Belated randomness! Now with extra funny! 28 October 2009 5:32 pm
Posted by Tracy in : books,culture,fast food,food snobbery,fun,funny,health,health at every size,media,nutrition,random,video , add a commentI don’t know about the rest of you, but I find regular laughter to be an essential component of a balanced media consumption lifestyle, right along with serious hard-thinking stuff like class readings. (For sociology next week I had to choose between Barry Popkin’s The World is Fat and Hank Cardello and ghostwriter Doug Carr’s Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat. Yeah, that’s rough. But the Popkin book is shorter and not based on the premise that only the food industry can save us from ourselves, so it wins, even if it may yet force a ranty post or two out of me.) I digress. Here’s a few instances of food politics in pop culture that helped me keep things in perspective: (more…)
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…)
Monkey Monday: belated Thursday thanks. 18 May 2009 2:01 pm
Posted by Tracy in : cooking,good news,health,kitchen gear,Marion Nestle,monkeys,nutrition,school,sustainability,thank you Thursday , 1 comment so farSo first of all: thanks for being over, spring semester! I am getting way too old and cranky to stay up like I did last Wednesday night/Thursday morning to finish my vitamin C paper, but I did get it done, even if I forgot to cite any of Dr. Nestle‘s books in it (sigh). The fortification chapter of Food Politics would’ve been particularly appropriate for examples of how ascorbic acid is a great way to give junk food a health aura — and on top of that, it’s a preservative! Double whammy! On the other hand, I came in at exactly the 10-page limit (after severely truncating my Works Consulted section, which is where all of Dr. Nestle’s books should’ve gone if I’d had the pages), and I’d lost enough sleep without shoehorning in yet another chunk of information. So I’m going to hope everything’s all for the best.
Next, one more item related to the vitamin C paper: big thanks to Andrew for pointing me at a very recent study about vitamin supplements and exercise. So perfect for the “discuss a current paper about your nutrient” requirement!
Let’s see, what else? (more…)
Wednesday wackiness! 13 May 2009 7:47 am
Posted by Tracy in : fun,funny,nutrition,school,tea,video , 3 commentsToday’s very quick post is dedicated to the continued successful writing of my Vitamin C paper, and the following video, which makes me happy every time I watch it. So awesome.
I think it kicks over into pure genius at “When I say ‘Earl Grey,’ you say ‘Yes, please!’” but there’s a call-and-response later on in the song that manages to be even more brilliant. If you don’t believe me, that’s okay — but it does mean you’ll have to watch the video and see if I’m right, or just not wrong.
Enjoy!
Monkey Monday: welcome to hot mess week. 20 April 2009 8:29 am
Posted by Tracy in : cooking,eating,hot mess,meta,news,nutrition,politics,school , 1 comment so farSo last Thursday I mentioned cooking up a hot mess, and considered a series of posts (with pictures) about meals I’ve cooked that tasted way better than they looked. This week, as I attempt to wrangle together my big project for Research Methods, hot messes sound like a fun way to take what I’m sure will be much-needed breaks. BUT. Before I get to all that lighthearted fun, I need to write something about the food politics of a big hot mess in last week’s news.
All the Pepto-Bismol (or store-brand/generic equivalents thereof) on Earth would not be enough to get me through reading the CIA “interrogation technique” memos released by the Obama administration, but here’s a link to the ACLU page with the full documents just in case I develop some seriously hardcore intestinal fortitude. However, I did manage to read excerpts from the memos in in Friday’s New York Times, and that’s how I spotted a bit of food politics so grim I had to reread it repeatedly before circling it in black marker to etch it in my brain as something to write about. So here I go, (more…)
