Expository Writing: Latest Videos and Article

All,
   here are the videos from our last couple of classes.

Birke Baehr, What's Wrong With Our Food System

Food Fight

PBS Food, Inc

The Atlanitc Monthly: The Joy of Not Cooking

Expository Writing: Food

Welcome back, foodies!

I hope you had a great break.  We are quickly rolling to another end of term, so for the last two weeks of this class, we are going to shift gears once again and explore journalistic writing.  We will begin our adventure here with a brief celebration of eating.  We will then look into the heart of "the kitchen", and ask what it is, how it can be defined, and what it tells us about ourselves.  Sometimes even the food inside our refrigerators can tell us a lot about ourselves.   Finally, we will look into our own kitchen here at Culver and see what really happens behind the scenes of feeding a thousand people three times a day. 

Bon Appetite!

Foor For All

Here is a video from a film documentary competition on food entitled Chicken A La Carte.  It has a powerful and unnerving message.

Expository Writing-Food: Good Work

Dear all, 
   This week, we are focusing on the relationship between food and socio-economic class.  Some questions to consider as we work through the material.

1) What is the relationship between food and class?
2) What is the relationship between food and economics?
3) What does food tell us about the ways in which society is structured?
4) What are high-class/low-class foods?
5) What are some food stereotypes?

Please look at the following links for you reading this week.

Heirlooms
My Repertoire
The Food at Our Feet
Yaji

Also, here is a great Gettin Real in the Whole Foods Parking Lot video.

Best.
 JMN

Expository Writing--Food-Article

All,
   For homework tonight, please begin reading the following article by Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence and Morality.  It is a difficult article with very deep philosophical implications.  Take your time and come prepared to discuss it tomorrow.  You do not need to post on the blog. Also, remember that we have our Ramen fest tomorrow.  I can't wait to taste your creations.

Best,
JMN

Expository Writing-Food: Article

All,
   the link below will lead you to an article by Jared Diamond, a, important historian, writing on the question of whether the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic age was a good thing.  Please read and comment.

The Worst Mistake

JMN

Expository Writing--Food: Article, Critical Thinking, Analyitical Essay

All,
   After reviewing the film "Forks Over Knives", please begin the two-fold process of critique.  1) Read through the following critique of the movie (Forks Over Knives Critique); 2) determine which of the arguments presented from the movie and the critique are better and why. 

You will be writing an analytical essay comparing the relative worth of the two sets of arguments.  This is the beginning of an argumentative essay.  The paper will be due Monday.

Expository Writing: Food-Homework

Dear all,
Please work on your draft for tomrrow. We will meetin in the morning to work through two peer reviews. Your draft needs to be a full, not partial, draft of your essay. We will begin work on Super Foods toward the end of class tomorrow.

Best,
JMN

Expository Writing: Food--Article and Homework

Dear all,
   Please read the article linked on the right hand side of the page called "Why Take Food Seriously?" by Bittman.  After reading the article, please respond to the following question:

In what ways do you think (argue) that food affects culture in America?  (You can discuss gender, age, physicality, socioeconomic class, etc., just be sure to try and articulate a solid answer.)

Best.
 JMN

Expository Writing: Food--Homework

Dear all,
   After viewing the show Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, please respond to the following prompt (in correct English).

What are your typical eating habits, and how do they effect your moods?  Consider what you eat for dinner tonight and examine your concentration level, energy level, and over all mood.  Tomorrow morning, make a similar examination before and after breakfast.  Come ready to report to the class tomorrow what you discover.

Best,
JMN

Expository Writing: Food--The Meaning of Food

Hi, all.
   Below is the documentary The Meaning of Food from PBS.  Please watch Season 1, Episode 1 over the weekend, and we will begin our discussion next week with some insights from the film.

The Meaning of Food, Season 1, Episode 1

Best,
JMN

Expository Writing: Food-Homework

Dear all,
   Tomorrow I want to have an open discussion (Harkness) over the topic of "Food, Nationality, and Identity".  For homework tonight, spend thirty minutes thinking over the following questions:

1) What is the food of your home (country, household, etc.)?  What makes it special?
2) What food defines you? Why?

Please come prepared with answers and explanations.  Consider thinking through how process goals 1,5, and 6 will help you in your preparation and discussion tomorrow. 

Best,
JMN

Expostory Writing: Food--Article

Dear all, 

   Here is an article from renowned columnist, Roger Cohen on food.  Enjoy!

August 31, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

Advantage France

By ROGER COHEN

CHERENCE, FRANCE — Arrival is usually defined as reaching a destination, but of course it’s more than that, it’s the moment when you have shed enough of where you came from to be present at the place you’ve reached. This offloading of layers takes time, like peeling an onion.

 

My French arrival this year was time-consuming. Iran, which is another story, had me. But the moment came, and when it came, it was not the dawn swooping of starlings, the softness of the dusk light through the sycamores, or the chiming of a village bell that delivered me to “la douce France,” but the sight of glistening guts.

The guts in question were being coaxed by a hand — ungloved — from the belly of a four-pound sea bass — unfarmed — at the market in the Norman town of Vernon, which has one stand devoted solely to watercress. The fish, iridescent, its gills bright scarlet, was fresh from the waters off Dieppe.

 

My friend Marcel Bossy, who had made the pre-dawn drive from the coast with his glossy load, had his hand deep in the fish. He was laughing about something as the guts slithered onto a scale-coated chopping board.

 

My 11-year-old daughter, Adele, covered her eyes, but I was riveted. Marcel’s wife, Sandrine, also laughing — something ribald between them — was gutting firm mackerel with swift incisions and finger movements, when one dropped to the ground. She scooped the fish up and resumed work on it, putting me in mind of Julia Child’s famous statement about a miss-flipped potato pancake: “You can always pick it up.”

