Crowther Chapter 9

Local Digestion

Making the Global at Home

Overview

• How many of us has referred to tomatoes as “plastic”? (a.k.a. supermarket or “corporate” tomatoes)

• I certainly was shocked to eat West Coast tomatoes; I grew up in family where the garden had

dozens of such plants.

• Most were beefsteaks; large and delicious, and with a nice shape.

Beefsteak tomato

Heirlooms

• I gave no thought to their origin or what a hybrid meant.

• I was confused by why people grew cherry tomatoes on the

West Coast. Why bother?

• I was completely unaware that tomatoes come in a great

variety of colors and shapes.

• Tomatoes have now become so widespread that their American

origin is largely forgotten.

• But their culinary usefulness has seen them become an

industrialized agricultural commodity, often shipped from

warmer climes for northern consumers, or grown in massive

hothouses which defy any climatic restrictions.

• It is the most widely grown and traded fruit in the world.

• Supermarkets stock tomatoes throughout the year, selling them

fresh, canned, and sundried, along with myriad processed

products which contain this ubiquitous ingredient.

• Ketchup, pizza and pasta sauces, and soups all further the

presence of the globalized tomato.

• The reporting on the tomato’s abundance of cancer-suppressing

lycopene has further added to its status as a twenty-first-century

superfood.

Foodscapes: Materializing Global Foods

• Looking at foodscapes helps us to understand how global food systems materialized into local

traditions.

• We need to look at where food is encountered, consumed, and used as part of social relationships

and identity.

• This leads to observing what foods are available; what is purchased, what is ready-made.

• Globally, the introduction of new foods can lead to:

• Embracing the new global food.

• In some cultures in E. Africa, it is believed that maize is indigenous, even though it was

imported from the New World.

• Croissants, yogurt, salsa are American foods now.

• Rejecting this novel global food.

1. Americans understand that insects are nutritious and yet not a commonly consumed food

choice.

2. Purple sweet potatoes: One year for Thanksgiving I made candied yams, and accidently bought

Japanese purple sweet potatoes. No-one would eat them.

• Even a re-evaluation of local foods:

1. One re-evaluation has lead to rejection of local foods. In the Solomons, families buy salt and

sugar, even though they live next to the ocean and grow sugar cane.

2. Another is the emergence of localism (locavorism) as an ideological stance.

• Peoples de-commodify global food by defining within existing food classifications.

• The food is assessed for its usefulness physically and/or emotionally.

• It is assess for how well it “fits” into one’s cultural understandings.

Local Shopping: Retailing the Meaning of Food

• Unlike most humans, living or gone, you are

probably not directly involved in the collecting,

hunting, or raising of your own food

• Your food is, in general, of high quality,

consistency, quantity, safety and convenience

• Average supermarket has between 38,900 in 2016

items. In the 1990s, 7000 was the norm.

• The trend was been to introduce about 50% new

products each year into supermarkets. Most of the

new products are snack foods and processed

meats.

• The Great Recession (2007-2009) has affected this. According to the USDA (2017), the

number of new food and beverage products in retail outlets fell from 22,142 to …

15,637, in 2009.

• Recently, the market trend re-established By 2016, this number was back up to 21,435.

• You may have the view that with all the achievements of Western agriculture that there

has been a technological mastery over the environment.

• This view is very common among Americans.

• We will explore this worldview more completely. We will discuss the many ways

people by which people acquire their food.

New product introductions in the top 10 product claim categories

(2009-16)

Tag or claim 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Kosher 4,159 6,164 5,606 5,386 7,570 7,942 7,423 8,985

Low/no/reduced allergen 1,325 2,215 2,228 2,250 3,930 4,828 4,914 6,552

Gluten free 1,121 1,942 1,994 2,000 3,609 4,550 4,534 6,123

Ethical-environmentally-friendly package 1,329 2,892 2,806 2,903 4,254 4,268 4,239 5,056

