Contemporary affluent populations have access to a great assortment of commercially produced items whose natural origins are ambiguous.
Commercial foods are suffused with salt, sugar, milled grains, and fats.
The interrelations among these dietary excesses and obesity, cancers, and cardiovascular diseases have been recognized by health professionals for decades. Sedentary lifestyles and insufficient intake of vegetable and fruit fiber contribute to these problems as well. In the West today, there is growing concern about food and health among the public, fueled by increased media attention to the content and physiologic consequences of ‘‘bad diets.’’
Popular refrains about food and identity include ‘‘We are what we eat,’’
‘‘We are where we eat,’’ and (although not for all palates) ‘‘We are who we eat.’’ These statements can be further refined to ‘‘We are what we say we eat,’’ which multiplies the layers by which identity is forged or shed and suggests different implications for pharmacologic potential and physio-logic health. The long evolutionary trajectory that I trace in the first part of this chapter evidences the increasing complexity and versatility of human foodways. Early human populations had, and many people in the developing world today have, little of the flexibility enjoyed by the more privileged in contemporary societies, in which individuals who have the resources, interest, and presumed knowledge configure foodways to meet specific health goals. Here I discuss foods and diets of association that are characterized by inclusions and exclusions, constitute a nucleus of community and identity, and have significant potential to prevent and manage illness.
For the past fifteen years, many of the groups that cohere around particular foods or foodways have served as umbrella resource and social entities, which have proliferated with the growth of the Internet. These are interactive communities that maintain Web sites, publish electronic and paper journals, and otherwise disseminate information about health implications, sources of desired foods, substitutes, and efforts to influence the food industry. Although Web-centered interactions stretch my defini-tion of associadefini-tion, there is a growing body of literature that examines the cultural construction and social negotiation of online communities and the diverse products of those communications. These computer-mediated social spaces are indeed sites of shared ideology and commu-nity; they are social networks that can be analyzed in terms of nodes (individual actors) and ties (relationships between and among actors).
Since the mid-1900s, social network analysis has been systematically ap-plied by social scientists to communities on all scales, and most recently to Internet sites. Further, some of those electronic interactions eventuate in what are more conventionally regarded to be social associations, such as announcements that convene membership groups, identify in-person ed-ucational opportunities, or connect individuals in geographic propin-quity for in-person interactions and other face-to-face or same-place meet-ings (Wilson and Peterson 2002; Islam 2006; Knorr 2006).
Background: ‘‘Natural Diets’’ Evolve into Nutrients-as-Specific-Therapy
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bioscience was so focused on clinical microbiology and related disciplines that nutrition science did not advance until much later. In retrospect, the characteriza-tion of essential nutrients seems to have been slowed by the work of Louis Pasteur and colleagues, who directed attention to the presence of some-thing that causes illness, microorganisms, rather than to deficiencies of health-sustaining nutrients. Although the basics of metabolism and diges-tion had been sketched out in the early 1800s, the term vitamin did not come into use until 1911, most of the vitamins and essential amino acids were characterized only over the next few decades, and the U.S. National Research Council did not publish its first table of dietary standards until 1943. The dogmatic advocacy of infectious theories delayed the exposi-tion of vitamins, even those for which the link between disease and diet had already been established (for example, scurvy and diets that featured few or no foods that contain vitamin C).
That nutrients might play a role in human health was compelling for the general U.S. public, who reinstilled ‘‘natural foods’’ into diet and health lore during the early 1900s. The number of what have been la-beled retrospectively ‘‘food cults’’ expanded proportionate to whichever advocate or idea was most convincing, only to be superseded by some food regimen that seemed to be more healthful or at least different. Many of the allegedly natural diets were truncated, not supported by cred-ible evidence from nutrition and other sciences, and framed as dogma that featured, for example, grapefruit (Citrus spp., Rutaceae), ‘‘organic foods,’’ brown rice, or carrots (Daucus carota L., Apiaceae). Whereas earlier promotions of purportedly healthful foods had consisted of exag-gerated claims and testimonials, by 1930 advertising had been polished into communications that were more discriminating and persuasive. Ad-vances in nutrition and related disciplines were incorporated into adver-tising to infuse commercial products with the imprimatur of science (Young 1978).
Although the general public did not apprehend nutrition except at a low level of resolution, they were persuaded by product promotions that emphasized individual naturally occurring nutrients—for example,
‘‘Grapefruit Juice: Excellent Source of Vitamin C’’ and eventually by products that had been enhanced with heterogenous nutrients, such as vitamin D–fortified breakfast cereals and dairy products. In addition to singlet foods and nutrients, more-comprehensive foodways were fash-ioned around themes that appealed to diverse and shifting adherents.
