Instructors:
Lucy Jarosz (jarosz@u.washington.edu)
Ann Anagnost (anagnost@u.washington.edu)
Course Description:
This course explores how food production and consumption creates meanings, identities, relationships, and values that extend far beyond meeting our nutritional needs. It is organized thematically to include considerations of the industrialization of food, food and health, local and alternative food systems, hunger, and food democracy movements. The learning objectives for this course are to encourage a deeper understanding of these themes, to enhance your ability to synthesize and analyze issues and debates among the topics, and to reveal how the questions and concepts introduced each session are applicable to your lives.
Readings:
Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (Penguin Press, 2006) is the only assigned reading for this course. But we hope it will just be the beginning of your explorations. We have included many suggestions for further reading (and viewing) for those who would like to explore food issues further.
Course Schedule:
January 14: Making Industrial Food
January 28: What to Eat?
February 11: Food and the Environment
February 25: The Contemporary Food Crisis
March 11: Toward Food Democracy: Local and Alternative Food Systems
What to Eat?
This is a discussion area for the first class session. Feel free to post your comments or questions here.
Ann discussed the terrifying genius of the "energy bar". Wired Magazine has a section in each issued called "What's Inside" that is of a similar spirit - they break apart the componetnts of commonly used products note what manufacturing and industrial uses companies have for the same items we are often eating!
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to Wired's deconstruction of a PowerBar: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-02/st_powerbar
and if you google the following:
"what's inside" site:wired.com
you wil see a list of all of the items they have analyzed, including red bull, the twinkie, etc.
Enjoy! I loved being shocked, and then less shocked.