Foodways and Anthropology

Dr Alexandra Jaffe and Brody Fredericksen

Department of Anthropology and Sociology

The University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg

This presentation and packet of information is designed to give you information, ideas, and strategies you can incorporate into the classroom. It is not meant to be an exhaustive inventory of how food and culture are related. As you go through this seminar and these materials, it will become apparent that one question or activity can open up a very large number of avenues for research and learning. We hope they will stimulate you and your students. We offer the following examples and activities to illustrate how the anthropological perspective can be brought into the classroom at any grade level and how these ideas translate into operational, planned activities. We have, where possible, described the activities in great detail, explored the implications of each question (see sections in italics labeled "Teaching Points"), and offered reference material information.

Why foodways? At first glance, food might look like an interesting, but limited, cultural phenomenon. A closer look shows how food is tied to our religions, holidays, gender roles, ethnic identities, domestic economies, and the history of Mississippi. There are several culturally distinct groups in this area, each with their own ideas about food and its role in their lives. When we whip up a batch of fried chicken or a pot of gumbo for the Sunday picnic, we are reflecting the amalgamation of foodways that have become a part of many households in Mississippi.

We have divided the material up into three categories, and each shall serve as a way to explore different aspects of our culture. The categories are: Production and Consumption; Food, Social Identity and Social Relationships; and Health and Nutrition. Each category has a bank of central questions that we shall offer and activities to illustrate the points. We will also offer ways in which you, the teacher, will be able to manage the flow of information and be a mediator for worthwhile discussion in the classroom.

In this section, we will be discussing household patterns of food acquisition, utilization, and its relationship to the domestic economy. There has been an historical shift in food sources in Mississippi which is a direct result of the growth of the market economy. Rural households have previously been semi-autonomous in that they have grown their foods and hunted for meat. While this still exists, the trend has been toward relying upon outside sources for provisioning. How do these shifts reflect the food choices households are making? We can look at how these choices reflect a changing household dynamic. Food preparation been affected. Are the foods "quicker" to prepare? This change suggests changes in familial relationships. How do these patterns different from the patterns your parents and grandparents? We could explore community differences such as rural/urban. A related question is how have changing spheres of the domestic economy effected social events that center around food production. What is happening to events such as harvest or canning? Were they events for communities to come together, and if so do they still occur? The activities in this section will address these and other questions to demonstrate the cultural roots of the choices we make.

How did you learn to cook? How is the food prepared? Why don't you eat other foods? Where did the ingredients come from? Who else eats the way you do? Who do you eat with? What do you throw out? How does what you eat relate to your lifestyle or identity?

a. Use oral history methods: Collect tape recordings of people giving a recipe. Students can ask for a "typical" recipe from the area, or can ask for a "family" recipe. Some of these tapes can be played in class.

1) Linguistic/stylistic analysis of the oral record. Students can transcribe their tapes. This process can be used to explore the difference between oral and written communication. After they have transcribed, the teacher can ask them to look at the record of speech and pick out some features of oral communication such as pauses, use of fillers such as "you know," the dropping of syllables and other parts of words in rapid pronunciation, generally lesser attention to "standard" grammar in relaxed speech, lack of "complete" sentence structures, abundant use of words like "that" (referring to something that has been said previously), flexible organization (people can go back and clarify something, or follow a nonlinear sequence of ideas when they are interacting verbally). Did people make use of gestures, and intonation to convey meaning in the oral accounts? Were oral instructions as "context-independent" as written ones, or did people make use of gestures, phrases such as "you know" or intonation to convey meaning in speech? Were quantities given in standard units? What do oral recipes assume the listener already knows about ingredients, methods, etc.? (for example, a recipe giver may say "some flour," which assumes an ability to know how much. Or, "beat 'til it's smooth," which assumes the listener would know when that is).

a) An additional or alternative strategy is to ask students to turn the oral recipe into a standard cookbook format recipe and to discuss what was involved in this translation. This can be turned into a product: a recipe book that can be distributed among students, their families, and interviewees. Such an activity could be the basis for a shared meal using the recipes.

b) Regional lexicon: Oral narratives are often a rich source of local terms and expressions. The teacher can go through the transcripts or tapes and identify words unique to the region.

