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elliepassmore · 1 month

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Ruin Their Crops on the Ground review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: nonfiction, medical anthropology, social justice, food studies

Big thanks to Netgalley, Metropolitan Books, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Wow. I cannot sing the praises of this book enough. It goes in-depth into the way food and food policy has been, and continues to be, weaponized as a means of control. I got my BA in anthropology and got very into medical anthropology when doing that, so I knew a little about the stuff Freeman talked about, but she goes into detail and provides a lot of context for these topics and clearly elucidates the historical-to-contemporary connections. I learned a lot of new information from this book and found that it was presented in a very understandable manner. This is definitely one of those books that I think everyone should read.

The book is broken up into seven chapters and an introduction, the first three chapters each focus on an ethnic and cultural group in the US: Native American, Black, and Hispanic. In each of these chapters, Freeman looks at the traditional foods eaten by those groups and the benefits those foods provide nutritionally. She then examines how colonialization altered those foods and forced people in these groups to start eating according to how white people wanted them to, often switching from highly nutritious foods to foods of subpar quality and foods with empty calories (i.e., bison to canned meat, hand-made corn tortillas to white bread, etc.). From there she discusses the impacts, historically and modern-day, of those changes and the actions some people are taking to return to traditional foods.

I already knew some of the stuff covered in these chapters, but it was absolutely horrifying to learn more of the details and I found them to be very informative. It feels weird to say I liked these chapters because so much of the information contained in them is horrifying, but it's something I haven't seen touched on in too much depth in my studies and I want to learn about it. It's these chapters in particular that I feel people should read because they're so informative and provide a lot of historical and contemporary context, and I think it really showcases how things are connected through time.

The next two chapters of the book focus on specific aspects of American food and food policy. Chapter 4 looks at milk and the USDA's ties into the dairy industry. A majority of people in the world are lactose intolerant (including me, lol), though population to population the percentage changes, with Caucasians having some of the highest percentages of lactose persistence into adulthood. Not only did Freeman use this chapter to discuss the inadequacy and capitalistic-driven motivations of the USDA's milk requirements, but she also uses it to dive into the health issues associate with dairy products, as well as the racist rhetoric surrounding milk in the past and present. Chapter 5 looks at school lunches and again targets the USDA's Big Agriculture ties for why school lunches lack nutrition. Freeman also uses this chapter to touch on school lunch debt and the myriad of ways policies surrounding lunch debt serve to humiliate and starve children.

I found these two chapters to be interesting and informative in a different way than the preceding chapters. Like with the first three, I did already know a lot of what Chapter 4 covered before going into it. Milk, lactose intolerance/persistence, and the USDA were things we discussed in my medical anthro class, but the historical ties and legal efforts to change (or not change) things were new to me. I also didn't know a lot of the negative health side-effects Freeman discussed in the milk chapter and it was definitely eye-opening. Chapter 5 was interesting to me because I rarely ate school lunch as a kid, and then as a late-middle schooler and in high school I did school online so I wasn't exposed to a lot of the stuff Freeman discussed in the chapter. I definitely remember the school lunches though and how they often lacked veggies and seemed always to contain a milk carton. It was super interesting to read the politics behind what goes into school lunches and how laws to change them or keep them the same were often tied into monetary interests.

Chapter 6 talks about racist food marketing and turns somewhat away from food itself and focuses on how branding utilizes some of the things discussed in chapters 1-3 to brand food, advertise to certain groups, or both. It was definitely disgusting to hear about the racist marketing techniques and how long it took companies to actually start doing better. Chapter 7 looks into the laws surrounding food policy, and SNAP in particular, which is an area I don't know too much about. I found the discussion to be very interesting and am definitely interested in seeing how this area of law and policy develops over time, hopefully in a positive way.

Overall I found this book to be very impactful and informative. I've already recommended it to 3 or 4 people and definitely think this is an area of study more people should know about. I'll probably check out Skimmed by this author as well.

