Cuisine & Identity

FNU 100 – Fall 2023

Week 1 – Class 2

©AndreaMoraes2023
Menu for today
1. Our proper introductions
2. Why study food?
5 min break
3. Cuisine & Identity
4. Game

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Any questions
about the course
organization?

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 Thank you for posting your introductions on the
discussion board
LOVE…
• Travelling FOOD EXPERIENCE…
POSITIVE THING… • Videogames
• Loyal • Dogs
• • Lots of interest in food: Cooking, baking,
• Outgoing Cats
eating, different cuisines
• To learn
• Reliable • Making new friends • Working in the food industry: e.g. pizza
• Good listener • Walking shop
• Quick thinker • Soccer • Enjoy watching cooking and baking shows
• Hockey •
• Kind hearted • Music
Family members are chefs or have
• Adventurous restaurants
• Journaling
• Dedicated • Crochet • High school courses, cooking classes,
•
degrees in food
• Hardworking Biking
• Cooking authentic dishes – Egyptian,
• Watching movies
• Persistent • Playing music/ listening/ creating playlists Italian, Jewish cuisines
• Get along with • Shopping • International students: France, Nigeria,
others • Trying new foods Netherlands
• Compassionate • Volunteer at TMU urban Farm
• Easy to talk to
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Our Group
• 9 x Business Management
• 5 x Computer Science
• 6 x Nursing
• 6 x Child & Youth Care
• 5 x Bachelor in Engineering
• 5 x Hospitality and Tourism
• 3 x Social Work
• 3 x Prof. Communications
• 3 x Biomedical Sciences
• 2 x Graphic Communications
• 2 x Dance
07 – 4th year
06 – 3dr year
20 – 2nd year
38 – 1st year
• 2 x Public Health
• 2 x Urban & Regional Planning
• 1 x Fashion • 1 x Env. & urban Sustainability
• 1 x Nutrition • 1 x Geographic Analysis
• 1 x Financial Mathematics • 1 x Business Tech Management
• 1 x English • 1 x Sociology
• 2 x Early Childhood Studies • 1 x Biology Co-op
• 1 x Professional Music • 1 x Accounting & Finance
• 1 x Psychology • 1 x Language & Intercultural relations
• 1 x Math & its Applications • 1 x Urban & Regional Planning
• 1 x Occupational Health & Safety • 1 x Media Production
 Your
introduction

• In groups of 4: introduce yourself

through food.
• Find either one thing you all like, or
one thing you don’t like.
• The person with the closest
birthday will be the reporter

https://deepblue.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/who-are-you.jpg
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 Reporting

We like__________ We don’t like_________

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2 – Why study food?

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 2 – Notes on Food
What is the first thing that comes to your mind

Studies & Food Systems

when you think about food?

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Why Study Food? Professor of American Studies at the University of
Notes from Maryland, U.S.

Belasco, chapter 1

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https://sites.bu.edu/gastronomyblog/2012/09/30/dr-warren-belasco-asks-can-food-save-washington/
 Meanings of Food (Belasco)
• Essential for life
• World largest industry
• Core of social relationships
– Coffee, romantic dinner, family lunch,
celebrations….
• Civilization is impossible without food
– Agriculture – 10.000 years ago - city states and
empires, art, music, war

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 Meanings of food (Belasco)
• We are what we eat (Brillat-Savarin), and what we
won’t eat (Lucretious)
• Cause of anxiety
– Cause of disease and death
– Hunger and food insecurity
– Obesity and related diseases
• Food drove colonization!

Food Matters!
©AndreaMoraes2023 https://affairscloud.com/2-37bn-people-severely-or-moderately-hungry-in-2020-report-by-5-un-agencies/
https://www.worldobesity.org/resources/resource-library/world-obesity-atlas-2022
 However, In the past:
until • Focus on Food production: Economic,
Chemistry, Agronomy, Engineering,
recently, Marketing, Labour relations
• Less studies on Food Consumption – what,
there was how, and why we eat
– Family dinner rituals, cookbooks, appeal of
little interest fast food
– Embodied, concrete, practical experience
in food
studies
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 Invisibility of Food
Studies: Why?
1. Dualism mind over body
2. Separate spheres until the 60’s
– Private female sphere of
consumption X Public male
sphere of production
– Institutional biases (male
dominated and female dominated
professions)
3. Technological Utopianism https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/1950s-family.html

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 Invisibility of Food Studies: Why?
3. Technological utopianism
Food work as drudgery that
technology would make
disappear
– In the household
– In the farms

Let’s think of how many

appliances we have at home
today….
https://wallacebaine.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/4922970480_04ee575e82_b.jpeg

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 Industrialization of farming

However, there were consequences

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• https://www.permaculturenews.org/images/combine_harvesters_lots_of_them.jpg
 1/4 PIG BULK PACKAGE