* Cultural practices such as cooking can be hard to describe: They are often taught by demonstration.

* Oral traditions are very much a part of culture: How you talk about things is learned from your culture.

* Writing is a domain of cultural practice that operates on different rules from speech. Writing is "context-independent;" everything must be spelled out to an unknown reader. Conversation, however, is interactional, and meaning is achieved through a variety of means.

* When people talk to each other, a lot of what is understood is unsaid. Looking at what is taken for granted (and therefore not specified) in discourse is a good source of information about shared cultural knowledge and assumptions.

a) Food, affect and memory: Students can ask respondents to talk about when the dish described is eaten, what memories their interviewees have of eating or making this dish, who makes it the best.

This can be used to make the simple but important point that food preparation and consumption is intimately connected with the social ties (of kinship, friendship) that bond us together and define who we are.

b) Use the collected recipes as a database of ingredients and methods. This could be an analysis done by the teacher, or it could be assigned as a student activity. Divide the ingredients and techniques into significant categories.

* Does the recipe include lots of preprocessed food, such as Cool Whip, or are the ingredients staple foods recipes that require a greater degree of time and energy to prepare?

This can be connected to the contemporary labor market, and abundance of families with two working parents.

* Are there common methods used (baking vs. frying etc.)? Do these methods change from one ethnic group to another? If more than one age group has been interviewed, can you see any changes from one generation to another?

* Ingredients relate to the local economy, and to economic practices. These economies change over time. Part of the contemporary economy involves the labor market and the availability of prepared foods.

* Ways of preparing foods are part of a cultural heritage. They not only shape what people like to eat, but are a part of who they are.

Have students bring in cookbooks from home and from the library. Have some students bring in contemporary books, assign others to find older cookbooks (for example, one from each decade). It is also useful to use at least one contemporary women's magazine that features recipes, because these often have a lot of editorial comment on the uses and values of particular recipes.

Have students read both recipes and other kinds of information and advice contained in the book's preface, and in other parts of the text (suggested menus, introductions to different sections of the book).

1) Who is the intended audience? Men? Women? Both? What assumptions does the cookbook make about how much time and energy the cook wants to put into cooking?

2) Time of preparation and cooking: Compare how many recipes in a given section require a lot of time for preparation and cooking. Are recipes in older cookbooks more time consuming that in newer cookbooks? Do they make reference to speed of preparation? What is the connection between preparation time and the intended audience?

3) What knowledge and assumptions about nutrition are referenced in these recipes?

4) What knowledge is assumed on the part of the reader? This can be inferred from the kind of advice given to the reader, as well as the kinds of cooking skills described. For example, if the book describes how to boil an egg, a novice cook is the target audience. What terms in cookbooks seem to be experientially-based (see above on oral accounts). For example, what does it mean to "knead dough until smooth and elastic?" Can you tell when the dough is ready just from this description?

5) What advice is given the reader about the social dimension of cooking and eating? Does the book make reference to menu planning for different kinds of meals? (holidays, invalid, etc.) give advice about food storage, purchasing etc? In other words, what kind of image of a household do you get from reading the book? Are there other social values attached to food in the way recipes are presented; for example, "Show them you love them with this gooey chocolate cake."

6) To what extent are recipes from "scratch?" How much use is made of prepared foods?

* Every day documents that describe practices such as cooking can be read as cultural texts.

* Interpreting these texts involves analyzing the intended audience and looking for explicit and implicit references to cultural norms. Like the analysis of the oral texts, this exercise examines what is taken for granted.

a. Have students discuss who cooks in their house. How is this responsibility distributed?

1) Gender: Is cooking primarily a female activity? Are there certain kinds of cooking done more by men than women? Compare household cooking with holiday or special-event cooking. Compare "cook" (often female) to "chef" (often male). What does this use of language tell us about social values associated with domestic vs. "professional" activities? How do these patterns relate to the household economy (who works outside the household, what hours they work, etc.)

2) Age: At what age do children in the household learn to cook? When are they given cooking or food preparation responsibilities? How does this relate to the household economy?

b. This can also be used as the springboard for a historical comparison based on interviews with older members of the family.

