Advanced Storytelling

The Ethicurean's Dairy Queen had a post today titled Truthiness and Real Food: Hellman's, get your paws off our framing! The title alone referenced, Steven Colbert, food and framing, so I had to read it. Turns out it touches on a lot more of the issues we've been covering this year in class. Hellman's Mayonnaise is starting a "real food" web campaign, and was trying to get bloggers to join in. I can't quite figure out what it all entailed, but apparently Unilever attempted to pitch an integrated marketing show (ie, "infotainment") to the Food Network, which turned them down, so they've now developed a "In Search of Real Food" website on Yahoo where people can share recipes and thoughts on "real", local, and fresh foods--and Hellman's mayonnaise. What’s keeping me up so late with annoyance is the insidious way that Hellman’s/Best Foods is trying to co-opt the idea of real food by velcro-ing their manufactured "f...

I came across two great posts this week that brought together food, feminism, and healthy choices. Freelance writer Jennifer Jeffrey wrote a pair of posts entitled The Feminist In My Kitchen. The question: is the sustainable food movement women-friendly? I wonder if our little blogsphere sits here debating the provenance of our nectarines while the larger community of women – most of whom have no time for surfing blogs, let alone writing one – head out to work feeling more guilty than ever before, as the mountain of expectations and unattainable standards grows ever higher. Can we call ourselves feminists (simply defined here as people who desire the equality of all women, everywhere) and still suggest that an ideal dinner consists of handmade ravioli and slow-simmered marinara from vine-ripened, hand-picked tomatoes and a salad composed of vegetables that (let’s be honest) are Not Available at Safeway? By pointing out that convenience has been a friend to the working women, she could...

Time has a great special report on its website, called The Food Chains That Link Us All . I've only scanned it so far, but so far it's drool-worthy for a geek like me. The beginning of Mark Kurlansky's opening essay was awesome: C.L.R James, the great Trinidadian essayist, once wrote of his favorite sport,"What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" The same question should be asked of food. To write about food only as food misses the point, or the many points, about the great universal human experience between birth and death. Food is not just what we eat. It charts the ebbs and flows of economies, reflects the changing patterns of trade and geopolitical alliances, and defines our values,status and health—for better and worse. The famous dictum of the early 19th century French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are," should be expanded. Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you a...

DairyQueen has a hilarious post on The Ethicurean about the latest E. coli outbreak, which I hadn't heard of. She picked up on one of the frames I discussed in my thesis, the modernization frame: Another day, another recall of ground beef possible tainted with E. coli 0157:H7, aka Revenge of the Industrial Food System. Actually, this is just an expanded recall, voluntary of course, because the USDA has no power to force the companies it regulates to recall their products. Kind of like being the parents of rebellious teenagers. You just hope you raised them right … so they don’t go out and kill people. In outbreaks like this the modernization frame--aka Revenge of the Industrial Food System--works against reform for two reasons. Either they're proof of the need for even more industrialization: As usual, this latest E. coli recall has brought out the proponents of irradiation. Those would be the parents that, having raised rotten teenagers, are fine with packing them off to adu...

I stumbled across the Columbia Journalism Review yesterday, and there's a lot of good stuff in the latest issue. An article titled The Op-Out Myth discusses the real trend of articles covering the faux trend of professional women turning their backs on the working world to become stay-at-home moms. The author makes a point that always seemed obvious to me when I read these "mommy war" articles: the women profiled are always upper-middle-class women with money in the bank and a well-paid spouse. How many moms does that actual describe? The moms-go-home story keeps coming back, in part, because it’s based on some kernels of truth. Women do feel forced to choose between work and family. Women do face a sharp conflict between cultural expectations and economic realities. The workplace is still demonstrably more hostile to mothers than to fathers. Faced with the “choice” of feeling that they’ve failed to be either good mothers or good workers, many women wish they co...

Round One wasn't really a fight, but whatever. Caught your attention, right? Elyzabethe posted about Montgomery County's trans fat ban, which inspired my post last week on the Guerrilla Nutrition Labels, which inspired her response . Well, over on my new favorite website, Culinate, there is a review of a --I guess you could call it a debate--between food and agriculture writer Michael Pollen, and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Apparently, Mackey impressed the Berkeley crowd with his commitment to reforming the food system. I have no doubt he's genuine, either, but this article points out some of the facts he left out of his (seriously) PowerPoint presentation. What got me especially (no surprise to anyone who heard me ramble on about Spinach and e.coli last semester) was his classification of Earthbound Farm as a group of small organic farms banding together under one brand name, allowing him to say that 78% of Whole Foods produce comes from small farms. I call bull...

My new favorite commercials are the Ad Council's PSA for adoption. They're hilarious. I'm a huge proponent of adoption, partly because I have a couple of adopted cousins who have basically settled the 'nature or nuture' debate for me. They lack my dysfunctional DNA, but they've got the family sense of humor perfected. Basically, the ads show parents being inept parents, with the tag line "You don't have to be a perfect parent...There are lots of kids who would love to put up with you." The one that's getting a lot of airplay right now is 'Phone' , and I think the kid in that one is pitch-perfect. The first one in this series they launched was 'Gift' , which I think was good-you get right away that the kids are adopted, but the situation is so "That's my family!" which is the point. The latest one is 'Hamster':