Diet as a Social Construct

As the semester draws to a close, I've stumbled on an interesting speech by Michael Pollan, entitled "In Defense of Food." He speaks about how the nutritionist movement, which is defined by the quest to quantify the content of food, is a failed one, and how (past) culture is a more reliable indicator of whether or not something is healthy to eat. He touches on many different problems with the current American diet, but one rule, "don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food," stands out. After hearing this speech, I'm convinced that I need to pick up a copy of his latest book.



Blog By Abe Hedeya

Ch.5 Making a Living: Commenting on Corn

Chapter Five introduces us to the adaptive strategies humans have used to make a living. Hunting, gathering (foraging), horiticulture, and agriculture. This week I want to focus specifically on the product CORN to aid us in understanding how industrialism leads to the alienation of producers from their products. Click here to learn about the zillion uses of corn including for biofuel.

By Thu Mar 6th at noon, post a comment after watching the following videos for our class discussion of Making a Living:

1. A conversation with director of the documentary KING CORN (watch all 3 parts)
2. A TED Talk about the Omnivore's Dilemma, looking at humans and the world from the plant's point of view. He introduced to me the concept of permaculture, and
3. A TED Talk about developing a commodity exchange for maize (corn) in Ethopia.

This is your homework for Thursday's class. Take notes and bring your notes to class. Also make a comment on the blog below by Thu at noon (click COMMENTS at the bottom of this post). What you could comment about is:

• How did corn become so important to us according to the director of King Corn? What do you think about that?
  
• How much corn do you think you consume in your diet? What did you learn that was new about corn in our culture?
  
• What did you think about the permaculture example Pollan presented?
  
• How might what you learned about corn from these videos provide a great example of how culture is learned, shared, integrated, all-encompassing, and/or symbolic?
• What did you learn about Ethiopia's production of corn and what it says about small farmers' knowledge of markets?
  
• Anything else you'd like to share relevant to MAKING A LIVING chapter.
  

This will help us take a look at how agriculture and the possibility of permaculture can transform our relationship to what we eat, how we eat, how consumers get what they eat and how we might transform our relationship to the environment and to agribusiness.



FOOD NEWS: A Conversation with 'King Corn' Filmmaker: Part 1

Pt. 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5bAfPsUAb8&feature=user
Pt. 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2vARSdg7bw&feature=user



TEDTalks Michael Pollan: The omnivore's next dilemma



Talks Eleni Gabre-Madhin: Building a commodities market in Ethiopia
Note: Maize is another word for corn