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3584-tropical-fish · 7 months

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Thinking about those loaves of bread they found in Pompeii and reverse engineered

#drawlogies2023 #ologies #ologies podcast #food anthropology #fish’s-art

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cedarlili · 1 year

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Christmas Books

For Christmas this year, I got a little gift certificate from work, to spend at Amazon. What did I want? Well, books! I wrote about this a week or so ago, how my initial foray into selecting a few fun reads was stymied by the state of anthropology these days. I weep for it… but I dug into the used book stacks and wound up finding a few that fit within my budget and seemed to be useful for my…

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#brillat-savarin #cooking chemistry #food anthropology #food books #food science #gastronomy #research books

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littlepawz · 6 months

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Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said."

We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.

~Ira Byock~

#Margaret Mead #civilization #first sign of civilization #caring for others #ancient history #anthropology #food for though #wow #protecting each other #worth a read

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iknowmorethanyou · 20 days

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Follow for more ❤️

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daffodilfool · 5 months

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Music and Intelligence

i made a followup / correction of this post

go read that instead, please I worked so fucking hard on it and people are STILL flocking to this version

I'm gonna preface this by saying I am by no means a professional biologist, I am just a biology student who nerds out about art and biology sharing an interesting thought I had this morning.

We don't know where music comes from. That is the very disappointing answer I got to a very interesting question I had this morning. The best answer science can come up with is ...eh, it's kind of just an evolutionary hiccup that developed out of nowhere.

I don't buy it.

Hypothesis: Music isn't an evolutionary hiccup but actually an integral aspect to developing sapience.

Think about this: One of the very first things we'll hear as human beings both now as we're born and in the ages past when we first evolved is birdsong. We associate birdsong with two very important things:

Winter has passed.

Dawn has broken.

Both of these give us a lot of valuable information like it is no longer dark, it is no longer cold, it is no longer dangerous, it is safe.

Early hominids with the ability to correctly identify birdsong and associate it with safety would thus be at great evolutionary advantage as they would be much more likely to survive the winter and the night, but that ability requires 3 major steps:

The ability to pick out distinct rhythms and melodies to correctly identify something as birdsong.

The ability to correlate said birdsong to the idea of the sun coming out.

The ability to make said connection through an abstract emotional response.

In other words, it requires pattern recognition, problem solving and complex emotion. Sapience. Music is not a coincidental fluke byproduct of sapience, it is the catalyst for developing sapience.

Granted this is largely speculation on my part; there's nothing I can do to prove that this is why our sapience evolved.

However.

We are not the only sapient life on earth, there are others, some debated, some not. Besides us there are dolphins, whales, corvids, parrots and elephants, and do you know what we all have in common? We deliberately communicate through melodic and rhythmic sounds, and we derive a particular pleasure from doing so. We all enjoy music.

If music was an evolutionary fluke in our development, how come it's a commonality among all sapient life? There are many animals that sing to mate and sing to intimidate and yet they lack any signs of sapience, but the ones that sing just because they can all happen to be the most intelligent creatures on earth.

Food for thought.

#biology #zoology #music #songs #philosophy #animals #anthropology #dolphin #whale #corvid #crow #raven #parrots #elephant #food for thought #shower thoughts

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mindblowingscience · 6 months

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Seaweed isn't something that generally features today in European recipe books, even though it is widely eaten in Asia. But our team has discovered molecular evidence that shows this wasn't always the case. People in Europe ate seaweed and freshwater aquatic plants from the Stone Age right up until the Middle Ages before it disappeared from our plates. Our evidence came from skeletal remains, namely the calculus (hardened dental plaque) that built up around the teeth of these people when they were alive. Many centuries later, this calculus still contains molecules that record the food that people ingested. We analyzed the calculus from 74 skeletal remains from 28 archaeological sites across Europe. The sites span a period of several thousand years starting in the Mesolithic, when people hunted and gathered their food, through to the earliest farming societies (a stage called the Neolithic) all the way up to the Middle Ages. Our results suggest that seaweed was a habitual part of the diet for the time periods we studied, and became a marginal food only relatively recently.

