Projects
Food Autobiography
During my childhood there were many factors that affected what food I ate. The most restrictive factor was some food allergies in my family. My brother was severely allergic to corn and wheat from the day he was born until he turned 14 years old. I also had some food allergies myself though not as severe as my brother which limited my choices. Until when I went to middle school, I was lactose intolerant and allergic to eggs though I could eat either item if it was in a baked item permitting it wasn’t a large dose. Therefore, our meals and much of the snack food in my house didn’t have corn or wheat and tended to be non-processed foods. Substitute items like rice for bread and carbs were present in many meals. I never enjoyed the taste of rice at first though “to be disgusted is natural” (pg.11, Gatekeepers of Disgusting). Currently looking back, I understand a bit better why I was disgusted. The taste or texture wasn’t bad it was the allure of other foods available that I’d see in media or another friend’s house that caused me to feel dissatisfied. Though we did keep some bread in the house for packed lunches for myself and my sister. Packed lunches represented a time when processed foods and other “delicacies” were acceptable. This was mostly due to how convenient it was to purchase snacks like Zebra Stripes and other packed snacks that could be distributed according to allergies to each lunch. But all the dinners I had growing up were always homecooked and my mother spent lots of time planning and preparing meals that everyone would be able to eat and enjoy. Though besides allergies a particularly noteworthy factor in the food I ate can be traced back even further to our family tradition.
Almost all my food choices were dictated by tradition and culture. Primarily dinner meals were influenced by the tradition of previous dishes my grandparents and their parents made. My grandma’s meatballs, wedding soup, pierogi, chocolate chip cookie and dinosaur bread (zucchini bread) were staples of my childhood. Multiple family portions of these dishes would be created and frozen for a later day. My grandparents have roots in Poland so dinner dishes I had were inspired or directly taken from there. For any new dishes my family made these were influenced by advertising and articles. Cereal and other breakfast sugary food were significantly influenced by TV Ads. Peanut Butter Captain Crunch was the main cereal I ate. The taste and texture then were great but the marketing strategies using the back of the box for games were very effective on me. Today if I eat Captain Crunch the top of my mouth gets cut up by the texture, I wonder how I was so thrilled by this in my childhood. As a side note in the tradition of my food, religion as a Catholic Christian also played a minor role. During special days of the year like Christmas and Easter the quality and quantity of food would drastically increase. During Christmas there would be a tradition of a fondue with red meat, cheese, and white bread. At Easter a typical meal would have ham, deviled eggs, and many deserts. While the holidays listed focused on a surplus of food Lent was equally special for giving up food. During Lent I usually gave up soda or something sweet and sugary. Often, I disliked and questioned why I had to do this but over the years it represented something more than the food. Lent helped me appreciate the access I had to certain foods that simply can’t be found in other places or cultures. This appreciation for food would happen to be further developed in Boy Scouts.
Boy Scout was an experience that lasted over 7 years that challenged me to plan and cook my own food for my camping trips. I was truly on my own with my fellow peers and had to budget and identify what food we needed and what food we wanted. This would occasionally lead to trouble and missing items. A famous learning experience was eating sandwiches without any bread till it was discovered in a box the next day. My ideal of “disgusting” food would be stripped away as I grew to appreciate the food I had when the alternative was to be hungry. Like the “sensory pleasure in fire-roasted dog meat” (pg.3, Do You Eat Dog?), after smelling many sausages or other foods I previously despised my appetite became ferocious. By the third or fourth year I would have the planning and cooking process down. I had confidence in my ability to make myself a quality meal with any food I have and truly enjoy it. Ultimately this experience instilled a deep respect in me for how food is obtained and cooked and I still hold these values today. I do still enjoy processed snack items in college, but I love cooking my dinners. Tacos, burgers, meatloaves, French toast are some comfort meals that are now a part of who I am.