* Household behaviors and norms are related to the wider economy, which defines how much time men and women have to devote to domestic tasks. This is one reason for changes in patterns over time. It can help to explain how responsibilities are divided up in a household.

*Ideas about gender-based duties and responsibilities are also historically rooted, and may or may not coincide with contemporary economic pressures. For example, statistics show that women still do more domestic tasks than men even when they are employed outside the home the same number of hours as men.

* Men's work (outside the home) has historically been valued more than women's work.

* In societies where women contribute the most to producing money or food for the household, they tend to have greater status and power (hunter-gatherers, for example). In agricultural societies where women play a "supporting role" by maintaining the domestic sphere, they tend to have less status and power.

Cooking methods and types of food are tied in with larger cultural traditions and have become integrated in the south. Discuss with the students the different methods of food preparation. Frying, for example, is a distinctly African method for cooking food. The archaeological and ethnohistoric records show examples of African slaves using frying. Food adaptations are also historic. Foods such as corn, beans, and squash are Native American foods that we all have in our diets. They have been adopted over time. Cooking stews is a cultural adaptation. Foods such as gumbo and creole have their roots in 18th-century French Louisiana and have carried into today's diets.

Students can easily research the topic of food preparation in the library. There are good resources about food origins and their incorporation into American eating habits. Have them discuss the different types of food preparation techniques in their homes as well as how food traditions have diffused throughout contemporary Mississippi.

a. Self-study: Have students take an inventory of the foods in their household. Then, have the student document the foods that are or acquired during a week. Students can be provided with a worksheet with data categories such as:

The teacher can collect worksheets and summarize the trends for a later class period.

* The data collected on convenience foods and meals out can be used as a way of talking about household economies, the division of labor, and time available for domestic tasks.

* The data on food purchased in neighborhood stores, and food obtained from friends or family, can also be used to talk about consumption patterns and social networks. Some forms of consumption (buying fast food, buying from a superstore) are relatively impersonal. Others involve people in social interactions and obligations (often, to reciprocate). People can also make economic choices (for example to shop in a neighborhood store) that are based on social considerations as much as they are on economic ones. Or, the social element may be an economic benefit, as in the case where local vendors extend credit to some of their customers.

* Data on the amount of food produced by the family can be used to talk about the labor involved (planting, weeding, harvesting, processing). Students can also consider whether growing food is done for purely economic reasons in their families or for subjective reasons. What ideas do we have in our culture about the value of gardening?

Students can use interviews with elders in the community to find out where the elders got their food.

1) Hunting: How much did they hunt? What animals did they hunt? Who did the hunting? How much of their diet did hunted food represent?

2) Gardening/farming: What foods were grown? What animals were kept? Who did the planting? Who took care of the animals? How big was the plot of land farmed? How was the food processed (canning, freezing). Where was it processed? Was any of it sold? Distributed to others?

Oral history data can be connected with archaeological evidence that shows that there has been a transformation from a rural farmstead to an urban homestead in the last 100 years, and fewer and fewer houses are producing their own foods. Students can do "archaeology in progress" by interviewing neighbors in rural areas talking to them about structures on the property. Some transformations make new uses out of old buildings. Many garages used to house equipment for tending to farm animals and crops grown on premises.

The change, above, shows a decrease in household autonomy (more autonomous households produce or procure a lot of food outside of the market economy).

What we throw away is a good record of our patterns of consumption. It also reveals economics (what we can afford to throw away) and cultural ideas that affect our ideas about what waste is and what our responsibilities are as citizens regarding its disposal.

An archaeologist named Rathje began a project several years that he called garbology. He and his students interviewed people in the community and asked them about their consumption patterns and then compared what they said to what they actually threw away. There were discrepancies between the two; people have ideas about cultural norms of health and consumption of such things as alcohol. Rathje found that certain items were going unreported or under reported. People's notions of cultural norms were influencing what they reported.

You can have students do a project very similar to what Rathje and his students did. They can interview family members and get a report on patterns of behavior. A sample of the questions they may ask includes:

Do you recycle? If so, what do you recycle and where do you take it (or is it picked up)? If not, why not? How much, of what kind of beverages (alcoholic, soda, tea) do you drink each week?