#Seaweed #anthropology #anthropologie #archaeology #Oceans #Food #science #biology #stem

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vampirezogar · 8 months

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I gotta know about the food of ancient cultures.

And not in like an Epic of Gilgamesh meets Portal type of "And by a pie, what I meant was darkness and torrential flooding" way.

I NEED to know what Agrarian Greg's favorite snack was. There were streets back then, I AM DEAD CERTAIN there was street food. What the fuck did the construction crew at Gobekli Tepe daydream about gorging themselves on. I KNOW THEY DID, I'VE WORKED IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY, I KNOW YOU CAN SAY "dumpling" AND HEAR THE WHOLE CREW GO "aaaaah, noooo, I'm trying to focus dude, I know a guy in nebraska who has a fuckin recipe I'm gonna have to call him, god dammit."

#food #anthropology #archeology #i guess?#gilgamesh mention

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kafkasapartment · 8 months

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Scholars think Nacional cacao was first cultivated in what is now Zamora Chinchipe province over 5,000 years ago. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in Nacional cacao. Some chocolatiers believe that it is the finest cacao in the world. There are now efforts underway to revive the Nacional cacao industry in Ecuador.

#history #histoire #historia #chocolate #food #anthropology #cult

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kimyoonmiauthor · 4 months

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The difference between Paocai and Kimchi in terms of Food science

For the record, I evenly hate all super nationalists of any nationality. I don't discriminate on nationality, but the attitude that comes with it:

Mass retconning of facts on the bold faced idea that your idea, not factually based can replace actual history.

And this is the case for Paocai and Kimchi, where Chinese try to claim on kimchi as "being originally Chinese" in origin when it's a series of

Misunderstandings

Fucking none of them have made kimchi in their lives so they don't understand the headspace jump and differences between the two.

This is of the flavor of (pun maybe intended): Never read the book, heard the teacher in class, parroted the teacher and now I think that Aristotle loved women because my teacher was a pro-Aristotle is not a bad scientist and a creepy asshole which bad statistical ideologies.

Note: 泡菜 can be romanized "paocai", "pao cai, "pao chai", and "Paochai" it varies on dialect.

The origins of the idea:

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-Chinese-people-including-some-CCP-guys-argue-that-Kimchi-has-its-origin-in-China-not-in-Korea?q=Why%20do%20Chinese%20think%20Pao%20Cai%20and%20Kimchi%20have%20the%20same%20origin

Quote:

As far as I know, it started from an article in Global Times. Paocai was able to get a certification from ISO in 2020. In a provocatively worded article, China's state-run Global Times newspaper reported that the ISO had recognized "paocai" as "an international standard for the kimchi industry, led by China." The article was deleted in Global Times, but you can still find quotes in other media. The Global Times announced that the headline was a problem of translation from Chinese headline to English. But in China, kimchi is called Korean paocai, so no way that paocai could be translated to kimchi. Global Times announced there is no need to argue, and ISO also clarified that kimchi is not included in their certification. Anyway, it transformed the dispute of the history of the two countries. The answer is NO. China did not claim that they invented kimchi. But a state-run media provoked a dispute, and it becomes a struggle between the netizens of the two countries.

Second Claim: Koreans took the characters from Paocai and used them for Kimchi.

This is FALSE.

Chinese characters: 泡菜

The etymology of the Korean.

沈菜 It would be: timchɑi (팀ᄎᆡ; 沈菜) > dimchɑi (딤ᄎᆡ) > jimchɑi (짐ᄎᆡ) > jimchui (짐츼) > gimchi (김치)

Furthermore, it's best guess by Chinese ambassadors, IIRC. This is as close as you get to a native word because it doesn't have CHinese characters associated with it (anymore)

Third Claim: Paocai is older than kimchi

The only verifiable source I could find was a book of poetry that mentions pickles. BUT it doesn't mention how they are made at all.