Almost all my food choices were dictated by tradition and culture. Primarily dinner meals were influenced by the tradition of previous dishes my grandparents and their parents made. My grandma’s meatballs, wedding soup, pierogi, chocolate chip cookie and dinosaur bread (zucchini bread) were staples of my childhood. Multiple family portions of these dishes would be created and frozen for a later day. My grandparents have roots in Poland so dinner dishes I had were inspired or directly taken from there. For any new dishes my family made these were influenced by advertising and articles. Cereal and other breakfast sugary food were significantly influenced by TV Ads. Peanut Butter Captain Crunch was the main cereal I ate. The taste and texture then were great but the marketing strategies using the back of the box for games were very effective on me. Today if I eat Captain Crunch the top of my mouth gets cut up by the texture, I wonder how I was so thrilled by this in my childhood. As a side note in the tradition of my food, religion as a Catholic Christian also played a minor role. During special days of the year like Christmas and Easter the quality and quantity of food would drastically increase. During Christmas there would be a tradition of a fondue with red meat, cheese, and white bread. At Easter a typical meal would have ham, deviled eggs, and many deserts. While the holidays listed focused on a surplus of food Lent was equally special for giving up food. During Lent I usually gave up soda or something sweet and sugary. Often, I disliked and questioned why I had to do this but over the years it represented something more than the food. Lent helped me appreciate the access I had to certain foods that simply can’t be found in other places or cultures. This appreciation for food would happen to be further developed in Boy Scouts.
Boy Scout was an experience that lasted over 7 years that challenged me to plan and cook my own food for my camping trips. I was truly on my own with my fellow peers and had to budget and identify what food we needed and what food we wanted. This would occasionally lead to trouble and missing items. A famous learning experience was eating sandwiches without any bread till it was discovered in a box the next day. My ideal of “disgusting” food would be stripped away as I grew to appreciate the food I had when the alternative was to be hungry. Like the “sensory pleasure in fire-roasted dog meat” (pg.3, Do You Eat Dog?), after smelling many sausages or other foods I previously despised my appetite became ferocious. By the third or fourth year I would have the planning and cooking process down. I had confidence in my ability to make myself a quality meal with any food I have and truly enjoy it. Ultimately this experience instilled a deep respect in me for how food is obtained and cooked and I still hold these values today. I do still enjoy processed snack items in college, but I love cooking my dinners. Tacos, burgers, meatloaves, French toast are some comfort meals that are now a part of who I am.
Food Autobiography Reflection
Look back on this assignment now that the semester is coming to a close, I wish to further dive into the impacts and influences of food in my life. My brother’s allergy to corn and wheat actually made much more impact than I previously realized. Since in the United States corn is heavily subsidies and added to many processed products which consequently eliminated a majority of processed foods from my childhood diet. Currently this is due to huge food companies spending a fortune lobbying for “governmental policies aimed at keeping the price of junk-food ingredients low” (pg.17, Nestle) which results in this massive, processed food environment that I live in. Thankfully my family had the income to afford more vegetables and fruits since processed foods were generally cheaper in comparison. Though what I found to be interesting is that after my brother lost his allergies over the course of one to two years processed foods and snacks started to dominate my household. The previous culture of natural more home cooked style meals became replaced by more frozen instant cook meals. The culture in the United States of convenience and cheep processed food and finally converted my family and myself. In just a short span of six years I can’t imagine my diet without many different highly processed snacks. Yet it didn’t stop just at snacks, fast food that was once a treat became normalized and a part of my culture. Once a month turned into once a week once everyone could eat it. We never needed fast food but perhaps we concluded “rightly or wrongly, that a trip to the fast-food restaurant will take less time than eating at home” (pg.14, McDonaldization).
