Monkey Monday: readings in review. 28 September 2009 11:56 pm
Posted by Tracy in : anthropology,eating,geekery,nutrition,random,reading,school , add a commentOkay, party people, I was going to write a top ten list awesome food-related things I’ve read in the past week, but I am coming up against my self-imposed midnight deadline and I’m suddenly stupid tired, so here’s the bits of the list I managed to write up before my brain shut down:
From the readings for my food sociology class last Monday:
Not all harmful conditions are considered social problems. Consider nutrition. Medical authorities argue that the typical American diet contains undesirable levels of fats and cholesterol…. This diet endangers the well-being of individuals, who face greater risks of heart disease; and it also threatens societal well-being by forcing Americans to devote a growing share of their national income to health care. Yet the nutritional inadequacies of the American diet rarely appear on lists of social problems even though the condition fits most objectivist definitions.
—Joel Best, “Introduction: Typification and social problems construction,” Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1989
Look at the date on that! Twenty years ago, in my lifetime, at a time in my life I can clearly remember, food clearly defined as not a social problem. Fascinating! (more…)