I heard you cry, but on Wikipedia (as of the date of this writing)

There are claims that it dates to the Shang Dynasty.

The author of this article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0956713520300906

cites himself, and then there is no work cited or which article he's talking about. When I went digging for it NO SUCH ARTICLE EXISTS. This is the only article that talks about it, which means HE MADE IT UP. WTF.

In this article, it does not mention Shang Anywhere.

In this article there is no mention of Shang:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jfs.12075

Check your sources's sources. This is called media literacy.

The earliest we can be certain of the recipe is probably 6th Century BCE.

So if we adjust for verifiable sources, the earliest date is Shijing, which mentions pickles as: 葅

That's 11th century BCE.

Even if it was the Shang Dynasty, that's still sooner than the date of Kimchi: 1600 to 1046 B.C. It would have to be 2000BCE or older to throw doubts and even so, the jars to make Kimchi are sometimes dated to 6,000 years old or more.

This is sooner than Kimchi.

Earliest date for Kimchi is probably around 4000 years ago:

This is archaeology work, rather than trying to smack some microbiologists and hope no one searches for Shang Dynasty.

You might think I'm arguing something mind-numbing as Chinese copied from Koreans. Not at all. Because I'm going to cover some food science for the next bit.

Fourth Claim: Paocai and Kimchi are made the exact same way

When BBC disputes this, you have an issue. White people disputing it...

But here, I'll do a break down for you based on basic food science.

Lactobacilli

The majority of the pickling experience as agreed by Chinese people and Korean are done by Lactobacilli. These are naturally in the air, etc.

Lactobacilli in Paocai

Lactobacilli in Kimchi:

However, there are several varieties that grow in different environment. L. iners, L. crispatus, L. gasseri and L. jensenii.

I couldn't find the composition of Lactobacilli in paocai, but I doubt they are the same, give the Korean article.

But WHY?

There are several ways to ferment vegetables.

There is by sugar as in: https://www.sugarnutritionresource.org/news-articles/sugar-as-a-preservative#:~:text=How%20does%20sugar%20help%20preserve,of%20water%20activity%20(aw).

Usually this has to be in heated jars and very, very well sealed and heated.

Alcohol preservation

https://www.ehow.com/how_8733128_pickle-vodka.html#:~:text=Vegetables%20to%20use%20when%20preserving,creating%20a%20flavorful%20infused%20vodka.

There is also heated in salt: https://www.cooking-therapy.com/how-to-make-pickled-vegetables/#:~:text=Making%20pickled%20vegetables,and%20adjust%20to%20your%20tastes.

There is cold anaerobic:

Cold Aerobic Salt Fermentation

This means it relies on air exchange, and might use some sugar, but it mainly uses salt. This is where the majority of Korean fermentation lies. This also is the most difficult to master.

Which one is kimchi and paocai?

Kimchi- Aerobic cold fermented. All versions. Without light.

Paocai- Anaerobic hot fermented with sugar necessary, sometimes alcohol, light is used, water mote is employed.

Another recipe: https://msshiandmrhe.com/paocai/

This has an impact on the lactobacilli flora.

For example, in Sauerkraut:

It is usually produced by spontaneous fermentation. In spontaneous sauerkraut fermentation, Leuconostoc mesenteroides initiate the fermentation process, followed by the growth of other lactic acid bacteria (LAB), mainly Lactobacillus brevis, Pediococcus pentosaceus, and Lactobacillus plantarum species, among which L. plantarum is responsible for the second phase of fermentation and high acidity of the produced sauerkraut.

Because the gasses are trapped, the cO2 produced by the lactobacilli effectively cook the vegetables.

www.sciencedirect.com/topics/food-science/sauerkraut#:~:text=It%20is%20usually%20produced%20by,plantarum%20species%2C%20among%20which%20L.