No additives/preservatives 2,068 2,993 2,647 2,524 3,544 3,549 3,471 4,591

Social media 1 3 0 808 2,118 2,599 2,871 3,994

GMO free 297 340 550 567 1,352 1,993 2,685 3,732

Organic 1,445 1,548 1,332 1,279 2,097 2,084 2,313 3,011

Microwaveable 1,724 2,279 1,827 1,706 2,531 2,530 1,749 2,287

Ease of use 903 1,610 1,319 1,401 2,133 2,062 1,700 2,287

Fast and Tasty: Localizing Global Dishes 1

• This chapter explores the domestication of global products — some of the more well-known

dishes, such as sushi and hamburgers, and commodities, such as tea and coffee — to situate all

eating as a localized act, capable of assigning new meanings that do not disintegrate the existing

classifications and rules surrounding settled cuisines.

• The raw ingredients for these foodstuffs can be globalized or locally sourced commodities,

which are then transformed into recognizable dishes that have become ubiquitous on the

global food scene.

• Wherever these occur there is a tension between culinary homogenization and the ability of

the locality to assert its meanings, values, and practices onto the introduced foods.

• Fast food typifies the homogenization threat, seemingly offering an undifferentiated format

capable of undoing culinary traditions.

• Despite the concept of fast food being inextricably linked to a North American identity and

lifestyle, it has been peddled by many street vendors in many places and times as a service

to hungry workers.

• Furthermore, while the form of fast food — standardized through the demands of rapid

service and ease of consumption — remains constant, the identity of the food also has

lingering cultural connotations.

• These are open to be locally interpreted, and appropriated, in a multi- faceted route of

acculturation.

• However, it must also be remembered that what foodstuff comes to constitutes fast food

will vary from one cultural context to another, but its form and function will be the

cross-cultural constant.

Fast and Tasty: Localizing Global Dishes 2

• Sushi

• Sushi is a food with a considerable global reputation; an icon of

Japanese culture.

• Has the ability to receive a local creolization of its traditional

Japanese format.

• While sushi is now a fast food, its reception away from Japan has

not received as much negativity as the all-American ham- burger.

• Sushi is presented as a healthy fast food, aesthetically pleasing

and nutritious, full of fresh ingredients and easy to eat.

• It is enthusiastically consumed in Japan. The Japanese consume

one-third of the world’s fished tuna, about 600,000 tons a year,

and this prodigious appetite has seen tuna stocks decline by 90

per cent in the past 30 years.

• Since the creation of 320-kilometre fishing limits around coastal

waters in the 1970s, the Japanese have come to rely upon

American and Mediterranean fishers to provide bluefin tuna.

• The appetite for sushi is not confined to the Japanese; it is popular

in North America and Europe.

• The spread of sushi has been facilitated by better and cheaper

refrigeration from the mid-twentieth century onwards.

• The “sushi boom” really took off through the 1990s and peaked

in 2004.

Spam sushi

California roll

Bluefin tuna

Fast and Tasty: Localizing Global Dishes 3

• Hotdog

• The hot dog, an icon of North American cuisine, can be remodeled with new culinary influences

and sold using the fast food model.

• The hot dog has a remarkable history of emigration and cultural incorporation as a symbol of

North American identity.

Hotdog w/mustard

One variant on the Japadog

• It is an industrialized sausage in a bun that is “a platform for

culture”—sold by immigrants, adopted by locals, open to put

whatever you want on it, and yet familiar, tasty, and easy to

eat by gourmets or just the hungry.

• The hot dog is now glocalized (global + local). For instance, in

2005 an immigrant Japanese couple in Vancouver, British

Columbia, created Japadog, a street food cart that serves

Japanese-style hot dogs.

• The Japadog creators have taken the sausage in a bun concept

and added Japanese toppings, such as bonito flakes, wasabi

mayonnaise, black sesame, shredded cabbage, and spicy soy

sauces.

• They have also developed their own Japanese-style sausages,

such as the Edamame hot dog, which has edamame beans

inside and the Kurobuta pork sausage.

• Other innovations include placing Japanese dishes, such as

yakisoba and deep-fried pork cutlets, with garnishes, into the

traditional hot dog bun.

