Sámi engagement with global food activism in order to advance

Abstract Next to blood, fast food and junk food make up the most common meals in ‘80s vampire fiction. Whether munching on chips, devouring a Big Mac, or slurping down soda, humans use these foods to satisfy hunger, assuage anxiety, provide a needed jolt of caffeine, and pass the time between sunset and sunrise. The vampires in these works tend to function in one of three ways. They can serve as metaphors

ABSTRACT The legacy of French Creole culture in Missouri is particularly remarkable in the community of Old Mines, located in the North Eastern section of the Ozark Mountains. More isolated than the larger French village of Ste. Genevieve on the Mississippi River, this historically mining community has until recently retained a strong collective identity founded on the use of the French Creole language

ABSTRACT Faced with heightened xenophobia and economic decline, middle class Senegalese in Paris provide a striking example of the ways immigrants reinforce transnational hierarchies as they cling to (post)colonial privilege. This article examines how Senegalese immigrants and their French-born children draw on eating practices to index religion as an axis of social differentiation, producing hierarchies

ABSTRACT How does Picard Surgelés, a frozen-food company with an international supply chain, thrive in France, a country where a well-developed and widely shared understanding of a national cuisine excludes the use of industrial methods, such as flash-freezing, and privileges locally-sourced ingredients? Drawing from both Picard's advertising materials and consumer comments about the company posted

ABSTRACT French colonists in seventeenth century New France were introduced to maize, the staple of the Native American diet. In the eighteenth century, when French agriculturalists settled along the Mississippi River, they grew maize but preferred not to eat it themselves, as fur traders and soldiers had previously done. Maize avoidance reflected the changing socio-economic framework of French settlement

ABSTRACT This introductory essay provides a general reflection on the meanings of ‘French food’ and proposes analytical directions to explore this concept. While this expression is often associated with refinement, restaurant culture, and haute cuisine, in this special issue we are extending the frame of its meaning to explore the ways in which this category relates to processes of identity construction

ABSTRACT Scholars have found that assumed connections between meat eating and performances of masculinity are perpetuated across the American public sphere. However, food expectations and choices are constantly shifting and evolving over time. Recent cultural shifts in the middle and upper-middle class American foodscape that moralize “good” eating as choosing local, organic, and eco-conscious foods

ABSTRACT The National School Lunch Program (NLSP) draws on federal poverty guidelines to distribute free, reduced, and full price meals to students throughout the United States. The NSLP aims to provide nutritious meals to students in need, and in 2014, the Community Eligibility Provision expanded food entitlements, allowing high poverty districts to serve all meals free. This study analyzes pilot

ABSTRACT Recent ethnographies from the anthropology of food and the senses have shown how moments in which people taste foods are shaped by scientific knowledge, methods, and rationales. Building on approaches developed in science and technology studies, this article offers an ethnography of the field to which this shaping power has been assigned: the scientific study of taste. Detailed tracing and

ABSTRACT Sushi first achieved widespread popularity in the United States in the mid-1960s. Many accounts of sushi's US establishment foreground the role of a small number of key actors, yet underplay the role of a complex web of large-scale factors that provided the context in which sushi was able to flourish. This article critically reviews existing literature, arguing that sushi's US popularity arose

Lexan is a registered trademark for SABIC Innovative Plastics’ (formerly General Electric Plastics) brand of a thermoplastic polycarbonate. Lexan is the brand name for polycarbonate sheet and resin in a wide range of grades. Lexan is mainly used in three domains: building (glazing and domes), industry (machine protection and fabricated parts) and communication and signage. Common usages include space

ABSTRACT This essay is an open letter to the hospitality industry, a partial genealogy of a life in food service, and a direct response to the Food and Foodways essay, Lexan Ceiling. Various food journalists have recently addressed themes of inequities within the food service industry based upon ethnicity, race and gender. For decades there have been a paucity of opportunities in the field for viable

ABSTRACT The culinary profession and discourses advocating the pursuit of passions have gained prominence in the American cultural landscape, along with having captured scholarly attention. Yet, research on career changes into culinary entrepreneurship is lacking. Drawing on interview and survey data, this article examines career changers' motivations for pursuing personal cheffing. Participants wanted