That goes with All of the other processes involved–the way it is fermented impacts the flavor and the end product. The aims are different with each type of fermentation.

Processes of making the pickles side by side:

Brining v. salting Kimchi is first salted to kill unwanted mold and bacteria. Sometimes a salt brine is used, but it's usually water (cold+salt) This varies widely by temperature and region.

This corresponds to it being a peninsula.

It makes no sense for Paocai to have this treatment. This is why it is technically *hot brined* first.

There is a huge gap of difference between salted and brined.

Brined means you use water and salt and the water and salt mixture *stays* with the vegetables as in Paocai.

In Kimchi, the water, if there is any is *dumped* out. It does not go into the final product.

How to activate the bacteria

Paocai traditionally *requires* sugar to jump start the lactofermentation process.

In Kimchi, sugar is sometimes added and sometimes not. Koreans rely mostly on the carb content of flours like sweet rice flour.

Protein element

Kimchi always, always has a protein element. This helps even out the fermentation process so that the vegetables on top don't ferment that much faster than the vegetables at the bottom. The higher the heat, the more protein Koreans add to the kimchi.

Paocai never has a protein element. Even in the warmer Sichuan province region. You complain about Luosifen? Hahaha. Kimchi is smellier.

How flavor is added

Kimchi You make a slurry with the flavorants already added to spread over the leaves and spread it evenly. You add water after the flavorants. And the flavorants are very, varied by regionality. These flavorants are never hard and woody, but usually soft and fishy.

Paocai, you have the flavorants cooked into the brine and add one or two. These are usually hard and woody spices. They are never fishy. These are small and very different from kimchi.

Aerobic or Anaerobic?

Kimchi is lactofermented with AIR. It’s aerobic. This is why the protein is in there and the recipe for SUMMER Kimchi is entirely different from WINTER Kimchi.

Paocai is lactofermented (with different subspecies WITHOUT AIR. This is why there is NO protein in the recipe. (Also doesn’t last as long. *cough*) There is no separate recipes for summer versus winter Paocai.

Traditional Pickling vessel

Kimchi is traditionally made with special ceramic jars that breathe. Onggi. These do not let in light, but they let out gasses and let in new air regularly. They are carefully packed in order of density and pickling time of the vegetables.

Paocai can be made with a special jar that only burps. It’s not made with anything that lets air in. In fact, you seal it with a water ring traditionally. And often they use light to help ferment the vegetables.

Conclusion

In process there is a stronger argument for the relationship between sauerkraut and Paocai beyond the fact that Paocai uses hot brine, the process is pretty close. And one could make paocai in a sauerkraut jar, but the same is NOT true of Kimchi. trapped gasses cook baechu and make it taste nasty and mushy.

I know people preach up and down that kimchi is merely pickled vegetables, but I'd strongly argue that it is a specific fermentation process that uses AIR as the strongest fermentation agent and the recipe is built from there. Koreans are masters of aerobic fermentation, going as far to do it with about all things fermented: vinegars, soy sauce and of course all kimchi. The shame of it is that Koreans don't seem to remember that and embarrassingly say things like, it'll be hermetically sealed for white people's approval? I saw a manufacturer of a kimchi making product promise that no smell will escape and no air will escape, but I'm telling you, that makes for some nasty kimchi. The whole point was that after a while you could smell when it was done without opening the jar. You took a whiff and ah, you knew.

There is no such things with paocai.

Yeah, cue the haughty indignant person here saying something like I' saying kimchi is "superior" or something. No. What I' saying is due to their processes of fermentation and how they are thought of and treated being completely different, occupying totally different parts of the cultural frames, isn't it safe to say they had nothing to do with each other and were independently created? There is about no resemblance in the recipes with each other. The processes are completely different.