How much uneaten food do you throw away each week? How many times do you eat leftovers per week?

The next step is to document behaviors empirically. Have the student make a record of recycling, leftover consumption, and garbage content of a week. Compare what people said versus what they did and try to think of reasons for any differences.

How difficult is it for people to recycle? How much effort are they willing to make?

How easy is it for people to throw things out? Do they have frequent garbage pickup? Do they have the income to be able to afford to throw things out?

How are people influenced by cultural ideas, to include notions of "citizenship," individual responsibility and "wastefulness?"

Students can also do waste analysis in restaurants, cafeterias, and other commercial contexts. Since this topic may be perceived as a sensitive one, on which the establishment may be judged, the teacher will have to spend some time setting up these placements. Restaurant owners/managers and employees should be assured that the results are for educational purposes. Students should also be told to maintain complete confidentiality with regard to individuals they observe. You may want to have a "human subjects" release form signed by people involved — this establishes an ethical research climate by setting ground rules and allowing those who do not want to be observed a way to avoid it.

In addition to observing waste practices, students should learn about the laws and rules that affect waste management in the restaurant. These include health department requirements on food storage and disposal, any local recycling requirements, and in the case of franchises, company regulations. They should also find out about what waste removal or recycling "costs" the establishment, either in money or employee time.

They can study both the employees and the customers. Customer behavior of interest includes:

* Recycling patterns and waste patterns are affected by economics. The economy includes not just monetary cost, but cost in time and energy. This means that institutional structures (local waste management, laws, regulations, mandatory recycling) provide costs and incentives for people in this area.

* Waste is also a cultural concept. Patterns of disposal are like every other mundane activity: learned in a cultural context, and taken for granted as normal and acceptable. People who want to change behaviors have to address this cultural component.

* People tend to misreport waste behavior for a number of reasons. First, they may not always be aware of what they do. In other cases, they may be aware that what they consume or what they throw out is disapproved of by the wider culture.

In this section, we will be looking at how food is related to who we are, how we feel about ourselves, and how the foods we eat can distinguish us from other cultural groups. We will also explore the relationship between food and ritual, holidays, and other social events. Our relationships to food affect self esteem, mental health, and overall well-being. One the one hand, we can witness the negative side of food and image when we address eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa. There is a social link between proper body size and the ways in which we try and achieve it. On the other hand, we use food to comfort ourselves and make us feel better when we are not feeling well. People have their "comfort" foods, or foods they may associate with relatives and friends that may remind them of certain events or times in their lives. Certain foods are familiar. Food can also be a medium for social interaction. There are cultural correlations between certain events and holidays and the types of foods we perceive as belonging at these events. Food also plays an integral part of religious ceremonies, and these foods vary across our cultures. The activities in this section will address these issues and link them to our larger cultural fabric.

a. In class exercise: Hand out, or put on board/overhead the following list of foods. For each one, ask students to answer the following questions by writing or with a show of hands:

Would you eat the following? A) gladly, without hesitation; B) under duress; C) never.

1. horse

2. cow

3. cat

4. sea slug

5. brains

6. dog

7. tripe (cow intestines)

8. raw fish

9. dolphin

10. kangaroo

11. monkey

12. insects

13. blood or blood sausage

14. snake

15. opossum

16. cheese with worms in it

17. potted meat

18. hedge hog

19. tongue

Ask students why they would or would not eat the foods listed. Ask if they can see any patterns or categories of things we tend not to eat. Create a climate in which students feel free to respond (perhaps by including in the list an unusual thing you have eaten and can talk about).

* Cultural categories are powerful. They can affect our bodily reactions (the example of vomiting after eating a Ataboo" food).

* Cultural categories are not "logical". Every one of these animals is equally digestible from a purely physiological point of view.

* Cultural categories are patterned. Inedible foods in American culture fall into some broad categories: raw foods, offal (brains, blood etc.) and animals who are seen as "pets" or like humans. In the area of innards, there is a lot of subcultural variation, and this can be discussed. Other taboos are extremely local (for example, some people's ideas about possums), but they are usually accompanied by some rationale.