Effects of modern
food industry

• Distancing us from nature and

tradition (knowledge loss)
• Obscure links between farms
and dinner table
– Meat-packing industry
example: “Forget the pig as
an animal”
– Obscure working conditions

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https://www.yankeefarmersmarket.com/Pastured-Pork-1-4-Pig-Package-p/5400.htm
 • Industrialized food system increased distance
between production processing and eaters
One example:

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/butcher-economy.html https://www.tradefairny.com/self-service-meat-department.html
Effects of modern food industry

• Intense globalization
of food production
• Cornification of food –
processing, packaging
distribution (Michael
Pollan)
• Increasing and
alarming consumption
of Ultra-processed
foods

http://www.jemome.com/cdn/2013/09/oreo-nutrition-label_193144.jpg
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 Responses
• More people studying food than ever
before, new courses, degrees, ..
• Lively market for food books,
websites, blogs
• Socially conscious food professionals
• Activists' analysis of hunger,
ecological sustainability, ..
• Not to mention the media
• Especially true in a world post Covid-
19

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Contemporary
Concerns
• True cost of food!
• Food issues after Covid 19
• Local food and migrant
• Environmental. Economic,
Social, Cultural concerns

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 ENVIRONMENT SOCIAL

A system’s
SOCIAL
approach to food

Interdisciplinary
Matters all at once – a systems FOOD
approach
- Focus on Relationships
- Drivers and Outcomes
- Complex food system

HEALTH ECONOMY
http://www.sustainablecitiesinstitute.org/topics/food-systems ©AndreaMoraes2023
Small break
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 This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

3 – Cuisine & Identity

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What guide our food choices? (Belasco)
Responsibility

Food choices

Identity ©AndreaMoraes2023
Convenience
 Responsibility
• Being aware of the consequences
of ones action- personal, social,
physiological and political
• Short term consequences and long-
term effects
• Awareness of your place in the food
system
• Remembering how the food got to
you, and anticipating future
consequences
• A political process
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http://www.idahohunger.org/food-systems/
 Convenience
• Price, availability, easy of
preparation
• Requirements of energy,
time, labor, and skill
• Can I get it? Afford it? Make
it?
• Food industry sells
convenience
• Differences in what
conveniences people can
afford
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https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g3524078-d12258798-i247785065-
McDonald_s-Elizabeth_Playford_Greater_Adelaide_South_Australia.html
 Identity
• Personal preference, pleasure,
creativity, the sense of who
you are and where you are
• Includes taste, family and
ethnic background, personal
memories.
• Cultural aspects, such as
values and ideas (good
food/bad food)community
preferences and practices
• Gender – food as female or
male related

©AndreaMoraes2023
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/04/02/176064249/what-do-we-lose-and-gain-when-reducing-a-life-to-a-recipe
 “Cuisine” Cuisine
Belasco (c2)- Popular Anthropology
Identity: are language
we what we High class, All groups have
eat? elite, an identifiable
gourmet cuisine (like
food culture)

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 Cuisine
• Food as system of communication, protocols of usage,
situations and behavior (Barthes 1979)
• Expressive and normative
• You are never “eating alone”
said Fischler (1998)
• Inclusion & Exclusion
• Examples?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8BONu3cn6E

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 Do you agree?
Integrative
• Food not only nourishes but also signifies
approach
• Groups are made of individuals endowed with
proposed by biological organisms
Fischler (1988)
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How is food related to identity formation?

2 dimensions:

biological/nutritional ➔➔➔ the cultural/symbolic

individual/psychological ➔➔➔ the collective/social

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 Integrative Approach
= Two aspects of human relationship with food

Omnivore Principle of
Paradox Incorporation

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The Omnivorous Paradox (Fischler,1998)
Anxiety

Tendency to explore Resistance to Change

Need for change, Prudence
novelty, variety Fear of the unknown
Neophilia Neophobia

Cuisine ©AndreaMoraes2023
 Principle of
Incorporation
• Embodiment (Lupton, 1996)
• The eater not only incorporates
the food, but the food
incorporates the eater into a
culinary system that is
embedded in a culture

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This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC
 Every cuisine has a
Culinary order of meals
(Mary Douglas –Deciphering a
Meal)
• How we eat?(utensils, rules, plates/pots,
etc.) Example?
• Who we eat with – status,hierarchies
gender…Example?
• How we categorize foods - taboos-
delicacies. Example?
• When we eat (# meals/day, time of meals)
Example?
• How much we eat (portions). Example?
• What we eat (edible ……….inedible)

* Danger of relying in stereotypes ©AndreaMoraes2023

 The edible and the inedible
Inedible Edible

Edible by animals, but Edible by humans like

not by me: me, but not by me:

• Ants, termites… • Personal preference

Inedible: •Allergies/sensitivity
•Varies culturally
•Poisonous
plants &
animals
Edible by humans, but not
•Varies humans like me: Edible
culturally by me
•Taboo foods
•Unacceptable in my
Example? culture

Adapted from Kittler &

©AndreaMoraes2023 Sucher, (2001)
 Cuisine

Certain foods are considered good to eat

and good to think (yum) while others are
considered inedible or disgusting (yuck).

