The reading today once again continued on with the ideas of both globalization and industrialization within countries. The first section of the first reading was discussing the industrialization of the corn industry and tortilla making within Mexico. The Mexican government in 1999 took away subsidies to farmers, which in turn caused small time farmers to have to shut down. Many Mexicans saw this as the end of an era, “more than two thousand years of eating tortillas made from freshly ground corn” (235). All countries react negatively to changes in technology right away the true test is what will be their reaction in the long run. The question raised here was would they be able to keep up with their traditions and ideals while still making advancements in expediency of food production. This created many questions when advancements began to be made in the early 1900’s because labor force for women and men began to be questioned. The way it had been for years were women’s job was to grind up the corn into tortillas which was a tedious task that could take hours. This idea of nationalizing the corn industry was something that threatened local cultures, “The homogenizing effects of national food processing companies may pose as great a threat to local cultures as the more visible cultural imperialism represented by Ronald McDonald” (236). Each change that they made created less individuality than before as the taste and texture of the tortillas deteriorated. This hurt the women’s roles within households because this is something men based judgment upon them off of because they would brag about their wives if they made good tortillas. Men also objected to this originally because they felt it would lead to cheating because it gave the women a great deal of free time at night. It all came back to money for the government here because the mass production by these huge companies created the ability for the government to supply lots of cheap corn. “Government officials justified support for the industry by pointing to economies of scale, since cornmeal could be produced, transported, more cheaply than whole corn” (241).

                The second half of the first reading was focused on Pepsi within a small community in Mexico and how globalization affected all parts of the globe. The fact that there was industrial foods within this region shows the incredible and vast reach that globalization has had and that no matter how small the community there is always a way for Pepsi or Coke to find it. Developing countries were a huge target for these types of companies as they feel they could get in before they had developed a complete food culture. If a company like one of these got in fast enough than they would be able to make their product a staple of the country involved.  One example of this is, “Fast foods and soft drinks likewise became fashionable among India’s urban elite as “liberalization” in the 1990s led the country to abandon its gastronomic nonalignment” (242). The key to all of these productions is the adaption they make to make it fit within the food culture of the country they enter. One example of this from the reading is how when McDonalds entered Mexico they gave salsa to go along with their fries instead of ketchup as it is a local cuisine. Culturally though Mexican middle class is much different than the American middle class who makes it quite dangerous to generalize things. One other way in which they created their own individual culture against these brands is by creating localized styles of soft drinks and such with their own flavors. The key for the women of Mexico was to keep their culture while at the same time maintaining culture by creating the same dishes they had for many years.

                The second article assigned for reading was about the Mad Cow Disease epidemic within Great Britain during the 1990s and examined the different responses to this. This is where the United States and Britain were shown to have different responses as well as different ideas of importance within their societies. Obviously a health concern such as this is horrible publicity for the sale of beef products within England as well as the exporting of beef products throughout the world. Businesses within the country showed this by using beef from other parts of the world to increase consumer confidence in their product. One example of this is, “McDonald’s restaurants in the United Nations quickly announced that their burgers would henceforward be innocent of native beef” (299). The fear of the beef quickly intensified as it was reported by researchers that the BSE or mad cow disease could jump species, therefore putting humans in danger. Right after this there were mixed reactions from other countries. The United States and Australia both banned British beef, but many European countries went back to allowing it after numerous reassurances by the British government. The government of Britain viewed this issue from an interesting perspective though, “Tory politicians tended to view mad cow disease through the eyes of the beef industry, as a potential economic catastrophe rather than as a threat to public health” (300). This is shocking to me that the government would lack morals this much and put the economy over the health of people throughout their country. Another example of this was on the consumer end though. One local butchery instead of getting rid of the beef actually cut the price in half, and many consumers went out and bought a great deal of the product then. This was surprising as there were a great deal of health concerns, but it once again shows that the most important thing for consuming food is price. The European Union put a ban on beef from the United Kingdom which put a permanent damper on the industry. The disease itself was quite confusing and difficult; it took many years to actually find out how the disease got started, and how it may relate all the way back to cannibalism. Overall the focus of this article is on the question of what is more important to governments: the health of their population or their economy.

For our final project, our group Sustainable Future (Tori Yarwood, Rachel Hesse, Josh Zahrbock, and Mike Garrity) decided to create a video examining the idea of sustainability and how we can achieve it if we changed our current food system. Our video contains information from the books that we read in class, professor interviews, a taste test performed in Sorin Hall's main lobby, and some of our own ideas about how we can fix the problem of sustainability. The project was a challenge to complete but all group members are pleased with the finished product. Here it is!