And usually I've found if the recipe is similar and came from the same basis, there is relation between the elements. I mean, I made soy sauce from scratch for Japan, Korea, and China, North and South. And even I could see how they were related to each other. (Though no one wants to pay me for the effing article on the subject though clearly I'm an Anthropology and Food Science geek good enough to make all of the sauces from scratch on my own and one magazine tried to undercut me by boosting one of their existing articles with my pitch.). But these don't even have the same base ingredients. I don't see how one could remotely say they are the same.

BTW, there is a huge flavor gap between Northern and Southern Chinese soy sauce as well due simply to the aerobic v. non aerobic fermentation.

So I wouldn’t argue they are the same or have a same origin.

I make jokes that Koreans got kicked out of the Northern tribes for adding stuff to the kimchi like seafood. But it’s likely Koreans added seafood because it was there and then figured out it stored longer.

BTW, if you want me to break down the exact food science and all of the reasons I know the above about kimchi through trying to make a version with all foods I could get my hands on, I can so do that quickly too. I have a better grasp of it than your average Korean.

#kimchi #paocai #paochai #fermentation #food science #food anthropology

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socstudies · 5 months

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30-11-23

a November photo dump to celebrate 1k followers! /// atm I'm trying to get my shit together and I'm always super motivated to study when I'm active on studyblr bc I need to study to have something to post about lol

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40ouncesandamule · 1 year

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We need to abandon the Malcolm Gladwell image of everyone before us as r-slur-ed. We need to abandon the Francis Fukuyama myth of the end of history. Neoliberal ideology requires that everyday is better than the last and progress only flows one way to justify itself. Capitalism requires infinite growth.

It’s not the case. Our ancestors were more like us than they were different from us

#neanderthals #anthropology #science #food

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aibidil · 1 year

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On “Civilization” from The Dawn of Everything

One problem is that we’ve come to assume that ‘civilization’ refers, in origin, simply to the habit of living in cities. Cities, in turn, were thought to imply states. But as we’ve seen, that is not the case historically, or even etymologically. The word ‘civilization’ derives from Latin civilis, which actually refers to those qualities of political wisdom and mutual aid that permit societies to organize themselves through voluntary coalition. In other words, it originally meant the type of qualities exhibited by Andean ayllu associations or Basque villages, rather than Inca courtiers or Shang dynasts. If mutual aid, social co-operation, civic activism, hospitality or simply caring for others are the kind of things that really go to make civilizations, then this true history of civilization is only just starting to be written.

As we’ve been showing throughout this book, in all parts of the world small communities formed civilizations in that true sense of extended moral communities. Without permanent kings, bureaucrats or standing armies they fostered the growth of mathematical and calendrical knowledge. In some regions they pioneered metallurgy, the cultivation of olives, vines and date palms, or the invention of leavened bread and wheat beer; in others they domesticated maize and learned to extract poisons, medicines and mind-altering substances from plants. Civilizations, in this true sense, developed the major textile technologies applied to fabrics and basketry, the potter’s wheel, stone industries and beadwork, the sail and maritime navigation, and so on.

A moment’s reflection shows that women, their work, their concerns and innovations are at the core of this more accurate understanding of civilization. As we saw in earlier chapters, tracing the place of women in societies without writing often means using clues left, quite literally, in the fabric of material culture, such as painted ceramics that mimic both textile designs and female bodies in their forms and elaborate decorative structures. To take just two examples, it’s hard to believe that the kind of complex mathematical knowledge displayed in early Mesopotamian cuneiform documents or in the layout of Peru’s Chavín temples sprang fully formed from the mind of a male scribe or sculptor, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Far more likely, these represent knowledge accumulated in earlier times through concrete practices such as the solid geometry and applied calculus of weaving or beadwork. What until now has passed for ‘civilization’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.

—The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow

#civilization #history #anthropology #archaeology #political philosophy #human nature #sharing because I love this so much and need everyone to read it 🥲#finally some good fucking food #these guys spend the entire first chapter absolutely tearing apart all the enlightenment thinkers theories about social evolution #the dawn of everything

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