TracyFood

Well, that’s done. For now. 15 May 2010 6:10 am

Posted by Tracy in : history,random,school,writing , View Comments

Just emailed out my paper about how the rise of urban and metropolitan issues in food politics parallels food industrialization in the 20th century (as illustrated by examples from the class readings for my food systems class this term). Well, the first 12 or so pages of it, anyway, and kind of a mess in the middle there where I condensed two sections into a paragraph and a half and a few random references here and there. But I shuffled everything around to end on a strong note, so that’s good, or at least kind of satisfying. Not as satisfying, however, as it will be to sleep. Now. Yay!

Ask TracyFood: should I freak out about genetically modified foods? 10 March 2010 11:05 pm

Posted by Tracy in : GMOs,Marion Nestle,agriculture,books,economics,environment,food safety,food snobbery,friends,geekery,health,history,politics,science,sustainability , View Comments

So I got a message from the splendiferous Ms. Lara earlier today:

Hey, Tracy! Someone on FB is arguing that GM crops are categorically horrible and bad and whatnot. Can you send me some informative links to help educate her (and myself!)? (I seem to recall you linked to an article about the death of an agriculturalist who saved millions of lives with his crops, so of course I thought of you…)

Many thanks to my favorite foodie!!
-L

Well. How could I resist the chance to go all run-on sentence on that? (more…)

I may have created monsters last night, readers. 9 February 2010 11:49 am

Posted by Tracy in : cooking,eating,fun,geekery,history,photos,pictures,potatoes,random,reading,school,silly,writing , View Comments

One is the paper due in my industrial food class tomorrow, which is currently in very drafty form, full of rambles like:

…Hotchkiss comes in, pretending that change is this magical uniform unstoppable force kind of thing, but fortunately we also have the MIT book reminding us that there was no shortage of immovable objects — and sometimes those immovable objects were people, even if sometimes those people were embodying social forces (*cough* PATRIARCHY *cough* I am looking at you, Professor Sedgwick, you jerkface you. *cough cough cough*)

Yeah, I’ve got some revising to do. But anything written is better than nothing, and editing things to make them suck less is way easier than writing, so hey, I’ll take what I got.

Last night’s other little monster, I am happy to report, was of the edible persuasion, and I got pictures.

I’m posting both because the real color is somewhere in between too dark without flash, and weirdly over-lit with. Also, because more fries!

Homemade French fries, from (more…)

My weekend readings, they relate to current events. 10 November 2009 11:09 am

Posted by Tracy in : culture,geekery,health,health at every size,history,monkeys,news,politics,random,reading,school,society , View Comments

So like I mentioned yesterday, I read a lot this weekend (more so than usual even), because I had a new deadline on top of the stuff assigned for class: two of my NYU library books were recalled. (A third book is also now due the 20th, so I’ve got just a little time to keep that one on the back burner for a bit. Anyway.) Book #1 was Weighty Issues: Fatness and Thinness as Social Problems, edited by Jeffery Sobal and Donna Maurer (1999). We read the introduction to an earlier Maurer and Sobal book, Eating Agendas: Food and Nutrition as Social Problems (1995) earlier this term at the start of Marion Nestle’s food sociology class, and it was so interesting I got the whole book out of the library, which in turn led me to some of Sobal and Maurer’s other books, namely Weighty Issues and Book #2: Interpreting Weight: The Social Management of Fatness and Thinness (also 1999). Anyway.

The centerpiece for today’s post is from Chapter 3 of Weighty Issues, “Fat Boys and Goody Girls: Hilde Bruch’s Work on Eating Disorders and the American Anxiety about Democracy, 1930-1960″ by Paula Saukko. I promise you, it’s awesome. Saukko takes a historical case study about some early research into eating disorders, and uses it to demonstrate how health theory and practice is a reflection of its social, cultural, political, and historical context. I was so not expecting this piece to be great, and then (more…)

More obesity big-picture stuff. 14 October 2009 3:08 pm

Posted by Tracy in : consumerism,convenience,food snobbery,health,health at every size,history,politics,responsibility,writing , View Comments

So here’s a few thoughts I cut from last Wednesday’s post since it was running too long. I am tempted to make my health-at-every-size ranting a regularly-scheduled feature, but “Weighty Wednesdays” is just too cutesy and besides, I haven’t exactly been rocking the regularly-scheduled posts these past few months anyway.

So. Here I go. Despite its persistent reporting by both government and mass media sources, I am extremely skeptical about the oft-trumpeted assertion that we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic. I should probably spend some time analyzing the hell out of the use of the term “epidemic” when I think “crisis” or “panic” are more appropriate, but for now I’m trying to get on with this post (more…)