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[sociology-of-food-blog]

An interesting video. And I think it’s a good point. That sometimes things get so caught up in the label that it’s forgotten that focusing on the larger picture is more important. That any effort is an important effort.

[sociology-of-food-blog]

It would be fair to say that most of us lead a life far removed from our hunter-gatherer days. Consequently, studies into remote tribes, and the effect of their diet and foraging behaviour, have been used to try to understand the effect of our modern lifestyle on conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Members of the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer community from Tanzania, obtain 15% of their calories from honey. They have a relatively long life expectancy and little to no incidence of metabolic disease. Research suggests that people in the UK consume an almost equivalent amount of sugar (guidelines recommend no more than 5%) yet there is an obesity epidemic, with a comparable increase in the number of people developing type 2 diabetes. So, are the guidelines wrong? Or are we simply consuming the wrong kind of sugar? If we replaced all table sugar with honey would we see a dramatic decrease in the number of people who develop type 2 diabetes?

[sociology-of-food-blog]

Who’s right? It’s hard to say. When it comes to nutrition, everyone has an opinion. What no one has is an airtight case. The problem begins with a lack of consensus on what makes a diet healthy. Is the aim to make you slender? To build muscles? To keep your bones strong? Or to prevent heart attacks or cancer or keep dementia at bay? Whatever you’re worried about, there’s no shortage of diets or foods purported to help you. Linking dietary habits and individual foods to health factors is easy — ridiculously so — as you’ll soon see from the little experiment we conducted.

[sociology-of-food-blog]

‘Vegetables have moved from the side to the center of the plate. And as another year begins, it appears that plants are the new meat.’

[sociology-of-food-blog]

If you look at the ingredients list and it’s a bunch of words you don’t even know… neither does your body (x)

[sociology-of-food-blog]

This is a great review of the existing data regarding fat shaming and its effects.

[sociology-of-food-blog]

We all know what a vegetarian is - a person who doesn’t eat meat. Though some people choose to be vegetarian to improve their health, many vegetarians stop eating meat because they don’t believe it’s ethical to eat animals. Most of us realise that vegetarianism is an expression of one’s ethical orientation, so when we think of a vegetarian, we don’t simply think of a person who’s just like everyone else except he or she doesn’t eat meat. We think of a person who has a certain philosophical outlook, whose choice not to eat meat is a deeper reflection of a deeper belief system in which killing animals for human ends is considered unethical. We understand that vegetarianism reflects not merely a dietary orientation, but a way of life. If a vegetarian is someone who believes that it’s unethical to eat meat, what, then, do we call a person who believes that it’s ethical to eat meat? If a vegetarian is a person who chooses not to eat meat, what is a person who chooses to eat meat? Currently, we use the term ‘meat eater’ to describe anyone who is not vegetarian. But how accurate is this? As we established, a vegetarian is not simply a ‘plant eater’. Eating plants is a behaviour that stems from a belief system. The term 'meat eater’ isolates the practice of consuming meat, as though it were divorced from a person’s beliefs and values. It implies that the person who eats meat is acting outside of a belief system. But is eating meat truly a behaviour that exists independent of a belief system? Do we eat pigs and not dogs because we don’t have a belief system when it comes to eating animals? In much of the industrialised world, we eat meat not because we have to; we eat meat because we choose to. We eat animals simply because it’s what we’ve always done, and because we like the way they taste. Most of us eat animals because it’s just the way things are. We don’t see eating meat as we do vegetarianism - as a choice, based on a set of assumptions about animals, our world and ourselves. Rather, we see it as a given, the 'natural’ thing to do, the way things have always been and always will be. We eat animals without thinking about what we are doing and why because the belief system that underlies this behaviour is invisible. This invisible belief system is what I can carnism.

from ‘Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows’ by Melanie Joy. (via sociology-of-food)

[sociology-of-food-blog]

Last Meals of Innocent Men

Campaign for Amnesty International, displaying the final meal requests of prisoners executed on Death Row, who were later found innocent.

Photographed by James Reynolds

[sociology-of-food-blog]

I posted a new piece describing how modernist cuisine/molecular gastronomy is catching up to an obscure treatise from the 1930s by F.T. Marinetti on how Italian Futurism can make a better cuisine. i mention a lot of people in this one and spent a lot of time on it so any feedback or clicks or sharing is greatly appreciated!

[sociology-of-food-blog]

I’ve spilled a lot of virtual ink on Soylent over the past year—I count thirteen pieces, including the five-day experiment from last summer when I ate nothing but the stuff for a full week.

This, though, is probably the last Soylent-specific piece that I’ll write for a while. It’s the piece that I’ve wanted to do all along.

Here we’re going to talk about how the final mass-produced Soylent product fits into my life, without any stunts or multi-day binges.

More importantly, we’re going to take a look at exactly what might drive someone in the most food-saturated culture in the world to bypass thousands of healthy, normal, human-food meal choices in favor of nutritive goop. It’s something a lot of folks simply can’t seem to wrap their heads around.