I saw this the other day while browsing around online and thought it was pretty cool. The kid is only 11 and the talk is about five minutes but he touches on a lot of the issues we have discussed this semester.

Over Thanksgiving Break I had the opportunity to interview my grandmother and she told me a really interesting thing that happened in her family in the sixties. The family actually put to a vote whether buying bread or baking bread would be what the family did from that point on. This really marked the place in time where America was shifting from making their own food to becoming more industrialized. 

<<The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating>>

Children ‘s Food and Islamic Dietary Restrictions in Xi'an

Maris Boyd Gillette

This reading is very intresting to me. Even though, I have never been to Xi'an.

As far as I known, qingzhen food is mainly about lamb and beef ( because Hui doesn't eat Pork at all). However, there isn't a lot "real" Hui left. most of Hui has been assimilated by Han. I have friend who is Hui, but he eats anything, we call him faked Hui.

Thus, I would like show you some pictures about the Hui food in Xi'an.

The First picture is the "damaishi jie" in 80'

The Second one is "baozi"

The Third one is "jiaozi"(dumplings)

The Forth one is the "huasheng su"(peanuts cake)

Of these two readings one was about the Hui ethnic group of Muslim's in China, and the relationship between qingzhen dietary requirements (probably similar to what muslim immigrants in the Twincities refer to as halal, which is often advertised at small groceries around certain parts of the Twincities). The other was about the rise of "yuppie" coffees during the 1980s and 1990s. While the connection is not at first obvious, after reading both of the of the texts, it seems as if they involve changing tastes to become more modern.

Hui chinese, being Muslim, have a strict dietary restrictions that forbid the consumption of pork, blood, alcohol, or animals that have not been slaughtered in the Muslim way. These foods are considered to be unclean, and cleanliness really seems to be the main goal of qingzhen food (qingzhen does not exclusively refer to food, but the text only refers to the food part of it). For the most part, food that is not either prepared directly by Hui or at least labeled as qingzhen, if it is in a market. The reason why it matters who prepares it, is because Hui perceive most other ethnic groups (notably Han) as less than sanitary, and a lot of food is made with extensive use of the hands.

The exception to this rule, however is American processed food. Processed food, in general, exists as sort of a neutral zone of qingzhen and non-qingzhen food. This is because it is not made with the hands, but rather by machines. However, with Chinese processed food, lard is a fairly common fat to use in the preparation process, and lard is not qingzhen. With American food, many of the Imams don't eat it, because they have stricter standards for themselves, but most Hui are okay with it because they don't think of it as containing any lard or other particularly non-qingzhen ingredients. Most older Hui don't really like American or other western foods, but they are seen as modern and Hui parents, like many others in China, want their kids to be modern. In addition, some western style snack foods (mainly soft drinks) are kept on hand for visitors. The stereotype for western food is that it doesn't keep you full for long, much like Chinese food in the United States.

The rise of "yuppie" coffees in the United States represents a return, of sorts, to the coffee of yore, when it was still a prestige food, only affordable by the very wealthy. The reason for the change from that older style may have been the appeal of coffee as a "proletarian hunger killer" (this might have, in turn, been related to various temperance movements around the same time. Better for workers to drink coffee on their breaks than liquor). It probably also had to do with the conversion of colonies into "tropical stimulant" factories, as is mentioned in the earlier article that we read Why Can't People Feed Themselves? It also happened especially during the post-World War II era, which was a time of large-scale industrialization of food.

At any rate, Coffee (of the Folgers or Nestle variety) lost much of it's popularity as it began being perceived as old-fashioned by the post-war generation, during the 1970s and 1980s. Because of this, coffee companies needed to find a new angle. Their angle was to stress quality over quantity (including the quality of life of the workers who picked the coffee). This began by finding niches to market to. These were represented by fictional couples and people including "the Grays" (DINKs), "the Pritchetts" (middle aged, trying not to spend much money), "Karen Sperling" (single, working much of the time), "the Taylors" (elderly, worried about caffeine), and most importantly "Joel" (a student who grew up on soft drinks, and doesn't much like coffee). It ended up that specialty coffees were able to revive the market for coffee. This is very apparent to me, as I drink coffee all the time.

http://nicolesbbjessica.blogspot.com/2009/12/lil-kyle-mummy-yugene-2-yr-old-bday-kfc.html 

http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/China/Beijing_Shi/Beijing-1024960/Restaurants-Beijing-McDonalds-BR-1.html