Slow Food
The Slow Food movement is a cultural posture that positions one’s life-ways in contrast to the tempos and rhythms of modernity. A 1986 pro-test against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Rome’s historical Piazza di Spagna is commonly identified as the origin of this movement, although such an ethos emerged with the Industrial Revolution (or ear-lier) and has simply been perceived by some to have accelerated. Efforts to slow daily activity patterns are evident in individual subscribers’ daily routines and extend to wide-reaching social actions. The Slow Foods movement is propounded primarily by small autonomous groups that strive to (re-)create slow versions of cities, recreation, and communica-tions by increasing ‘‘awareness, attention, and engagement’’ (Parkins and Craig 2006:105). What began as opposition to fast food has evolved and today has the more comprehensive goal of advancing dietary and bio-cultural diversity.
Food is a central site of the Slow Food movement. Advocates of slow food (SF) both reject fast food proper—and other nutritionally and cultur-ally homogenized commercial foods—and promote traditional, regional, artisanal, and organic fresh foods and beverages. One goal is to advance the production and consumption of local specialties such as vegetable and fruit cultivars, cheeses, traditional beers and wines, and breads. The SF Ark of Taste project has fostered such foods as Sun Crest peaches from California, which taste ‘‘sublime’’ but travel poorly. On the strength of promotion through SF networks, the peach was featured in Time maga-zine, following which its small producer was flooded with inquiries and the volume of sales increased rapidly (Fastcompany 2007).
SF proponents are critical of fusion foods, citing the ‘‘decontextualiza-tion of culinary tradi‘‘decontextualiza-tions [which] . . . is symptomatic of . . . the need for . . . innovation . . . which, paradoxically, erases differences.’’ They regard fusion foods (see chapter 4) as ‘‘inauthentic, disconnected from
relations with place, people and territory—which can only be . . . made meaningful by slowness’’ (Parkins and Craig 2006:105). Critics under-score the privileged nature of access to slow food. Carlo Petrini, one of the founders of the Slow Food movement, was a contributing author for the epicurean magazine La Gola, a word that means both ‘‘throat’’ and ‘‘de-sire for food’’ and is often translated as ‘‘gluttony.’’ That he and other founders of the SF ideology were members of a Milanese leftist intellec-tual circle∂ fuels the critique that SF proponents are elitist, that the fore-grounding of boutique foods is simply another iteration of the ‘‘power of consumerist capitalism to commodify everything, even [one’s] opposition to commodification’’ (Wilk 2006a:22). The Slow Food movement’s Uni-versity of Gastronomic Sciences adds an academic piece that appeals, and is accessible, only to those who can afford it. The critique continues that featuring artisanal foods encourages dependence on niche markets, gov-ernment regulation, and gastro-tourism (Guthman 2003). For example, the SF Progetto Presidia fosters the continued production in Cinque Terre, Italy, of the rare white wine Sciacchetrà, for which the Slow Food movement purchased land and gave it, rent-free, to one of the three remaining Sciacchetrà vineyards (Fastcompany 2007). The name ‘‘Pre-sidia’’ is derived from the Latin praesidia, ‘‘military post,’’ a metaphor that underscores the passion that marks this and other SF projects and advocacies.
A primary goal of this culinary aesthetic is to consume in the company of others, where pleasure and authenticity converge. By this definition, one might argue that the Slow Food movement is quintessentially about foods of association, but essentialism is not something I want to embrace intellectually. The Slow Food movement is distinguished as a foodway not by signaling low-fat or lactose-free goals (see below) but by improving health through shared production, distribution, preparation, and con-sumption of foods and beverages. In these sites, the foods are items of association and sociability that are embedded in broader socioeconomic and ecological settings (Miele and Murdoch 2002; Petrini 2003; Parkins and Craig 2006).
The community coalitions that make up SF networks are convivia, from the Latin convivium, ‘‘feast’’ (more comprehensively, a living to-gether, from con + vivo), which shares a root with convivial, meaning fond of companionship, drinking, and feasting. Reference to SF
convi-via overlaps the literature on food sociability mentioned earlier. Analyz-ing the Slow Food movement from a biocultural perspective directs atten-tion also to the biology of foods and beverages and how they affect us physiologically.