* Cultural categories and values are interrelated. For example, we find that in our culture, we have the category "pet". This is not true in every culture. For us, these familial animals have an almost-human identityBthey are not just pure "nature" but part "culture". The ban on eating these animals is related to the ban on eating other humans (cannibalism). Other food taboos are related to religious practices, and are explained in a religious ideology. Here you can talk about the taboo on pork for Jews and Muslims, the taboo on eating cows for Hindus, the taboo on eating meat on Fridays for CatholicsBless widespread today. Students could be assigned research projects to find out the religious reasons for these taboos.

We are what we eat. Not only from a dietary perspective, but from the position of social persona. We have cultural diets that reflect our ideology, way of life, and beliefs. An effective way to illustrate our social ties to food is to have the class research a particular way of eating. An example of this would be vegetarianism. Other possibilities include weight-gain diets, "natural" food diets, and vitamin consumption. This research can be done in two ways: through library resources and through interviews. The following sample questions (on vegetarianism) could be adapted for research on other diets.

1) What are the motivations behind the choice not to eat meat? (Health? Philosophical aversion to killing animals? Connection with religious beliefs? Habits learned in the process of growing up?) It could be interesting for students to explore "veganism" as well (people who do not eat any animal products).

2) How does being a vegetarian affect their participation in social events? Is the rest of society accommodating? Are people accepting and tolerant? Or does their diet create tensions with others and cut them out of certain social interactions? What kinds of adaptations, compromises, etc., must vegetarians make in order to follow their diet? (For example, bringing food to events, notifying hosts of food preferences, eating around a meat dish). What food purchase and preparation patterns do they have?

One option is to have students adopt the diet they study for a week, keeping track of everything they eat. At the end of the week, they should report back on how difficult/easy it was to follow the dietary rules Did they cheat on the diet ? When and why? How easy was it for them to find the foods they had to eat? How did family and friends accept their shift in eating practices?

* Dietary choices are connected to social identities. Changing a diet can amount to a change in social identity. People interpret dietary choices as attitudinal choices.

* Non-conformity in diet (everyday behavior) can have social penalties: rejecting foodways amounts to rejecting the people that practice them. I

* It takes a lot of personal effort to "buck the system". This shows how cultural norms are embedded in institutions (school menus) and social practices (what is served at parties etc.).

In our culture, saying "I am on a diet" usually refers to trying to lose weight, or lower cholesterol, or something else related to health. Students can explore motivations for dieting in a number of ways:

1) Interviews (and self-reports) on why people diet and how they diet. Students can explore motivations (health, image). What are the rewards for being "thin?" What are the penalties for being "fat?" How many people diet successfully? Why are they successful or unsuccessful in their attempt? How much motivation does one need to continue dieting?

One obvious motivator for dieting is to achieve a "good body." The definition of physical attractiveness varies from one culture to another and from one period of history to another.

3) Research the historical record. Have students use contemporary and historical documents to identify changes in cultural ideals about the body. They can go to art history books, and contemporary and historical newspapers and magazines. Have them consider gender: Have ideal body types been more or less restrictive for men versus. women? Is there more historical variation for male vs. female ideal bodies?

4) Research the cross-cultural record. Use resources like Elisa Sobo's "The Sweetness of Fat" (in which she shows how plumpness is associated with positive character traits in Jamaica) to introduce students to cultural variation in ideals of body size.

a) Have students rate themselves for physical attractiveness on a scale of 1-10 (this may be most effective if done with large numbers). This should be done anonymously on a form and turned in to the teacher. The form could also ask them for height and weight. It may also be used to collect information on the student like age, gender and ethnic group. These forms should be analyzed and summarized by the teacher (or given as a project to a student group). Potential trends/analyses:

* We could anticipate that girls will rate themselves lower than boys. If this is the case, it can be related to the fact that girls are more often judged on the basis of their appearance, or that there is a greater range of acceptable body types for males. Also, being "big" for a male may correlate with physical strength and a value on male potential for aggression.

