Partial Readings: Feeding the Body Politic
Partial Readings: Feeding the Body Politic
Partial Readings: Feeding the Body Politic
Jon Henley traveled to Greece for the Guardian to witness austerity in action. He has produced a series of blogs posts entitled “Greece on the breadline,” a number of which relate to food.
He wrote about the ?potato movement?–a creative approach to economic organizing that is emerging from the crisis. The movement helps farmers to bypass wholesalers, meaning they get paid immediately and can provide cheaper prices to their customers, many of whom are struggling to cope with wage cuts and tax hikes.
Elsewhere in Greece, a cooperative scheme emerges:
People are helping each other in small, informal ways. Teachers and parents’ associations “come together, gather food and discreetly arrange to allocate it to families in the school who are suffering”, said Victoria Pakrete, an Athens teacher who herself volunteers in a soup kitchen. Marie Le Du said that in the northern Athens suburb where her mother lives, women from the local Orthodox church “work in pairs. They visit two or three families that are ‘their’ families, drop in for a coffee and a chat to catch up ? and discreetly hand over a parcel of donated food, as part of the visit, to preserve the family’s dignity.”
Others are more organised. Reveka Papadopoulos, head of Médecins Sans Frontières Greece, said that in the past year she had seen “some really encouraging, exciting things. People are seeing the power of organising themselves, of helping themselves, and each other. It’s wonderful to see ? it keeps you going.”
The Daily Beast gets an update from Eric Schlosser on his book Fast Food Nation, ten years after its publication. He describes a dispiriting report from the American Meat Institute celebrating (perversely) the 100th anniversary of The Jungle:
“If Upton Sinclair Were Alive Today … He?d Be Amazed by the U.S. Meat Industry??was perhaps its most accurate assertion. Sinclair would no doubt be amazed. He would be amazed by how little has fundamentally changed over the past century, by how poor immigrant workers are still routinely being injured, and by how the industry?s lies, no matter how brazen, are still said with a straight face.
On the topics of ?fast? and ?food,? Sarah Jaffe reports for Alternet on a campaign for fair food:
The signs the fasters carry, the banner under which they hold the vigil, declare, ?We go hungry today so our children won’t have to tomorrow.? It’s a poignant reminder of the real struggle of the workers, who even with the CIW’s Fair Food Program, still make poverty wages and have little job security.
Finally, a stomach-turning reminder that those who choose not to eat fast food can afford to do so. New York reports on ?foodie-ism as youth culture,? a cringe-heavy tale of New York twentysomethings who love to eat ?cool? food but hate being called foodies. Keeping up is stressful business, as Diane Chang, the story?s representative subject, makes clear:
Now the choice of a place for dinner turns into an oft-tortuous multistep process. When someone recommends a place, Chang goes online. Despite her distrust of Yelp and sites like it, she still reads them compulsively, at least to look at the photos. ?It doesn?t matter if it?s good or bad,? she says. ?I just want to know.? Last night, she had three options, she tells me. ?And I was just stressing out and stressing out about it. The reason I ended up choosing Neptune was, like, ?Okay, I mean, that?s the one from way out of left field, no one ever talks about it, maybe I?ll stumble across a gem.? But it?s like, I also realize, there?s not a single restaurant no one has ever talked about any more.?
But with the foodie cultivation of Tijuana concoctions like Tostilocos, Tostitos corn chips topped with an amalgamation of toppings, how long will it be before foodies reach the same culinary levels of creative prison inmates, who create chocolate orange drinks by mixing Tang and hot chocolate mix? Coming to a foodie haven near you.
For more on food, see our spring issue and its special section on the politics of food.
