{"id":29,"date":"2020-09-21T23:56:59","date_gmt":"2020-09-22T06:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/?p=29"},"modified":"2020-09-22T14:22:23","modified_gmt":"2020-09-22T21:22:23","slug":"reflections-on-week-2-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/2020\/09\/21\/reflections-on-week-2-materials\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on Week 2 materials"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Food reveals our souls”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For most of my life I had never questioned my relationship with the food I consume. One time in high school, I tried going vegetarian for a week simply because I wanted to impose a label on myself that would set me aside from others, something that would make me “cool” and “health conscious.” But the rest of the time when I wasn’t taking on a weight loss diet, I unquestioningly consumed the food my mom cooked for me. Food was never a concern because I never had to provide it for myself, or fend for my own health, thus it wasn’t until I moved out for college that I questioned my previous habits and looked for options that aligned with my moral priorities.<\/p>\n

I think it’s important to deconstruct western attitudes towards food consumption, especially the “ready-to-go” aspect of pre-packaged foods that favor capitalist values of productivity and quick satisfaction. Belasco highlights how we’re so disconnected from the farm-to-table process that even talking about foodways, in academia or casual conversation, seems almost ridiculous. The author also notes that in the west, we may consume all imported products in one meal, yet we stay oblivious to the journey that they undergo and the hands that cultivated it.<\/p>\n

Belasco’s remarks on this human detachment from food reminded me of the novel “Ravensong” by Sto:lo author, Lee Maracle. Particularly, the main character criticizes how white women discard weeds (such as mint, comfrey root, plantain, dandelion and mullein) from their gardens simply for being “unaesthetic,” while on the other hand, these constitute highly valuable sources of food in her community:<\/p>\n

“She knew they harvested weeds more or less indiscriminately, using them as crops to be eaten along with whatever store-bought food they could\u00a0occasionally afford. […] It struck her as pathetically funny that these people should invest so much time in throwing living creatures away when they were still perfectly good.”\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

I personally found this passage very compelling, as it reminds us to be grateful not just for the catalogue of imported foods that we can access at our local stores, but for the rudimentary and almost sacred foods that our ancestors worked so hard to cultivate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Food reveals our souls” For most of my life I had never questioned my relationship with the food I consume. One time in high school, I tried going vegetarian for a week simply because I wanted to impose a label on myself that would set me aside from others, something that would make me “cool” … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Reflections on Week 2 materials”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,6,5],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-last303","tag-reflections","tag-unit1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/dpgm99\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}