In our FYSem class our most recent series of readings from The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating by James L. Watson and Melissa L. Caldwell examined the infiltration of American fast food into the Chinese culture. The first assigned reading was entitled, “Of Hamburger and Social Space: Consuming McDonald’s in Beijing” by Yunxiang Yan, it’s main focus was on the cultural context in China in regards to fast food, with an emphasis on McDonald’s. In China, McDonald’s symbolizes America and our ideals. The restaurants become a social space where an American-lifestyle can be enjoyed for a meal. The second reading was called “Globalized Childhood? Kentucky Fried Chicken in Beijing” by Eriberto P. Lozada, Jr. which examined the relationship of American-style fast-food and children in China. It emphasized the point of the cultural change going on in China where children are deciding what meals are eaten and are often choosing more Western-style foods. The final reading, “China’s Big Mac Attack” by James L. Watson was about how, though global fast-food restaurants are very similar, they do not promote a “homogeneous global culture” (79), it illustrated the idea that when Western-style restaurants come into new countries they morph to fit the current culture there to some extent, and don’t necessarily force a new culture into the new country.

Yunxiang Yan’s article was very interesting, I knew that the McDonald’s franchises were a huge part of the global culture, but I was unaware as to how they managed to come into the new cultures and incorporate themselves into the older traditions. According to Yan, the popularity of fast food in China is had little to do with the food or how it is consumed; it has a lot to do with the social connotations behind it. In 1987 the first fast food restaurant (KFC) opened in Beijing, and by 1996 that fast-food sector was split into three groups; Western fast-food chains, local imitations, and the “Chinese fast-foods.” The bringing in of Western-style eateries brought a more pleasant staff, Yan claimed that before American restaurants came into China, most of the local eateries staffed “ill-tempered workers who acted as if they were distributing food to hungry beggars instead of paying customers” (87). The food at fast-food restaurants wasn’t well liked, but it was the atmosphere that sold. One customer claimed that “The Big Mac doesn’t taste great; but the experience of eating in this place makes me feel good. Sometimes I even imagine that I am sitting in a restaurant in New York or Paris” (91). The fast-food restaurants became a place where “middle class professionals, trendy yuppies, and well-educated youths” (90) resided. McDonald’s and other places like it also became a place where women could eat without a male present and not be looked down upon, thus it became a hotspot for women. It was really interesting to read about McDonald’s and its effect on the Chinese culture.

The next reading by Eriberto P. Lozada, Jr. was equally interesting and tied in well to the previous reading. Lozada examined how fast-food became so popular for families in China. Fast-food restaurants in China recognized that children were often the ones deciding where the whole family ate, so chains like KFC began trying to lure the kids in. KFC made a logo specifically for the children in China who could not relate to Colonel Sanders, its name was Chicky and it “embodies what KFC hopes is the dining experience of its younger clientele” (166). I found it really interesting that KFC would cater specifically to Chinese children. This reminded me of a discussion we had in class. We discussed the legality of banning Happy Meal toys in San Francisco. I wondered as I read, if one day the parents would want to ban the birthday parties, hostesses specifically for children, and the sponsorship of childhood activities that KFC provides in order to get Chinese children in their doors. Chinese children have helped fast-food chains like KFC come into China’s culture and develop a specifically Chinese chain in the country.

The final reading in a sense drew all of the reading together; James L. Watson drew on the idea of Western fast-food as a global, but local, food source. He claims that “The fast-food industry did not create a market where none existed; it responded to an opportunity presented by the collapse of an outdated Confucian family system” (74), making the argument that fast-food does not force itself into communities; it instead incorporates itself when it can. McDonald’s and KFC do not necessarily create a homogeneous global culture; they instead implant themselves into changing cultures and morph themselves accordingly so the two cultures blend together.

Image courtesy of http://www.businesspundit.com/high-costs-force-mcdonalds-out-of-iceland/

The reading for this week was three similar articles that talked about fast food and “Westernization” overseas, specifically, China.  Fast food isn’t something that seems very practical in Chinese culture.  In an article by Yunxiang Yan he writes that “…’fast eating’ contradicts the ancient principle in Chinese culinary culture that regards slow eating as healthy and elegant”(pg. 82).  I think that this is interesting because McDonalds ended up becoming such a success in China.  This was largely in part to the facilities of the fast food, rather than the food itself. 

Most of the people in China didn’t even really like the food at the new fast food restaurants, however they did fall in love with the “feeling” of being at these restaurants.  When people went to McDonalds or KFC or any other “western” fast food, they felt like they were eating very modern, like it was the cool thing to be doing.  Yan also writes in his article about a mother who, even though she hates the taste of it, takes her daughter to McDonalds regularly because she “wants her daughter to learn more about American culture.”  This is the mother’s way of helping to prepare her daughter for a modern society. 

Throughout all three articles the reoccurring theme seems to be that people in China want to eat at these places because it gives them a feeling of modernity.  This reminded me of the last article we read “India Shopping: Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging,” because in this article, too, people didn’t necessarily need to shop at those stores because they had to, but more because they wanted to because of the feeling that they got from being there.   

  Most of the restaurants in China were not kept very clean until the fast food chains came around.  The cleanliness of the fast food restaurants enticed a lot of people to eat there.  It wasn’t just the cleanliness that made them more appealing, but also the new “food culture” that enticed the “other” group of people to visit these “Western” chains.  For example, at the “regular” Chinese restaurants women would not be seen alone eating there and when they were with, the husbands would order the wife’s food.  At the fast food restaurants, it was completely acceptable and normal to see women eating by themselves and ordering on their own. 

There are also huge differences between American fast food restaurants and fast food restaurants overseas.  One difference is in the appearance.  Sure McDonalds still has the golden arches and Ronald McDonald and KFC has Colonel Sanders, but most of these restaurants are two floors, which is something that I’ve never seen in America.  When I went to Europe I was actually surprised that every McDonalds that I saw was at least two stories tall.  They are also different because fast food doesn’t mean the same to them as it does to us in America.  Here, we get our food and, a lot of times, eat it on the run.  Overseas, the only fast part is how quickly they get their food.  Some people will stay and eat their food for hours, which is something you probably wouldn’t see in our culture. Another difference is that in China McDonalds is deemed as a “romantic” place to be.  I find this very funny because if you took your date on a first date too McDonalds here, you probably wouldn’t get a second date.

There were two assigned readings for the Good Food Seminar Fysem this week.  In class we moved away from Pollan and his perfect knowledgeable meal to a completely new topic, nationalism in food. Part of the key aspects in our current food culture in the United States is that it consists of several other food cultures from across the globe. In this week’s reading, the class specifically looked at nationalism in food in form of Indian cuisine. The first reading is an article by Arjun Appadurai, “How to make National Cuisine: Cookbooks in India”. In the reading the author explores how unusual the origins of Indian cuisine and recipes. The Indian Cuisine started off not too differently than its colonizers. “Like their counterparts in England and France in the early eighteenth century, the new Indian cookbooks are fueled by the spread of print media and the cultural rise of the new middle classes” (Appandurai 2).

Appandurai uses Indian cuisine and the onset of Indian cookbook cuisine to illustrate how nationalism in food occurs. Indian food unlike other nations did not have a strong culinary history, mainly due to the Hindu religion. “The history of food consumption outside the domestic framework has yet to be written for India, but there is little doubt that traditional nondomestic commensality was confined to religious and royal milieus, where traditional social or religious boundaries could be maintained even in public eating places”(Appandurai 9). Hinduism dictates several important practices when it comes to Hindu cooking despite any specific talk of preparing food in any text. A prime example would be the practices with leftovers. “Leftovers are an extremely sensitive category in traditional Hindu thought” (Appandurai 7).

The second reading, Purnima Mankear’s article “India Shopping”, looked more at Indian cuisine in America, specifically supermarkets. Purnima first sets up the current Indian cuisine industry like many anthropological views, looking at the movement of people. He states, “The start of the twentieth century witnessed the migration of laborers from Punjab to California and other parts of the Western Coast, and constituted the first wave of immigrants from the South Asian subcontinent” (Purnima 199). With the influx of immigrants came the desire for the traditional food came along with it thus the restaurants and grocery stores popped up.

The rest of the reading looks at the idea of food nostalgia with regional cuisine. When it comes to ethic food, there’s nostalgia to have food in America be as close as back in the homeland. This was certainly true with Indian cuisine. As Purnima states, “Indian grocery stores are not just familiar, but for some deeply familial, with all the longing, ambivalence, or terror that the familial can invoke” (207).  This is something deeply surprising given that since the 1980s as seen the movie in class, food culture has gotten driven away from the familial. Perhaps this influx of ethnic cuisine will balance out what the industrial American fast food culture lacks.