* Different subcultures/ethnic groups have different criteria for rating body attractiveness. For example, recent studies have shown that African-American girls and young women have better self-images than white women. More than 30 percent of African-American female college students rated themselves a 9 or a 10 in attractiveness, compared to less than 5 percent of white female students.

b) Look to popular culture for representations of "ideal" bodies. Students can bring in magazine photographs of "good" bodies and discuss how closely the images presented mirror the general population. They can also be sent to the library to find "BBW" (Big Beautiful Woman), a magazine that offers an alternative image of beauty and acceptable weight. Some interesting things that can be found in magazines include:

* the juxtaposition, in many women's magazines, of quick diet plans with recipes for calorie-laden dishes that are presented as ways to "pamper" themselves or show their love for their families. This makes it explicit that "dieting" constitutes a significant social and emotional sacrifice.

* diet success story narratives (available both in advertisement for >miracle' diets as well as in regular features of magazines like Shape). These "success stories" often show what social and emotional rewards are linked with becoming thin (feeling "good about oneself;" gaining social approval, gaining the attention of the opposite sex, etc.). They often also make reference to a person having "control" in his or her life, which shows that dieting has taken on a moral dimension in our culture.

6) Assign a research project in which students review a large popular and academic literature on anorexia nervosa and bulimia. This research can be supplemented with visits to local counselors who often have experience (and literature) with these problems. Have students examine these conditions as "cultural pathologies" that can be linked to ideas about food, the body and "self-control."

* The notion of the "good body" changes across cultures and over time. What has usually been fashionable has been that which is hard to achieve. In times of economic hardship, being well-fed (plump) is social capital. In times of plenty, restricting food intake becomes the measure of social success, since "healthy" food costs more than fattening food.

* Many of the motivations for dieting (both positive and negative) are rooted in cultural beliefs. Such cultural beliefs include shared ideals about what constitutes a good body, as well as moral values attached to an individual's relationship with food (eating a lot, cooking for others, restricting intake).

Anthropologist Mary Douglas, in a famous article called "Deciphering a meal," shows that each culture has a "grammar" of ingredients and sequences. You can explore this cultural grammar with an in-class discussion of what goes into a traditional holiday meal, Thanksgiving. This can be conducted in small groups, or as a whole class. Ask students: "What do you eat for Thanksgiving?" Some students may not celebrate Thanksgiving; they can be asked to report on a special holiday meal they do celebrate. What ingredients are essential — without them, it just wouldn't be right? Responses can be grouped together under various categories (main dish, starch, vegetables, side dishes, desserts). This exercise will often reveal some unique family traditions and recipes. It inevitably shows a significant amount of variation. But it also will show that this variation is not extreme: for each category, there will be a fairly limited number of dishes. Overall, despite variation, most people's meals would be recognizable by other members of the culture (either specifically as Thanksgiving, or more generally, as a holiday meal). This discussion can also touch on the historical, local or family meanings behind the consumption of particular foods.

* Sharing a culture does not mean being exactly like everyone else. It does mean sharing ideas about a range of possibilities/values etc.

* Food has important ceremonial uses. For many people, the meal is Thanksgiving. Some foods have specific symbolic value for particular holidays or ceremonies. Some foods have a defining, central role: the holiday or ceremony wouldn't be "correct" without them. Others help to define an event as out-of-the-ordinary. Other foods have meaning as markers of specific identities or histories (Aunt Jane's raspberry pie; a family recipe).

a) Research on Food and Religion. Food and religion have intimate ties. Certain religious events require certain foods. Research for these religious correlations is fairly easy. The student can find references for the religions and compare them. Also, how does food symbolize other religious ideology? Why, for instance, do Christians eat a wafer of bread and have a drink of red wine during communion? What do these two things represent? How much religious diversity is there in your community and to what extent do they incorporate food into their ceremony? Have them discuss this with religious leaders and other people in the religious community. Are there differences in what is reported and the information the literature gave. If there is a local adaptation, how does it reflect overall community culture?

b) Cross-cultural uses of food in ceremonies of all kinds. This is a topic that can be easily researched using library sources. It is also an opportunity to make use of cultural diversity within the community, by interviewing people about ceremonial food use. A good video to use for this subject is "A Marriage" in the Eye of the Dragon series (in bibliography). It shows food being used as part of marriage negotiations as well as its use in a wedding ceremony.

