Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the readings from Unit 1, I found particularly interesting the reading “Why Study Food”. Whenever I eat food I don’t usually analyze where they all come from and the connection they may have to certain lands and peoples. Furthermore, foods that contain a great deal of ingredients that come from all different areas in the world. I was able to come to these realizations through the quote from Wendell berry, stating “the ideal corporate customer is the industrial eater who does not know that eating is an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and the land, and who is therefore necessarily passive and uncritical.” This also makes me think about the chemicals that are unknown to the many people within populations including myself within the food we eat.
This passage and reading also reminded me of another course about Latin America that I took in my second year in UBC having to do with Latin American History. Through this class I learnt about how dependent the world truly is on Latin American agriculture. I learnt about how cocoa beans, bananas, fruits, rice, and other foods all are based in Latin America and are inherently connected to the peoples and land of its countries. Furthermore, in connection to the reading from Unit 1 it reminds me that so many people don’t think about where a lot of these foods that I have mentioned come from, nor how they are produced. I had the great pleasure of visiting Nicaragua, Cuba, and Ecuador, all countries in Latin America with an abundance of agriculture, in which I was able to develop a greater perspective of food. In this sense, the reading also gave me reassurance of how I felt when seeing the people’s connections to these foods and lands in Latin America.
Hi! Yeah I totally agree with what you are saying about the disconnect between the act of eating and the journey the food made to our plate. I think the Berry quote you added really sums it up from a corporate perspective how they do not want their consumers to really know how their food got to them. To understand how crops have been exchanged all over the world is to understand the colonization of indigenous lands and foodways and the violence of large corporations appropriating their food culture for their own economical benefit. I am sure we will talk more about that in class specifically with agriculture in Mexico and South America where coffee, corn, grain and livestock was predominantly independent but now benefits outside multinational corporations. Don’t even get me started on GMO crops haha. But yeah, great collection of thoughts. Thanks for sharing!
Grey
Hi!
I really identify with your response! I also found this article, “Why Study Food”, thought provoking! Living in a place such as Vancouver, where we can “travel the world with food” any day we want has really desensitized me to the idea of where our food comes from as-well. Not only did I realize that I don’t pay enough attention to where all the ingredients are from I also sometimes forget to think about where the recipes came from too. I feel that this disconnection between my food and my body is not natural and Im thankful that this course has highlighted this concept for us to reflect on!
Also on a side note I am totally jealous of your travels! Its sounds like you have spent a fair amount of time discovering Latin America 🙂