Heirloom and Heritage Foods and Beverages
In the past, farmers worldwide have produced thousands of breeds and varieties of animals and plants (see the section on early human forag-ers, above). Today, industrial food producers work with relatively few specialized species and varieties; thousands of noncommercial breeds and varieties representing substantial genetic diversity have disappeared.
Some sustainable farmers conserve biocultural diversity by producing heirloom and heritage products, which have been embraced by garden-ers, gourmets, and food hobbyists, including SF advocates (see chapter 3, section on street foods in Hawai¿i). Although the terms heirloom and heritage are used interchangeably and mean more or less the same thing, some distinguish heirloom plants from heritage animals—which, by my interpretation, privileges meat (see above) by connecting it to our ances-tors, while heirloom connotes items that have been important over a shorter time frame. These terms are applied to varieties of plants and animals that were produced by earlier generations of farmers and are genetically different from commercial, mass-produced foods. Growing heirloom plants sustains diversity and contributes to diet items that are unique in taste, appearance, and texture. Whereas heritage animals were bred to encourage characteristics adapted to local ecologies (climate, disease, altitude, and pasture and other free range), breeds favored by industrial agriculture were selected for the volume of meat, milk, and eggs produced over compressed time frames in confined installations (Fresco 2007).
Researchers of Africa’s food heritage point out that the continent has more native grains than any other landmass. However, this began to change with the advent of exposure to other cultures: centuries ago, dhows (traditional Arabic sailing vessels) along the Mediterranean coast traded rice from Asia; in the sixteenth century, Portuguese colonists in Mozambique and Angola imported maize from the New World (see chapter 2); over the past several decades, wheat has been imported from
temperate regions. Embracing the exotic and projecting what people associate with modernity, Africa has ‘‘slowly tilted away from its own cereal wealth’’ (National Research Council 1996:1). Indigenous popula-tions lacked the support of authorities—principally agricultural research-ers, missionaries, and colonial administrators—who had little interest in or knowledge of local ecologies, cuisines, and other customs. Local grains literally and metaphorically lost ground to ‘‘up-to-the-minute’’ aliens whose convenience was exaggerated by the introduction of automated grinding mills and other ease-of-processing technologies. Indigenous grains were ‘‘driven into internal exile,’’ as they acquired the fictional stigma of having low yield and less flavor and being more difficult to produce and process. Some of Africa’s ‘‘lost crops’’ have begun to take center stage, however, on the basis of recent research: West African red rice (Oryza glaberrima Steudel), cultivated in the Niger delta for 3,500 years; finger millet (Eleusine coracana Gaertner), cultivated in Ethiopia since 3000 BCE; fonio (Digitaria exilis Stapf and D. iburua Stapf ), argu-ably Africa’s oldest grain; and teff (Eragrostis spp.). All of these grains have nutritional values that are as high as or higher than some of their substitutes—notably, and variably, for calcium, thiamin, iron, phospho-rus, manganese, and fiber (Mabberley 1993; National Research Council 1996).
Among heirloom crops, the purple carrot offers an interesting exam-ple that is gaining momentum in North America and Europe. Wild ancestors of the carrot probably evolved about five thousand years ago and are native to Afghanistan, which remains the center of diversity of Daucus carota; there, it is still used by hill farmers to make a traditional fermented beverage. Egyptian temple drawings from 2000 BCE depict a purple root that researchers speculate is a carrot; papyruses (made from Cyperus papyrus L., Cyperaceae) record the medicinal properties of carrot seed and leaves. People of the Roman era knew purple carrots, whose color is attributed to anthocyanins, and white cultivars, whose lack of pigment is attributed to a single gene. In the 1300s, purple, white, and yellow carrots were imported to southern Europe, where they were used as medicine and food. By the 1700s, the Dutch had introduced orange roots, pig-mented by á-carotene and by even more ß-carotene than their yellow relatives. This emblematic food honored the Dutch national color, a metaphor for the political entity Huis van Oranje, ‘‘House of Orange.’’
The still-orange center of the purple root contributes to the stunning appearance of sliced carrots (World Carrot Museum 2008). These heri-tage or heirloom crops are not, or not primarily, promoted by food enthu-siasts; instead, they are advocated by researchers who recognize better nutritional potential and wish to advance biocultural diversity.
