Abstract
“You are what you eat.” We have all heard this saying, and no doubt each of us has used it on a few occasions. Yet food is not only a what, but also a when, a why, a how, and a with whom. In other words, we cannot understand food without understanding the social practices that go along with eating and producing it, as well as all those activities that lie in between. Those practices have changed dramatically over the last half century, becoming far more homogenized, as illustrated in figures 1.1 and 1.2. Figure 1.1 tracks the narrowing dietary profiles of dozens of countries from 1961 to 2009, which also implies a narrowing of culinary skills, preferences, and knowledge. Figure 1.2 shows the same trends, focusing specifically on seven commodities, three industrial and four traditional.
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Notes
- 1.
I have covered the topic of the Green Revolution extensively in previous books. See, for example: Carolan, Michael. 2011. The Real Cost of Cheap Food. New York; London: Earthscan/Routledge; Carolan, Michael. 2013. Reclaiming Food Security. New York; London: Earthscan/Routledge.
- 2.
Thompson, Carol. 2007. “Africa: Green Revolution or Rainbow Evolution?” Foreign Policy in Focus 17, July, www.fpif.org/articles/africa_green_revolution_or_rainbow_evolution, accessed August 11, 2016.
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“George,” personal interview, January 21, 2014.
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Orwell, George. 1992 (1949). 1984. New York: Random House, 260.
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Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 13–14.
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Kilman, Scott, and Roger Thurow. 2009. “Father of the Green Revolution Dies,” Wall Street Journal, September 13, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB125281643150406425?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB125281643150406425.html, accessed August 11, 2016.
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Polanyi, Michael. 1966. The Tacit Dimension. New York: Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 4.
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Gorenfloa, L., S. Romaineb, R. Mittermeierc, and K. Walker-Painemilla. 2012. “Co-occurrence of Linguistic and Biological Diversity in Biodiversity Hotspots and High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas,” PNAS 109 (21): 8032–37.
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Nazarea, Virginia. 2005. Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers: Marginality and Memory in the Conservation of Biological Diversity. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
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Ibid., 62.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Smale, Melinda, Mauricio Bellon, and Jose Gomez. 2001. “Maize Diversity, Variety Attributes, and Farmers’ Choices in Southeastern Guanajuato, Mexico,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 50: 201–25.
- 13.
Carolan, The Real Cost of Cheap Food, 103.
- 14.
United States Department of Agriculture. 2015. Turkeys Raised, ISSN: 1949–1972, http://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/tuky0915.pdf, accessed August 11, 2016.
- 15.
Gewertz, Deborah, and Frederick Errington. 2010. Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
- 16.
Norris, John. 2013. “Make Them Eat Cake: America Exporting Obesity Epidemic,” Foreign Policy, September 3, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/03/make_them_eat_cake_america_exporting_obesity_epidemic, accessed March 10, 2016.
- 17.
Jang, H. J., Z. Kokrashvili, M. J. Theodorakis, O. D. Carlson, B. J. Kim, J. Zhou, and J. M Egan. 2007. “Gut-Expressed Gustducin and Taste Receptors Regulate Secretion of Glucagon-like Peptide-1,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (38): 15069–74.
- 18.
Quoted in: Jones, Eleanor, and Florian Ritzmann. [No date]. “Coca-Cola Goes to War: Coca-Cola at Home,” http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/coke/coke1.html.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Woolfolk, Mary E., William Castellan, and Charles I. Brooks. 1983. “Pepsi versus Coke: Labels, Not Tastes, Prevail,” Psychological Reports 52 (1): 185–86.
- 21.
Mirsky, Steve. 2007. “Carrots, Sticks, and Robot Picks,” Scientific American 297 (4): 48.
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Carolan, M.S. (2017). Monocultures of the Mind and Body. In: No One Eats Alone. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-806-0_2
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