 

Since Child, in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” and in her groundbreaking 1960’s television show “The French Chef,” brought Gallic secrets to riveted Americans, the shameless gutting and picking-up of real food in ungloved hands has given way to the hurried-hermetic-hygienic U.S. fever of plastic gloves, processed foods and precooked meals.

 

Those fish guts delivered me to France because, although this country has its share of fast-food outlets, it has preserved a relationship to food distinguished from the American in three essential respects: fear, time and “terroir.”

 

If Americans want their fish pre-filleted, their chicken breasts excised from surrounding bone and conveniently packed, their offal kept from view and the table, and any hand that touches a slice of ham or lox sealed inside a glove, it is because fear of the innards that will not speak their name, the guts that reek of life, and the germs we all carry has become rampant.

 

By contrast, the French don’t believe what they’re eating is genuine unless they’ve seen gritty proof of provenance. They like the alchemy of the peasant hand that does the pâté grip.

 

American anxiety is related to the American perception of time, which is always short in a land that prizes efficiency above all. Precooked meals — food divorced from its origins, food without guts — is faster to prepare and therefore attractive.

I bought a couple of the female ducklings the French call “canettes” the other day. It took 15 minutes for the cutting-off of head, feet and wing-tips; for the innards to be removed; for the placing in the cleansed insides of the liver, kidneys and neck; for singeing over a gas burner; and for discussion as to whether I wanted the plump ducks trussed for rotisserie cooking (I did not).

 

Most stores in New York don’t bother selling ducklings — they’re inefficient birds in that the meat-to-size ratio is low — and if they did such protracted preparation would be unthinkable. Time bows at the altar of gastronomy in France. In the United States time is the altar.

 

The third fundamental difference relates to “terroir,” the untranslatable combination of soil, hearth and tradition that links most French people to a particular place. France sees American mobility with a sacred immobility; attachments trump restlessness.

 

These are attachments of the gut, which brings us back to why the French take such pleasure in those hands at work cleansing a sea bass or a duckling, and why a stand selling watercress (with the unique taste of a particular patch of soil) is viable.

The French Paradox, so-called, is really the French self-evidence. Change your relationship to fear, time and place, and you change your metabolism. This has less to do with the specific foods eaten, or the specific wine drunk (although of course they count) than it has to do with how food is approached.

 

According to the 2009 C.I.A. World Factbook, the estimated average life expectancy in France is 80.98 (84.33 for women and 77.79 for men), against 78.11 for the United States (80.69 for women and 75.65 for men.) France ranks 9th in the world; America ranks 50th. There’s something to be said for ungloved hands picking mackerel from the ground. 

 

The American healthcare debate is skewed. It should be devoting more time to changing U.S. culinary and eating habits in ways that cut the need for expensive care by reducing rampant obesity, to which anxiety, haste and disconnectedness contribute. France has much to teach, guts and all.

Expository Writing: Food-Welcome and Homework

Welcome writers! Your first task is to begin to identify yourself as a writer.  Give yourself permission to write and improve your writing.  Intellectual vulnerability is an essential part of the course, so prepare yourself for that.  Your homework for the night is as follows:

Please respond to the prompt below by clicking the comment link below.

You are a writer for the Food Network, and your boss has just informed you that the pilot for a new show has just been turned down.  He wants to know what people want to know about food in order to draft a new pilot for another show.  Please write a short paragraph answering the following questions: What do people want to know about food, and what are they willing to watch about it?

Final Paper Topic Idea

If you are stumped as to what to write about for your final paper, you may address the following prompt:

The Food Network has a problem: 

one of its most popular hosts has suddenly left the network, leaving an open slot during prime time.  Given this opportunity, what television series would you propose to Food Network’s CEO?  You’ll need to consider your own strengths as a host or hostess along with your interests in food.  The paper should culminate with you pitching an idea for a television series.  Your proposal should include the following components:

o    Claim/Angle

o   Rationale

o   Intended Audience

o   Challenges

o   Credible Research

Expository Writing-The Botany of Desire

Dear all,
    Great film by food author Michael Pollan, Botany of Desire.  Attached is a link where you can watch it on your own.

Best,
JMN

Expository Writing Interesting Experiments Regarding Belief

Here are some interesting experiments regarding what we eat/drink and our beliefs.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/3874.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3035442.stm


Remember that your essay is due Monday, and it must contain the following elements:
- Introduction to the experiment
- Explanation of the set up and administration of the experiment
- What you hope/expect to find
- The results
- Conclusion from the experiment


JMN

Expository Writing: Food-Psychology of Food Article

All,
   here is an article on the psychology of food that I want you to read.  Please read it tonight and come ready to discuss the relationship of Orthorexia to the psychology of food.  There will be a writing assignment and discussion in class tomorrow.

Paul Bloom-How Pleasure Works

Best,
JMN

Expository Writing--Food: Orthorexia

Consider the following: We have managed to uncover aspects of food culture, food politics, food nutrition, and the food economics, but we have yet to explore the psychological dimensions of food.  Not only is food immensely pleasurable, it can also be psychologically oppressive.  For the weekend, please read the following articles and watch the video link below.  Please make a commentary on the following question related to what you read and see:

Why is it the food has such a psychological hold on us?  Of course we need it for survival, but, beyond that, why does food effect us on such a deep level?

Orthexia--What is it?

Healthy Food Eating Disorder?

Can Healthy Eating be a Disorder?

An Obsessive MInd Game--Video

Expository Writring: Food--Corporations and Public Policy, Group Paper

Please draft a group document that reports on the following question: What is the relationship between corporations and lobby politics?

Follow this link to write and revise your document.

Corporations and Lobby Politics

Best,
JMN