Slow Food and Health
The physiologic implications of slow foods, including heirloom and heri-tage varieties, include the nutritional benefits of organically produced and fresh foods and beverages. Organic foods contain fewer or no pes-ticides, hormones, antibiotics, chemical fertilizers, and preservatives.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) certifies four categories of organic foods (outlined in table 1.1) according to standards established in 2002. Meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables are grown either organ-ically or not and are thus 100 percent organic, if at all. The other three categories reference food blends and processed foods. Since the early 1990s, the conventional food industry has been stocking a small percent-age of organic products, with astonishing sales increases of about 20 per-cent each year. This success can be explained by the large profit margin from what is still a small proportion of marketed foods (estimates range from 1 to 10 percent). The great abundance of food in the United States translates into slow growth of conventional food sales, about 1 to 2 percent annually (Nestle 2006). Organic foods carry the cachet of certification for consumers who seek agency in their health but are overwhelmed by the diversity of food varieties, brands, and health claims. Consequently, they are prepared to pay high prices for what they perceive to be assurances and better food. However, many of the organic foods that are sold in big-box grocery stores do not conform to the SF philosophy, because they are not locally grown; SF proponents count on local producers for what they perceive to be healthy foods.
The nutritional benefits of fresh local foods include the decreased likelihood of nutrient loss. For example, the stability of both fat- and water-soluble vitamins is compromised by heat, oxygen, ultraviolet radia-tion, and pH shifts that can occur during transport and storage (table 1.2).
Reduced spoilage among locally sourced fresh foods might contribute to cost containment and thus further encourage supporting local producers.
Organic ingredients content
Certified Organic
seal on labela Label statement
73% or less no organic ingredients only on information panel
74–94% no ‘‘Made with Organic Ingredients’’b
95–99% yes ‘‘Organic’’
100% yes ‘‘100% Organic’’
Source: Nestle 2006.
aLabeling requirements are also established for livestock feed that has been organically pro-duced, for containers in which organic products are shipped and stored, and for denoting bulk organic products in market information that is displayed or disseminated at the point of retail sale.
bUp to three organic ingredients can be listed.
table 1.2. Vitamin susceptibility to environmental conditions Destabilizers
Vitamin Heat Oxygen Light Acids Alkalies
Fat-soluble
A no yes yes yes —a
D no no no —a —a
E no yes yes no yes
K no yes yes yes yes
Water-soluble
C yes yes yes no no
Thiamin yes yes yes —a yes
Riboflavin no no yes no yes
Niacin no no no no no
B∏ no —a yes no yes
Folic acid yes yes yes yes no
B∞≤ no yes yes yes yes
Source: Lutz and Przytulski 2006.
aInconsistent information.
Beyond these considerations, featuring wild or semiwild SF species sug-gests the contribution of significant amounts of macro- and micronutri-ents (Grivetti and Ogle 2000). These species also provide substantial pharmacologic potential: the manipulation of wild species during their domestication, notably their organoleptic characteristics, has in many cases bred out physiologically active phytoconstituents. For example, the anthocyanins in purple carrots and other novelty vegetables are antioxi-dants that have cancer-suppressive and cardiovascular-protective effects and are antimicrobial (Etkin 1994a; Johns 2000; Nicolle et al. 2003).
The SF philosophy also extends to the physical environment: ‘‘eco-gastronomy’’ contextualizes people’s foodways broadly and draws a paral-lel with species conservation by promoting what SF proponents label
‘‘endangered foods.’’ A central theme links people who enjoy food and traditional foodways with environmentalists who seek to preserve local, small-scale production. The Slow Food movement offers these compel-ling statistics: since 1900, the loss of food-product diversity is 93 percent and 75 percent for the United States and Europe, respectively; 33 percent of livestock varieties are extinct or approach extinction (Fondazione Slow Food 2007).
Vegetarian Diets
The diverse foodways that are included under the rubric ‘‘vegetarianism’’
all cohere around the idea that consumption of plant foods is more healthful and ethical than eating meat and animal products. Vegans are the most strict and exclude all animal products from their diet, attire, cosmetics, and other use categories. Vegans also reject so-called hidden products, whose animal origins are more remote, such as gelatin (from connective tissues) and beeswax, propolis, and honey (see chapter 4).
Animal-derived additives also are avoided: texture modifiers, including whey (milk plasma) and bone phosphate; emulsifiers, such as caseinate (milk protein); lactose (milk sugar) (see below) as a sweetener and flavor vehicle; dyes, including cochineal (scale insect, Dactylopius coccus
Animal-derived additives also are avoided: texture modifiers, including whey (milk plasma) and bone phosphate; emulsifiers, such as caseinate (milk protein); lactose (milk sugar) (see below) as a sweetener and flavor vehicle; dyes, including cochineal (scale insect, Dactylopius coccus