Fast and Tasty: Localizing Global Dishes 4

• Hamburger

• The hamburger, another icon of American culture, has had a far rougher reception than hot dogs in

its global journey, but it too has been successfully localized.

• Its association with the corporate fast food industry has, however, contributed to its success —

and its failure, in the sense it has been utterly rejected by some members of some societies as

representing the worst of globalization and heralding a decline in food culture.

• The hamburger’s history goes back to the nineteenth century, but its contemporary incarnation in

the fast food empire of McDonald’s has established its notorious reputation.

• McDonald’s was established in 1940, initially by two brothers. It was then bought out by Ray

Kroc, who really established its supremacy, bringing it to today’s hegemonic hold on Americans,

22 million of whom eat a McSomething every day.

• McDonald’s coincided with the rise in incomes for Americans.

• The golden arches of McDonald’s have spread throughout the world, reflecting societal change

and typifying the commodification of the burger, with its essence of Americana.

• There are over 33,000 McDonald’s in 119 countries, serving 64 million people every day.

• The format remains the same: burger/sandwich, fries, and a drink, with a relatively limited

menu.

• There has also been considerable effort made by McDonald’s to localize themselves and their

products to the local context.

• The work of James Watson and his associates stands as a superb example of how a foodstuff ’s

reception is subject to local meaning and value construction. Watson makes the important point

that while the form of fast food— hamburgers in this instance—appears the same, the content, and

its meaning, must be located within the local context of its consumption.

Fast and Tasty: Localizing Global Dishes 5 • Hamburger (continued)

• France has also become a fast food nation. Many French citizens enjoy a Big Mac or La Recette au

Chèvre, perhaps washed down by L’espresso, making France the world’s second-largest consumer

of McDonald’s.

• A French sheep farmer,, decided to make a stand against the invasion of fast food (“la malbouffe”

or junk food), and in 1999, José Bové, with the help of 300 protestors he dismantled a McDonald’s

in a small French town, Millau.

• As a non-artisanal producer, McDonald’s was targeted because it represented American agro-

business interests in France, and more specifically because the United States and Canada had

imposed tariffs on French food items.

• Although Bové used McDonald’s as the launch of his role in the politics of food in France, it

was not just fast food that he successfully rallied against; it was also genetically modified

organisms (GMOs).

• The attack on McDonald’s was a result of trade war, but it was couched in terms of the assault on

the French way of life, and especially its small food producers and local food traditions, bringing

Bové’s demand for people’s right to choose how to feed themselves.

• In response to Bové’s activism, McDonald’s France launched its localized menu in 2001, with

the advertising campaign proclaiming “Une Touche de Région Dans Votre Hamburger” (A

regional touch in your hamburger).

• The company reinvented itself as French, sourcing local ingredients and employing French

workers, a decision which helped see it through the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy)

tainted-beef scandal and the public’s insistence, following Bové, to eat local.

Fast and Tasty: Localizing Global Dishes 5

Slow Food vs. Fast Food

Techne or artisanal Technoscience or industrial

Natural Unnatural ( “Frankenfoods”)

Art Science

Safe Risky

Natural species—biodiversity Genetically modified species

La bouffe — good food La malbouffe — junk food

Quality Quantity

Small-scale Large-scale

Terroir—taste of place Placeless production—tasteless

Handmade, organic, sustainable Processed, chemical, damaging

Named, distinct food Anonymous, generic food

Rural Urban

Fast and Tasty: Localizing Global Dishes 6

• Slow Food Movement

• The Slow Food Movement rests on three principles; good, clean, and fair food.

• In Italy, the Slow Food Movement has similar parallels with France’s emphasis upon

sustaining traditional local.

• One of the founders, Carlo Petrini, has become a global food celebrity, and rather

like José Bové his food activist epiphany hinged on the presence of McDonald’s in

the heart of Rome.

• The Slow Food Movement began in the late 1980s in grand Italian style, with a

manifesto setting out the intentions of its followers to defend against our

enslavement by speed and fast food by returning to the kitchen to enjoy regional

foods, develop taste, and embrace the pleasures of gastronomy.