The more I reflect on how my eating habits have changed I become shocked at how highly processed food has creeped into my diet and how Americanized I am even though I thought I was very open minded when it came to eating. Highly processed food isn’t the norm for most of the world and in that respect, I feel like I’ve started to become distant from my food. In Boy Scouts I would do a lot of cooking from scratch but now I feel like I’m relying far more than I should on frozen meals and boxed foods produced in some factory. I also consume a lot of meat in my diet and after learning about various climate change impacts meat production has, I’m surprised that I grew up in a strong pro meat culture. Clearly my diet needs more of the vegetables and fruits I had growing up, but I’m surrounded by beef and starches and snacks. My food environment is quite unnaturally compared to how my parents or grandparents ate growing up and I wonder what the consequences of that will be, since I’m currently researching obesity for our final project in the class. Going forward I hope to take away from this class a higher level of awareness of my processed food snacking habits and to attempt to replace some meat on my plate with more vegetables. It’s a tall order but I want to prioritize my health more non that I have a better understanding of the large role food plays in my day-to-day life.
The more I reflect on how my eating habits have changed I become shocked at how highly processed food has creeped into my diet and how Americanized I am even though I thought I was very open minded when it came to eating. Highly processed food isn’t the norm for most of the world and in that respect, I feel like I’ve started to become distant from my food. In Boy Scouts I would do a lot of cooking from scratch but now I feel like I’m relying far more than I should on frozen meals and boxed foods produced in some factory. I also consume a lot of meat in my diet and after learning about various climate change impacts meat production has, I’m surprised that I grew up in a strong pro meat culture. Clearly my diet needs more of the vegetables and fruits I had growing up, but I’m surrounded by beef and starches and snacks. My food environment is quite unnaturally compared to how my parents or grandparents ate growing up and I wonder what the consequences of that will be, since I’m currently researching obesity for our final project in the class. Going forward I hope to take away from this class a higher level of awareness of my processed food snacking habits and to attempt to replace some meat on my plate with more vegetables. It’s a tall order but I want to prioritize my health more non that I have a better understanding of the large role food plays in my day-to-day life.
Recipe Reflection
Figure 1: Great Grandma's Corn Bread Recipe
Figure 2: Historical Recipe
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a For my historical recipe for this project, I selected chicken gumbo from a cookbook called “Southern Cookbook of Fine Old Recipes” published in 1935. After looking through the web for 20 minutes I found an archive of old cookbooks and decided to choose a Southern American dish. I didn’t spend a lot of time comparing between different books and mostly wanted to find a dish that seemed simple and familiar enough for me to cook. Now for my family recipe I recalled my Great-Grandma’s corn bread recipe and decided that would go well with my southern dish. The original recipe had been changed over time along each generation, so I wanted to see what the original recipe looked like. After collecting the recipes, I needed to shop for every ingredient since I don’t keep any baking items or many fresh vegetables in my apartment. I had never previously desired to do any cooking that required that kind of preparation. Though preparation turned out to be very simple and convenient since I found everything at a Meijer's located 12 minutes away. I didn’t realize how fortunate I was to have such immediate access to a wide variety of food that for others can take hours to get food and at a total cost of $45 that I could afford. For as I walked through the aisles grabbing boxes and vegetables I never once thought about how the food got there. It’s incredible and also kind of terrifying to think about how “supermarkets supply more than two-thirds of the food we eat” in the United States and have so much control over this food that I couldn’t give a second thought for (pg.11, The American Way Of Eating).