Today it’s relatively easy to make a healthy meal, so why in the hell would anyone pour Soylent down their throat? But if you’re asking that question and genuinely can’t see an answer, then you’re demonstrating both a profound over-projection of your own cultural norms and also a stunning lack of empathy.

Food is for some people a genuine struggle. Just because many in the first world have the ability to go to a grocery store and stock up on healthy stuff doesn’t mean it’s easy, or even possible, for everyone.

Blithely dismissing someone’s inability to whip up a healthy meal by tossing off a condescending “Soylent? Gross! You don’t need that! Just go cook something quick and healthy!” can be about as wrongheaded and insensitive as telling an alcoholic that they could fix all their problems by just drinking less or telling a clinically depressed person that they’d feel better if they’d just stop moping and cheer up.

The psychology of Soylent and the prison of first-world food choices | Ars Technica

[sociology-of-food-blog]

Can We Make Meat Out of Plants? | The Good Stuff

Craig talks to Ethan Brown, CEO of Beyond Meat. Beyond Meat strives to produce a sustainable plant-based meat replacement. 

[sociology-of-food-blog]

National burger chain Wayback Burgers is taking a major step towards normalizing bug protein by adding Peruvian chocolate-flavored cricket powder to a limited-edition Oreo mud pie milkshake, starting July 1.

The biggest issue with the new shake will be shifting consumer attitudes.

[sociology-of-food-blog]

Entomophagy around the world—a map of the who, where, what and how of global insect consumption

Source

[sociology-of-food-blog]

Check your cognitive bias.

Which do you fall victim to most often? 

[sociology-of-food-blog]

The food movement over the past couple of decades has substantially altered consumer behavior and reshaped the competitive landscape. Chains like Sweetgreen, a salad purveyor, are grabbing market share from traditional fast food companies. Brands such as Amy’s Kitchen, with its organic products, and Kind bars are taking some of the space on shelves once consumed by Nestlé’s Lean Cuisine and Mars. For the large established food companies, this is having disastrous consequences. Per capita soda sales are down 25 percent since 1998, mostly replaced by water. Orange juice, a drink once seen as an important part of a healthy breakfast, has seen per capita consumption drop 45 percent in the same period. It is now more correctly considered a serious carrier of free sugar, stripped of its natural fibers. Sales of packaged cereals, also heavily sugar-laden, are down over 25 percent since 2000, with yogurt and granola taking their place. Frozen dinner sales are down nearly 12 percent from 2007 to 2013. Sales per outlet at McDonald’s have been on a downward spiral for nearly three years, with no end in sight. To survive, the food industry will need more than its current bag of tricks. There is a consumer shift at play that calls into question the reason packaged foods exist. There was a time when consumers used to walk through every aisle of the grocery store, but today much of their time is being spent in the perimeter of the store with its vast collection of fresh products — raw produce, meats, bakery items and fresh prepared foods. Sales of fresh prepared foods have grown nearly 30 percent since 2009, while sales of center-of-store packaged goods have started to fall. Sales of raw fruits and vegetables are also growing — among children and young adults, per capita consumption of vegetables is up 10 percent over the past five years.

[sociology-of-food-blog]

We all know what a vegetarian is - a person who doesn’t eat meat. Though some people choose to be vegetarian to improve their health, many vegetarians stop eating meat because they don’t believe it’s ethical to eat animals. Most of us realise that vegetarianism is an expression of one’s ethical orientation, so when we think of a vegetarian, we don’t simply think of a person who’s just like everyone else except he or she doesn’t eat meat. We think of a person who has a certain philosophical outlook, whose choice not to eat meat is a deeper reflection of a deeper belief system in which killing animals for human ends is considered unethical. We understand that vegetarianism reflects not merely a dietary orientation, but a way of life. If a vegetarian is someone who believes that it’s unethical to eat meat, what, then, do we call a person who believes that it’s ethical to eat meat? If a vegetarian is a person who chooses not to eat meat, what is a person who chooses to eat meat? Currently, we use the term ‘meat eater’ to describe anyone who is not vegetarian. But how accurate is this? As we established, a vegetarian is not simply a 'plant eater’. Eating plants is a behaviour that stems from a belief system. The term 'meat eater’ isolates the practice of consuming meat, as though it were divorced from a person’s beliefs and values. It implies that the person who eats meat is acting outside of a belief system. But is eating meat truly a behaviour that exists independent of a belief system? Do we eat pigs and not dogs because we don’t have a belief system when it comes to eating animals? In much of the industrialised world, we eat meat not because we have to; we eat meat because we choose to. We eat animals simply because it’s what we’ve always done, and because we like the way they taste. Most of us eat animals because it’s just the way things are. We don’t see eating meat as we do vegetarianism - as a choice, based on a set of assumptions about animals, our world and ourselves. Rather, we see it as a given, the 'natural’ thing to do, the way things have always been and always will be. We eat animals without thinking about what we are doing and why because the belief system that underlies this behaviour is invisible. This invisible belief system is what I can carnism.

from ‘Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows’ by Melanie Joy.