• In the U.S., there is a recent strong interest in what is being called “home-style” and

“handmade” foods.

• Artisan foods more popular (800 new foods in last 5 years) introduced with this

label.

• Regional foods becoming more popular too .

Double-sided menus (more lower calorie foods).

• More customized ordering.

• More importing from international markets.

• Interesting facts about American restaurant trends.

Locavorism: Eating Locally

• New term

• The term represents a neologism (coining of a new term) and is a blend of local and –vore (to

eat/devour) and was introduced in 2005 in the book, Full moon feast.

• In 2007, the word locavore was declared the “word of the year” by the Oxford University Press.

• Eating local

• The concern over the distance travelled by our food is part of North American and European

culinary and sustainability discourses.

• Part of this proposed solution includes a return to the culinary local as a means to stall

environmental degradation, with the 100-mile diet being a prime example.

• This can be imagined as a map- ping of thousands of culinary circles across northern continents,

delineating foodsheds, with local wild and domesticated ingredients shared through social

networks of like- minded producers and consumers who are attempting to create new,

sustainable, socially and environmentally responsible food systems

• This can be challenging, since concentrated, settled populations make high food demands that

cannot always be met by the agricultural land in the locality.

• For instance, a recent analysis of Vancouver, B.C’s 100-mile foodshed notes that in 2006 the

agricultural land was only sufficient to satisfy 17 per cent of 2.1 million people’s food needs.

• By 2050 the region’s population is predicted to become 3.1 million, and to achieve a self-

supporting 100-mile foodshed, agriculture would have to change significantly to:

• Biointensive gardening using hand tools.

• Everyone would need to be lactovegetarians.

• Eat more raw food to save energy costs & reduce their calorie intake to 2,500 kcal per day.

• Forty-three percent (43%) of the population would need to be involved in agriculture.

Globalized Commodities 1

• The arrival of new food and eating spaces has presented opportunities for local consumers to expand

their culinary experiences and address change by enacting continuity with traditional meanings and

practices surrounding food.

• These new venues will be differently understood by members of any society, influenced by age,

gender, class, and ethnicity, creating differentiated participation and meanings.

• Coffee

• The the arrival of Western-style coffee houses in post-socialist Russia marked another new location

for the public performance of life.

• For some Russians, the prospect of exposing their private lives in such public surroundings was

discomforting, with the etiquette of such spaces demanding new understandings of the “norms

of propriety,” such as the appropriateness of greeting a co-worker.

• This throws into relief the way sites of public space—whether commercial or civil — are able to

establish patterns to people’s behavior, and simultaneously people cast their own meanings onto

the space and its purpose.

• Coffee houses have had an influence on culture and society since the fifteenth century, representing

an early localization of a global commodity whose consumption has linked Ethiopia, the Middle

East, Europe, the Americas, Africa, and beyond.

• Its success has continued as one of the drinks—coffee and tea—that helped shape the Protestant

work ethic so instrumental to capitalism through its caffeine-induced clear-headedness, imparted

during work.

• You might want to read A history of the world in six drinks. In addition to looking at the

invention of beer, wine, spirits (from sugar), coffee, tea and cola, this book looks at the effects

they had on societies.

Globalized Commodities 2

• Coffee (continued)

• Just like other global foodstuffs, coffee links producers and consumers in relationships that can be

fraught, divisive, exploitative, equitable, and satisfying.

• We can take our familiar experiences of a coffee house and its offer of a “third place,” not home

or work, where patrons can hang out, relax, and socialize while enjoying a coffee served

according to their tastes, chosen from an enormous range of styles.

• Coffee is a commodity, but it is actively de-commodified by its consumers around the world, no

longer exotic or luxurious but ordinary, and a necessary stimulant for some.

• De-commodification invests the product with meaning as part of life lived at the site of

consumption, and it often makes the consumer forget the origins of the food, drink, or

garment, and how it is used in that context.

• Some of those images concern the producers of coffee and the countries the coffee comes

from, such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Guatemala.

• Coffee is an excellent example of costs called market externalities.