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Yet my indifferent mindset towards food would quickly change when I got back home and started cutting and cooking the ingredients. I felt more attached and connected to the meal and wondered why I hadn’t tried cooking to “generation regards home cooking as simultaneously scary and too much of a hassle” so I never took the steps to do (pg. 88, How to be your own Italian Grandmother). Even though my apartment has a great kitchen with an oven and all the kitchen tools you could ever need to cook. Compared to last year in the dorms the only limit I had was the time I was willing to spend cooking. I would receive an answer shortly after mixing up the dry ingredients and baking the corn bread for 20 minutes. The bread looked a little over done but seemed good inside. Sadly, as I took a bite, I immediately could tell that I had put in too much baking soda making the bread taste almost inedible. The taste I’m most familiar with for corn bread is a more buttery and sweeter flavor that is different from the dry blander found elsewhere. It isn’t surprising that this happened since I have little experience baking. Now the chicken gumbo on the other hand was a dish I was more familiar with, having cooked more stew meals in general due to my background in Boy Scouts. But cooking this dish required more concentration ensuring that the chicken was stir fried and than stewed without burning any ingredients. The result was a pleasantly simple yet savory aftertaste, not something I’d probably make a second time, but I was able to finish the dish this time. With the limitations present back when this dish was created, I wonder if people then found it more delicious then I did. Overall, this project revealed to me that my previous assumptions of the time and effort required to cook weren’t hardly accurate and I had more than enough tools and time to tackle these dishes. The only thing I truly lack is a little experience and the passion try cooking better food. Growing up my parents took the time and have this passion to cook more home meals, yet I never thought I could. College life cultural revolved around attitudes of no time or energy to put towards cooking. Only campus food and take out were “viable” options. Now that I’m living off campus for the first time this semester maybe I could try to adopt a different attitude. My new roommates in my apartment love to take the time to cook in our kitchen so I’ll try and use this experience to spark my own passion for food.
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Figure 3: Baked Corn Bread
Figure 4: Pot of Chicken Gumbo
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McDonalization Project
For this project on McDonalized processes I decided to disrupt the natural flow of getting samples at the store Costco. Most people at Costco grab a sample and either leave or say two words about how it tasted and then leave without any talking. This process is quick, efficient, and predictable for anyone in the store. Walking up I saw that the samples were small fruit bars, and instead of grabbing a single sample and leaving like other customers, I stayed and asked several questions about the fruit bar. My goal was to hopefully strike up a conversation with the staff member. I asked them had they had one before? What was in it? How much was the actual product? How was the staff member’s day going? It was a little awkward at first, but I eventually learned that the fruit bars came in mango, blueberry and apple and the staff member said they had a strong fruity taste. After I talked a little bit about each other’s day, I had a sample and said it was pretty good. Then to continue the conversation I asked for another sample. When I asked for another one, they seemed a little surprised but allowed me to have one more sample. After that some other customers seemed to notice the abnormality of my behavior, but most chose to pass on by and ignore it. At this point I had reached the level of socializing I could do before I just felt way too awkward. I tried talking with the staff member a little longer, saying that I would purchase the product and asked what flavor they recommended. They said mango was their favorite choice, so I grabbed that and quickly thanked them while walking to a different part of the store. At this point I felt relieved to have the ordeal over and started to relax again.
Picture Source: Forgie, Adam. “Costco Taking New Measures to Limit Big Crowds by Limiting Members.” KUTV, KUTV, 1 Apr. 2020
Overall, the experience was completely out of my comfort zone since I often strive to conform to McDonalized processes in my life and have gotten bad anxiety growing up when I have felt out of place. I’ve worked to get used to being more extroverted and engaging, but this project still showed me that I’m very uncomfortable attempting to break social norms and develop small talk. I really hate having other people look at me or think I’m breaking some unspoken code of conduct. This fear often causes me to choose to be more passive and avoid opportunities that demand me to put my neck on the line like this Costco experience. But I’m glad I got to try this experiment since I do strongly believe that “the struggles…. help make us who we are” (pg.4, Tyranny of Convenience) and I feel a little more confident now in my social skills. Only by struggling throughout my life trying different things have I grown and feel less freaked out about social events. Hopefully I brightened that staff members day a little bit by breaking their usual boring routine. It certainly would be a very different and more interesting job if every single person stopped for a little while and truly talked with them. Yet that will probably never happen. Especially since I still find the routine McDonalized process to be far more appealing for “it offers…. efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control” (pg.13, An Introduction to McDonaldization) so I don’t have to worry or overthink what I should do or say. I always feel super comfortable when I can predict and control events in my life and generally have little patience for anything that breaks my routine. For example, recently my Wi-Fi wasn’t very stable, and I couldn’t work on homework, so I had to drive out of my way to go to a coffee shop to get Wi-Fi. My first reaction and instincts are to be frustrated at having to be inconvenienced but looking back I actual enjoyed the change in scenery a little. Deep down I do recognize that convenience and simplicity make my life quite bland, and I hold this desire to live an interesting and enriching life. I want to try new things, grow, and feel fulfilled with my life but ultimately, I still follow the McDonalized way every single day whenever I can. Perhaps I should try to challenge myself more often when it comes to socializing with others and look for ways, I can remove some McDonalized habits from my life. It will definitely be hard for me considering how my life is structured but perhaps it will be alright to struggle a little bit.
