Conclusions

Bottom Line

Food is personal. People will always find time to celebrate life with a shared meal. We can't live without food, but we also wouldn't want to. We eat when we're hungry, we eat when we're sad, and we eat when we're nervous. We clean, cut, sprinkle, shave, grate, stir, sautée, and bake our way to melt-in-your-mouth perfection. We say "Let's split it," when we really want dessert but don't want to eat it alone. We watch the bride and groom feed each other cake, and we bring brownies over to the new neighbors. Through all of life's little and big moments, we have each other and we have food.

Food is, at its core, a basic means of survival. Just as species evolve and adapt to become stronger and smarter, people have created social customs around food to keep our bellies full and our families together. Oftentimes, the literature of food as portrayed by various forms of advertising and media can exploit what we hold so dear, whispering negative nothings into our ears, and encouraging us to have a conditional relationship with the very matter that sustains our lives.

What's important to remember is that we have to eat to live, no matter what. If we overthink it, we can easily become overwhelmed. We can obsess about what to put in our bodies and when, how to eat, how much to eat, where to eat it, and with whom to eat it. For as much as the literature of food can be controversial, it can be enlightening. Let's remember why we eat in the first place—let's appreciate the history, the customs, and the togetherness that food brings to us—and listen to what's good for our own bodies. In doing so, we nourish our bodies and our souls.

And if advertisements won't stop trying to shame us, let's not shame ourselves. We all eat, so let's enjoy!  Most of all, let's remember to take whatever literature of food we encounter with a grain of salt (and a pinch of pepper).

Fordham University's Expressions Dance Alliance's Senior Farewell Dinner, an annual custom revolved around food and friendship

My friend Mallorie and I sketchily enjoying some fruit on the 4th of July, an American celebration featuring hot dogs and hamburgers

Me at a Wawa, embracing the American aesthetic before voyaging to London

Children's Lit

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

I thought I'd focus this entry on one of my favorite categories: children's literature. Looking back on it, my all-time favorite children’s books are the ones involving food: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (the caterpillar eats a TON and still emerges a beautiful butterfly), and Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola (I say yes to streets flooded with pasta).

Let's compare an American children's book that centers around food with a more contemporary British children's book, also centered around food and eating. I checked out of the library My Big Shouting Day! by Rebecca Patterson, mostly because the small and loud heroine of the story reminds me of myself as a young, stubborn child.

Not only do Strega Nona and My Big Shouting Day! portray shared, family meals, but arguably, both portray the individual experience of eating in a negative light. When the cook's helper in dePaola's book attempts to replicate Strega Nona's recipe alone, things go awry and he floods the whole village with spaghetti. In Patterson's story, when the small child is too focused on throwing her temper tantrums, she misses out on sharing happy meals with her family and friends.

A picture from My Big Shouting Day!, depicting that a picky child is an unhappy child

Anthony from Strega Nona hanging on for dear life after he attempts to make spaghetti by himself

(Sources: http://www.newkideo.com/wp-content/themes/hybrid-newvideo/tools/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/NNVG155240.jpg&w=640&h=360&q=95)

DisADvantages & Eating Disorders

BILLBOARDS/EATING DISORDERS

Whilst in the tube I was reminded of another, less blatant way in which culture frames eating: through fitness advertisements.  When I decided to turn my attention to ads I saw in London about body image, I found plenty of commonalities with US ads.

The US and UK ads for gym memberships that I've seen often involve shaming bodies or criticizing eating habits. However, humiliation is not an efficient or sustainable tactic for convincing someone to get in shape. Telling me I'm fat and lazy won't transform my soft stomach into a six-pack—it may even make me fatter and lazier. In fact, you've pressured me so much already that I've decided I HATE exercise. Where's the closest McDonald's?

It would be irresponsible to have a blog that discusses emotions and eating without acknowledging eating disorders, too. While stress eating is very real and very common, people develop other disorders including anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating disorder, and more. The debate isn't if mainstream media's literature of bodies and food has an effect on a person's self-image, it is how much.

Hadley Freeman of The Guardian notes how airbrushed ads don't create the eating disorders, but definitely don't help them. She notes, "You know the problem with eating disorders? They're just so photogenic!" 

Speaking to the hypocrisy of popular magazines, Freeman observes how one page will feature a heartbreaking exposé on anorexia, and the next will praise whichever celebrities rock the skinniest "bikini bod."