• Market externalities are specific consequences of the working of the market: some positive,

some negative.

• These include environmental issues, lack of resources causing sickness and death, and so forth.

• The referencing of environmental and ethical concerns by transnational corporations such as

Starbucks is indicative of their awareness of consumers’ concern for food that is “clean”—

socially, environmentally, and physiologically.

• It can, however, be a challenge to ascertain the extent to which large corporations are able to

fulfill the ethical desires of some of their customers.

Globalized Commodities 3

• Coffee (continued)

• Fairly traded coffee, whether certified or not, should offer assurances that an

equitable exchange brought the coffee to northern climes, thereby allowing

growers to support themselves with dignity and sustain their communities.

• Ryan and Durning, Stuff: The secret lives of everyday things, track the actual

cost of a cup of coffee:

• Here is an online source that also summarizes the cost, including the market

externalities.

• What can we do to counter the market externalities?

• One option is to buy Fair Trade coffee and other products.

• Another is to by organic, shade grown coffee.

• Some people suggest protesting the corporate vendors (such as Starbucks®).

• Tea

• Tea is another commodity whose story parallels that of coffee, and it raises the

same questions of local constructions of meanings.

• Tea drinking is an institution in Britain, with 165 million cups being

consumed a day, and it has long been used to distinguish Britishness from

coffee-drinking Europeans and North Americans.

• While coffee consumption in Britain has risen, it is estimated to be only 70

million cups a day that are consumed, allowing tea drinking to remain a vital

part of people’s beverage choices.

• While tea drinking unifies the British as a nation, it is also a defining

characteristic of Chinese and Japanese culture, with their liking for green tea,

and India’s preference for black tea with milk and spices.

Farmers’ Markets: Local Foods and Faces 1

• Britain

• In Britain many of the medieval town markets have survived, with market day attracting local producers

and shoppers from nearby communities.

• They have received added prestige due to the availability of regional specialties, and they have been

championed by celebrity chefs, television programs, tourist boards, and the government as heralding the

“renaissance of our food culture” .

• This clearly adds further layers of meaning and value of the food through assigning an authentic

provenance.

• France

• Similarly, farmers’ markets are also well established in France, where local means unique products,

specific to a particular region, and protected by one of the many appellation controlée labels.

• The use of similar endorsements for local food traditions has become a hallmark of establishing

authenticity and the handiwork of artisanal production.

• In France the unique taste of terroir (taste of place) is also called upon to establish locality as fixed within

the environment and capable of leaving a distinct sensory presence in the mouth of the consumer

• United States

• I remember the fruit stands of my childhood with great fondness and buying apples from a local farmer. I

do not remember seeing farmers’ market, though.

• In the United States, the farmers’ market trend has caught on.

• According to Statista (n.d.), the number of farmers' markets in the US have grown from 1,755 in 1994 to

8,268 in 2014. Of these, 124 were added in 2014 alone.

• Many farmers’ markets can be regarded as offering a “third place” for informal social gatherings that is

not home or work. In these public spaces people can be public citizens—as opposed to supermarkets,

which are spaces people move through as isolated, private consumers,

Farmers’ Markets: Local Foods and Faces 2

• In addition to the increase in farmers’ markets, there are other responses to the American interest in local fare. • A community-supported agriculture (CSA) enterprise is where the consumer contracts directly with

the farmer. • Can be that the consumer buys part of the crop. • According to the USDA (2015), as of 2012, 12,549 farms marketing through CSAs.

• According to Local Harvest (n.d.), both farmers and consumers benefit: • For farmers:

• They can plan marketing during non-farming periods. • Their cash flow increases earlier in the production cycle. • They can develop relationships with the consumers.

• For the consumers: • The food is fresher. • Experience new food items. • Visit the food source and children often emotionally invest in the foods from their farm. • They know the farmer.

• Food co-ops and buying clubs list for WA • Food collectives will decrease the costs by using customers as labor and decreasing the use of

packaging. • Or can contract for produce as chosen by farmer as part of a buying club (I use Klesick Farms). • One new variant is where the consumer is called the "mix and match," or "market-style" CSA.