Grocery Ethnography Project
Culture certainly influences my buying habits but only after visiting Meijer, Meridian Farmer’s Market and the Fresh International Market do these influences become vividly clear. Each place had a vastly different look and feel that affected how I felt about buying certain food. The biggest difference is between Meijer and the Farmer’s Market. I’m most comfortable in Meijer where food is organized with a high level of Mcdonalization which results in it being a predictable and relatively mundane trip. People there were in more of a rush and in more casual clothing. Also, people were in groups of 1 or 2 with almost no interaction between any other customers or staff members. While compared to at the Farmer’s market, which is outside with highly individualized tents each with a person engaging and sometimes even entertaining customers there. I generally prefer a quick shopping trip but when I shifted my focus to watching and wandering around the Farmer’s Market, I found it interesting seeing how different the people were there. Different in the sense that people were dressed for the weather, and some had brought their whole family with the intent to stay for at least 45 plus minutes. The food there looked very tasty with a variety of bright colored vegetables. The experience brought back memories when my mom would take me to spend 2-3 hours at our local farmers market which was an exciting event. Specifically, the kettle corn is what I loved there but my mother loved going in order to get fresh and healthy food to support local farmers. Even though the prices tended to be a little more expensive and catered towards families with a slightly higher budget. But you can still feel that tight community influence when I checked out Meridian Farmer’s Market. Perhaps people felt a strong ethical obligation to support their local farmers and the culture that surrounds farmer markets. But it’s a relatively small community since there were hardly more than a handful of people there compared to Meijer. But it’s that strong atmosphere of traditional farming that pull people there, and I felt a slightly similar environment when I went to the Fresh International Market. While the physical structure of the Fresh Internal Market gives off an industrial Meijer vibe the inside felt different somehow. Staff working there were more friendly and the food there felt heathier and more special than at Meijer. Now I had heard about this place from a few friends who shopped there frequently and all had said it was a good place to get food they were more familiar with. After glancing through some of the isles it became quickly apparent that there was a very different culture of food present. Clearly, I was not the target market for this food, but it made me wonder why I felt this way. Why hadn’t I been exposed to authentic international food before and only seen it in a more familiar form in Americanized restaurants? To me these Americanized restaurants were international food, and I didn’t know what this place was then. But as I read signs and checked out the food court, juice bar and bakery the environment felt more familiar.
Picture Source: Staff. “Meridian Township Farmers' Market Reopens This Saturday.” City Pulse, City Pulse, 14 Jan. 2021
After visiting all 3 places I wondered which places I would go back to again to buy food and why. Ultimately, I realized that it was this familiarity and predictability of my food environment that had pressured me into only going to places like Meijer. Cheaper prices, wide variety of food, and minimal customer interaction were what I valued when shopping, but was that the best food I could get? There were far more people in Meijer than the other two places so maybe it’s the cheaper price of food and the general advantages of Mcdonalized process that drive most of the people’s food buying choices. Both places other than Meijer had food on par if not clearly higher quality and more passion put into their food. I also had a far more memorable experience at those places, and I could see the appeals that traditional food culture have on a few people but at the end of the day it takes more time and effort on my part to visit and purchase food there. I must conclude that for myself and a majority of others, the cultural factors that influence us the most are the idea of a convenient food environment, even if the quality of food isn’t to my ethical standards of healthy and sustainable.