I think the literature of food is most powerful in the form of these visual ads.  If a "picture is worth a thousand words," just imagine the number of words we absorb subconsciously from ads like these, and the effect they have on us without our permission.

Just one example of the type of ad I've seen at the Equinox, near one of my campuses at High Street Kensington. "Sex sells," as they say.

And yet another positive message instilling the idea that one should achieve such an exclusive status, that not even his/her significant other has full access

A link to Hadley Freeman's article (well worth the read!):

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/02/link-media-and-eating-disorders

In addition, a link to the author of Food: The Good Girl's Drug Sunny Sea Gold's homepage.  Gold provides support for young women in particular for binge eating disorder.  She is extremely articulate when discussing emotional eating habits and how tell-tale signs often go undiagnosed and unacknowledged by society:

http://healthygirl.org

(Sources of images:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/06/2472D99C00000578-2898577-image-a-1_1420538186807.jpg, http://www.mcpetesez.com/lipglosslace060113_bad-gym-ad-says-writer.jpg)

CakeCakeCake

FOOD, OCCASIONS, & TRADITION

Within the past week, I’ve been more perceptive of the ways we relate to food on special occasions.  Percy the Globetrotter, One Direction, Dora the Explorer, among many other pop culture icons adorn the birthday cakes I saw in Morrison's.  While on the one hand, I should be able to eat my Harry Stiles cake with a gleeful and carefree disposition, I'm simultaneously living in a society that guilts me for eating these fatty foods.

Perhaps Londoners have the right idea in making fancy fondant cakes so accessible in a normal grocery store aisle, as opposed to having it be a coveted specialty item like I've experienced in the US. If someone places a steaming plate of fettuccine alfredo behind the bars of a jail cell and they throw away the key, doesn't that just prime your taste buds for fettuccine alfredo?? (The lesson here is that we want what we can't have, or in the case of these cakes, what is difficult to access.)

I think if we weren't so preoccupied with "good" and "bad" foods, we wouldn’t be caught up in the "wanting what we can’t have" complex. This isn't just about what we eat, but how we're presented with it and how it impacts our relationship with different kinds of food. 

The associations we make with food are not inherent to their composition—the butter, flour, and sugar that makes the cake—but is created by its visual rhetoric as well.  It is interesting to observe how the physical can translate into the psychological relationships between us and what we eat.

A side note: I was fortunate enough to eat a piece of Percy the Globetrotter as my official birthday cake, though it reminded me of an idea discussed in a course I'm taking at the University of Roehampton called "The Literature of Food." It is somewhat gruesome in nature to shape our foods into beloved childhood cartoons...

Admittedly, if I'd had any emotional attachments to Percy or to pigs in general, I probably would've had a little trouble carving into his succulent, cream-filled body, no matter how delicious.

Me, surprised, as I am presented with a "Percy the Globetrotter" birthday cake

Me (left) and my friend Andy (right) after I'd smashed a birthday cupcake in his face.  I have to pose this question: is it also a weird tradition in the UK to smear cake on the birthday person's face? Either way, I won.

The Food Investigation Continues: Supermarket Edition

SUPERMARKETS 

My birthday is coming up, and I have my special day on the brain.  So while in Morrison’s today, I couldn’t help but look over the shelf of elaborate, pre-made birthday cakes.  After all, if your roommate doesn't come home to find you've polished off an entire Dora the Explorer cake by yourself, is it even your birth month?

As I pried myself away from the sweet selection, I remembered the first time that I saw a shelf of these themed birthday cakes in a London food store.  I was at a Marks and Spencer here in Camden when I first arrived back in January, and my American friends and I were taken by surprise with a collective “Wooow.”  

The fondant cakes with fancy designs reminded me of something I’d have to wait in a line for and buy behind a bakery counter in the States.  Here in London, I can pick up 5-tiered cakes and fly through self check-out without encountering any humans at all!  In fact, all of the London grocery stores I’ve been to have an easy-access, boxed cake shelf.

I’m not sure exactly how much cultural value lies in this observation, besides maybe that Londoners aren’t as easily fascinated by fondant cakes as Americans. (Fondant cakes excite me, and by this, I am not ashamed!)  Either way, it is intriguing to see even the small differences within the grocery shopping experience.

Additional note: Marks and Spencer has a full apparel store??

"Party cakes" section of Morrison's in Camden