One selects from the weekly options to one’s own taste, rather than buying a proscribed amount of the farmer’s selection.

• In spite of these new efforts, organic or sustainable farming remains a very small part of the American food landscape (today only 0.2% of farms).

Farmers’ Markets: Local Foods and Faces 3

• Artisanal

• The artisanal movement is also becoming more prominent in the U.S.

• For instance, the growing numbers of artisanal cheese-makers across the United States reveals a

reworking of terroir to fit North American entrepreneurial desires, such as adding commercial

value to distinguish a unique product, and simultaneously articulate a desire “to showcase the

aesthetic and economic value of farm and pastureland”.

• Smaller artisanal producers are deliberately experimenting with the nature of their land,

livestock, and environment to develop unique products that place foodstuffs within the local

landscape.

• This is a different orientation of terroir than is found in Europe; it emphasizes many unique

cheeses in one region, rather than one officially recognized brand, but both forms of terroir

establish the worth of the connection between place, people, their knowledge and skills, products,

and cultural identity.

• The small artisanal producers are reinventing the farming tradition and its products as supportive of

local communities and the rural economy, and as ecologically sustainable, while also engaging in a

commercially viable venture.

• The commercial success rests upon consumers being willing to pay a little more to support the

local equivalent of fair trade, to buy into the revitalization of the rural, often sold at farmers’

markets.

• However, the reinvigoration of artisanal food production also adds weight to the class

associations between such foods, taste, and the necessary income to pay that little bit extra for

the handcrafted, rural products.

Farmers’ Markets: Local Foods and Faces 4

• The farmers’ markets contrast with the experiences Americans encounter in the supermarket.

• The supermarket depends on industrialized agriculture to stock the shelves.

• This system is highly productive in terms of output per unit of labor due to mechanization.

• Relies predominately on monocropping or serial monocropping (called multiple cropping).

• This compares with intercropping by horticulturalists (also called companion planting)

where many species are planted together.

• This results in the technological treadmill; you need to buy the latest, best, fastest, quickest

• It is an energy sink, also.

• Pimentel & Pimentel’s research converted all sources of energy use into kilocalories so they

could compare output:input ratios for food production.

• They found the output:input ratio for American raised beef cattle was 54:1. Why?!

• Mechanized farming requires significant amount of gasoline.

• Chemical fertilizers are made from natural gas, and pesticides require fossil fuels.

• Food processing is a major natural gas and

fossil fuel user.

• Transport of food an average of 1, 300

miles is costly. Almost 85% of foods in

most states is from outside the state.

• Fast-food retailers are great consumers of

energy.

• Ultimate effect? Fewer farms, larger farms.

Ethical Consumers

• The importance of farmers’ markets draws attention to consumer agency, and the power of public

discourse to shape decisions regarding the choice of products to purchase.

• The ultimate choice rests with the individual, who must decide amidst the plethora of products and

competing advice simultaneously offering health and taste tips.

• Each consumer acts to define themselves—physically, socially, and culturally—as they engage in the

ongoing identity work of life.

• Shopping choices will be influenced by personal tastes, habits, social and cultural expectations,

availability, and time constraints, and the decision-making process must be understood as porous,

soaking up the immediate context and the information it oozes.

• This includes labelling, and the echoes of any public discourses—from experts or friends—

surrounding a product.

• Marketers and governments are actively engaged in shaping consumption trends to foster economic

growth and support local communities.

• Though ethnographic work in Britain the complexities of ethical food shopping have been documented.

• Danny Miller’s (2001) early work, identified that there was considerable talk about ethical shopping,

but when it came down to the actual purchase the green choice was often rejected.

• For instance, in the 50 shopping trips that he participated in, only two included ethical purchases.

• To explain this, Miller offered three interpretations:

1. Beginning with the off-putting “crank” image that green shoppers have.

2. That broader altruism was more concerned with personal health than concern for the

environment or animal welfare.

3. That shoppers’ “moral geography” ended at the threshold of their homes, meaning shopping

choices had to look to the needs of the family first and foremost, not the welfare of others.