Examples of good food / Bad food for you

What is the criteria used?

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https://www.google.ca/search?q=hot+foods&client=safari&rls=en&dcr=0&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZvonFy5_WAhWFyIMKHXsXBFsQ_AUICigB&biw=800&bih=447#imgrc=dYxTa2tHif7FXM:
https://freetheanimal.com/2014/04/explorer-vilhjalmur-stefansson.html
 JAPADOG FROM VANCOUVER

Cuisine (cont.)

• Cuisine – culture’s language – learn

from birth – retain an accent even if
you migrate
• Food voice – referring to intensity

Anthony Bourdain - No Reservations – JAPADOG

2:42 minutes
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X-
yUxJo-WQ
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Commensality
• Magical properties of sharing
food
• “Company” = “com pan’ =
sharing bread

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/joy-of-food/images/img2_2048.jpg
©AndreaMoraes2023
 Memories:
We are what we ate
Example: Madeleines

• Preserving identities despite

changes
• Shared food memories
• Rituals (old or new)
• Comfort Foods (traditional or
modern)
• Appetizer:
A little scene from the movie Ratatouille
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXPlzdTcA-I

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Think –Pair-Share
What is one
comfort food for
you or a food that
brings you good
memories, a sense
of Nostalgia.

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 The changing
character of
cuisines
• Practices that we take to
be timeless and universal
are in fact highly variable
and only recently
“constructed”.

Examples?

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http://www.planet-science.com/umbraco/ImageGen.ashx?image=/media/116224/fork_134016567.jpg&width=600&constrain=true
 1- Set of basic 2- Distinct 3 – Flavour 4 - Manners,
foods, edibles, ways of principles – codes of
Four core foods preparing food. distinctive etiquette,
seasoning protocols
elements of Availability, easy of Techniques, such as E.g. Number of meals

cuisine (Rozin, production,

nutritional costs and
benefits, custom,
cutting, sliding,
mincing, combining,
marinating, dry
Chinese use of soy
sauce, garlic, ginger,
sesame oil;
eaten per day, when,
where

1982) palatability, religious

or social sanction.
curing, frying,
fermentation.
Depend on energy,
Italian use of garlic,
tomato, olive oil,…
Hierarchies

Establish boundaries
time, skill, of acceptability
personnel, Other examples?
technologies
available

©AndreaMoraes2023
5th Characteristic (added by
Belasco)

• Food chain, how food moves from farm to

fork

– Short: Simple infrastructure – close

proximity of production to markets
– Long: Modern cuisines: highly
segmented and extended food chains
• Food miles, added value
(profit)for middlemen

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Modern Challenges… 1. The modern eater has become a mere consumer.
of Food 2. The work of preparing food is increasingly remote.
3. Traditional culinary systems eroded by economic, technological and life-
Identification in style changes.
industrialized food 4. Modern food is less and less identifiable.
societies (Fischler) 5. Food technology is becoming increasingly powerful

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This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
 Examples

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

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 Modern challenges
• If we are what we eat, and we don’t know what we eat, how do we
know who we are?

• Modern uncertainty or insecurity about food induces movements of

reaction and equilibrium (re-identification)
• Regimen – set of rules, pattern of life
• Reinsertion on a comprehensive system where food recovers
meaning and identity.
– New individual diets
– Rituals even with processed foods
• Examples?

https://www.art.com/products/p15063698730-sa-i6856067/roz-chast-the-last-
thanksgiving-new-yorker-cartoon.htm

©AndreaMoraes2023
 What is Canadian Cuisine?
Inspired by Belasco

• Complicated question
• Do Canadians even have a cuisine?
– A dominant cuisine in North America? – food
beliefs and practices associated with British
America’s ruling class and French?
– What about Indigenous peoples?
– What about the diversity of immigrants?
– To be continued…..

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 What’s next:
By Tuesday night:
• Read Belasco – Chapter 2 – Identity, are we
what we eat?
• And post your response to exercise A
Holiday Meal (page 17) – ( example of
culinary order)

For Thursday, our next in-person class

• Read Newman ( 2017) chapter 2, The
Language of Cuisine and/or browse Jacobs This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

(2009) Structural Elements of Canadian

Cuisine.

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 4 – Game: 20 questions
In groups of 2 or 3 write the name of a concept we explored today in class. (BIG
LETTERS ) I will do my best to guess it.
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This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
Thank you!
©AndreaMoraes2023
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC