Saturday, May 18, 2013

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Feminism and Food



A recent article on Salon attempts to hail the "feminvore," a trendy breed of women embracing DIY and artisan food, all the while using Michael Pollan's name and recent publication as a means to gain clicks.

To begin, I haven't read the New York Magazine article cited by Salon in which Pollan apparently attacks feminism as the reason for the nation's rising obesity rates. Nor have I read his latest book, although I thoroughly enjoyed The Omnivore's Dilemma (which actually inspired this) and In Defense of Food. I think Pollan is at his best when he is explaining the history and rationale behind the modern food industry, and less so when he attempts to become some sort of diet guru in books like Food Rules.

Many arguments have come out criticizing Pollan's nostalgia for women in the kitchen, emphasizing that for a greater part of history, cooking was work, and that not everyone found it pleasurable. My reaction was that, maybe someone should explain that feminism isn't done yet.

There is no one way to be a feminist. Although the feminist discussions that I grew up around centered on the idea that women and men could be anything, from doctors to stay at home parents (mostly stemming from things like this). But it was a discussion that focused on what sort of career a child would grow up to have. I don't remember the same enlightenment around discussions of household chores, of which cooking was one.

That idea seems to be one of my generation of feminists - incorporating partners who identify as male into the work/home equation. But most heteronormative women I know who are in relationships that share a domicile, do most of the household chores, still.

I wonder if the deeper issue is that food is still gendered, and maybe getting even more so. Women are supposed to eat dainty little salads, (while laughing alone?), men are supposed eat meat. Men are chefs in restaurants, women are cooks in the home kitchen (I'm generalizing and know this is not universal). I certainly have my share of ex-boyfriends who could throw a temper tantrum worthy of a five-year-old when confronted with the idea of eating their vegetables.

Anecdata aren't facts, and I do know my share of men defy these gender roles and not only eat their vegetables and cook at home, but are vegetarians themselves. Inversely, I know some women who can really carnivore out, as well. But overall, it seems feminism and society are still working on the balance.

And part of the solution may be de-gendering food and cooking, a form of evolution forward, as suggested here. Indeed, apparently Pollan suggests in his new book that "non-gendered home economics class" should be a requirement in high schools, and I think there is something in this idea.



Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Gratitude



Prayer After Eating

I have taken the light
that quickened eye and leaf.
May my brain be bright with praise
of what I eat, in the brief blaze
of motion and of thought.
May I be worthy of my meat.

Wendell Berry



Although this project is about veganism, I felt this poem was relevant. I didn't grow up in a home that prayed before meals. In fact, I've been fortunate, like many Americans, to take food for granted. I read a quote recently on Facebook - I can't remember it perfectly, or who said it, but it was something about how current generations haven't really experienced famine in living memory, so no wonder we are so weird about food. I don't know the veracity of this statement (my grandparents, who are still alive, lived through the Great Depression, and might possibly disagree), but I wonder if there isn't a kernel of truth in the idea.

In Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, he points out how food science and nutrition have distracted people from the idea that we eat food. Instead, we think of ourselves as eating nutrients, and how this leads to enormous confusion about what to eat.

One thing that gardening can teach you is, growing food is work. Cooking is work. Both are pleasurable if you have the time, but are difficult to squeeze in when you are overworked, tired, busy, overwhelmed, juggling multiple responsibilities, just trying to get by. I can't speak for raising livestock or hunting, but I can imagine. (I know there is a whole other debate about how these ideas relate to feminism, but I'll save that for another post).

So, I wonder, has the confusion of science, combined with the distance from the work of making food (coupled with the accessibility of food industrialization for the busy person), and the speed at which we live, given us a lack of appreciation? Heck, do we have time to appreciate, or even taste our food sometimes? I, who for various reasons often has no choice but to eat at my desk at work, while still working, have to remind myself at other times to chew my food, taste it, breathe between bites.

This past week I've had a bit of break from my regular work schedule, and a chance to relax. My lovey husband has been taking me to places that serve amazing food, many of which focus on local food sources. First of all, I've remembered, or maybe re-learned, that when eating really good food, taking the time to taste each bite, it keeps the eater in the present. Mindful tasting centers the body and brain. Instead of my usual work situation when food is just gulped down, slowing down to eat, and eating fresh, local food, often leaves me relaxed and euphoric.

As I was eating, I was reminded that I was eating my local landscape. This is how an eater becomes part of the place they live, connected to it, intimately, as it literally makes the person. This is no new idea - in fact, pre-industrialization, there was no other way to live, I suppose.

Consider this: if your food is harvested from the side of a mountain, eating said food, you take the mountain, its soil and rain, into your body. You also take the energy of the sun, which travels through space for 92,960,000 miles to be absorbed by leaves. Think how eating those leaves, or eating something that ate those leaves, literally connects your body to the larger universe. Some may dismiss these ideas as being a bit out there, but I ask readers here to suspend skepticism for a moment. Eating food is a way energy is transferred - the way soil, water, sunlight are transformed into human endeavor. Consider this web of connections. Isn't that something to be grateful for?