Students can be asked to write a short essay (in class or take home) in which they discuss the first time they remember being confronted with differences in food practices while visiting someone outside their immediate family. These essays can be discussed in class, and the teacher and students can compile a list of significant differences. These may include the kinds of foods that are eaten, the amount of food eaten, mealtimes, the use of prayer or other ritual before the meal, rules for dress, behavior and conversation during the meal, where the meal is eaten, whether it is eaten by a family together, whether it is accompanied by some other activity (like TV).

This list of significant differences can then be used as the basis for students to systematically describe either their own family practices, or as a tool to be used by them to interview someone else about their family eating practices. The results of this systematic work can be compiled by the teacher or by students (putting together the data in a readable format can be a good learning activity).

* Student essays will usually reflect the way that differences in food habits are connected to other kinds of social behaviors and values. Students will often read in these differences in values. For example, students brought up in families where there is a set mealtime with all family members sitting around a table may express shock at a looser arrangement where family members take a plate and sit anywhere they want and eat at different times. This may seem "lax" (in terms of parental control) or lacking in family cohesion. On the other hand, students raised without a lot of mealtime structure may find a structured meal "too formal" for the relaxed relationships they expect in a family.

* The fact that we can be "shocked" or disconcerted by differences in food patterns shows how easy it is to be ethnocentric. But we can learn to be culturally relative to try to see things from another person's perspective.

* Part of this understanding involves looking at the way cultural practices are "adaptive" to the different needs of different groups. This can be emphasized in class discussion about how meal times and rules can be related to the social and economic activities of the families involved, as well as to their value systems.

Do we have a healthy diet? Are we aware of the effects of our diet on our body? How have the combination of historic foodways come together to influence how we eat today? We have learned quite a bit about the origins of our foodways by looking at the archaeological record. There are also cultural ideas about healthy ways to eat. This is, in part, related to ideas about body image addressed in the last section, but I will relate this section directly to health and nutrition. What kinds of cultural ideas of modesty effect our children's nutrition? Where do these ideas come from? Who has authority?

1. FOOD AND HEALTH
Have students interview people in their families/communities on food practices and ideas about food and health. First, students should ask people to describe what they ate yesterday for breakfast, lunch and dinner (asking for amounts/portion sizes when possible). Second, students should ask respondents to say what they consider to be a healthy diet. This very general question can be followed by a questionnaire where interviewees check off what percentages of nutrients make up a healthy diet.

a) proteins (meat, fish, poultry); b) fats; c) vegetables/fruits; 4) dairy products?

Alternatively, students could present interviewees with a blank food pyramid and have them fill in the foods they think belong in each section.

Once interviews are collected, students can do a rough analysis (since portion size will not always be able to be determined) of calories, and percentages of fat, protein, fruit/vegetable, carbohydrates and dairy in each person's diet, and compare this with the ideal diet described by the interviewees.

First of all, the data can be analyzed for differences. Age, gender, and ethnic group may be interesting variables to explore. Have there been changes in nutritional consciousness over time? For example, how does what adults say differ from children kids say? How does the information collected compare with what health magazines, medical journals, health departments and governmental agencies say about healthy living? Do children reflect their parents' perspectives or are they treating other sources (school, TV) as authoritative sources of information about health?

The collected data can be used to discuss how medical/nutritional information does or does not get conveyed to the general public. It can also be used to talk about the gap between what people know and believe and what they do. It can also be used to talk about the gap between what people say in an interview and what they actually do. Students can be asked to think about why people do not always eat "healthy"and to consider the role of "habits" in eating behavior. They may have personal experience with trying to change their diets, or they may know a relative or friend who has struggled to diet for health or esthetic reasons.

* Ideas about what is healthy are transmitted through a number of different social and cultural channels.

* Food behaviors are grounded in cultural experiences and are thus resistant to change, even when people recognize the "scientific" grounds of health information

* Ideas about what constitutes "legitimate" authorities on health can change over time, and can vary from one person or group to another.

a. WHEN TO WEAN? Class discussion: Initiate a class discussion beginning with the question, "when are babies weaned?" This will lead students to make normative statements about behaviors. These statements will be a clue to the range of variation in weaning practices in the community. They will also often be prescriptive statements, and that can be the next question: "When should babies be weaned and why?" What sort of objections do people have to those who wean "late" by their standards? Or to those who wean "early" by their standards? Is there any consensus in the class about what constitutes "too late" or "too early?"

These rationales will be related to wider cultural values and orientations, for example, notions of dependence and independence. Some people may see "late" weaning as "permissive:" the mother being manipulated by the child. Or, they may see "early" weaning as a denial of a crucial mother-child bond and sense of security for the child. Others may link weaning with a positive value on the child's independence. Still others will see the issue from the mother's point of view, and advocate her independence from nursing.

This discussion can be followed by research on age of weaning in other cultures, by interviews with mothers and health care professionals. Literature on breast feeding in other cultures shows differences in weaning ages. What are the health differences associated with earlier or later weaning? Are the health issues the primary ones in the average person's judgments of appropriate weaning ages?

Students can also look at literature from organizations like the La Leche league and other groups that advocate long-term breast feeding, and see how child-directed weaning (where the mother never stops the child from nursing) is linked with other philosophical positions about child care. For example, the use of a "family bed"Bhaving children sleep in the same bed as parents.

1) Research the historical record: When was formula developed? What was said about it at the time? Students can interview grandparents who may not have had the option to bottle feed, or who remember when breast feeding was the only option. Have students research the use of "wet nurses." How do they feel about the idea of someone nursing a baby who is not her own? Who could afford wet nurses?

2) Research attitudes and practices about breast feeding in other parts of the world.

* One of the things that bottle feeding does is free the mother from being the sole source of nutrition for the child. This freedom has clearly been valued, since wealthy women exercised their option to hire a wet nurse who gave them the same freedom.

* Attitudes about breast feeding have changed over time. Some of these changes are a result of medical research on the benefits of breast feeding for the child's immune system. Others are more "subjective" or cultural.

3) Have students collect contemporary information on breast feeding vs. bottle feeding from a variety of community sources:

a) Interviews in which they ask women what choices they made and why, or ask non-mothers what they think is the best choice and why. They can also ask questions about where it is appropriate to breastfeed a baby.

b) Books on infant care, pamphlets and other literature available from the Department of Public Health, doctors' offices health clinics, WIC (Women, Infants, and Children), and the La Leche League. Some of these sources may also be able to provide statistics on breastfeeding in the local area. The people who run these organizations are also invaluable sources of information on local practices and attitudes, since they are the ones who take to mothers all the time.

c) The written media. There have been a number of publicized cases in the last few years where women breastfeeding in public places (and not so public places, like in a car in a mall parking lot) were in a car in a mall parking lot) were asked to stop or leave by police or security guards. These stories could be researched in on line or CD-ROM databases like EbscoHost.

Statistics show that the southeast has the lowest rate of breastfeeding in the country. Students can be asked to try to explain why this might be the case.

* arguments given for breastfeeding that deal with ideas about psychological well-being, mother-child bonding, etc. These are cultural attitudes.

* other information about breast feeding the child that reveals cultural attitudes. What kind of attitudes do proponents of breast feeding feel they need to address? What "difficulties" are assumed to go along with breast feeding? Do these publications recommend standards of appropriateness/modesty in the woman's choice of garments and where she feeds her child? What references are made to weaning, or problems of the working mother? What reference is made to the father's role in baby care? Is bottle feeding presented as a way for the father to be closer to the child? As a way to shift the burden of late night feedings from the mother alone?

* Decisions on how to feed the baby are influenced by cultural as well as practical issues.

* Practical issues are related to the social environment: the prime example is working mothers.

* Attitudes about breast feeding are culturally conditioned, and involve ideas about health, modesty, convenience, what it means to be a good mother, relationship between mother and child and father and child.

* Attitudes and practices vary subculturally within the United States, and vary significantly across time and cross-culturally. Such attitudes and practices can be linked to both practical and ideological (purely cultural) issues.

Last Modified: July 28, 2005 9:09 AM
URL: http://www.usm.edu/antsoc/anthro/teaching.html
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