Spring 2021, Volume 21 Number 1

Spring 2021, Volume 21 Number 1

Gastronomica

Editorial Letter | James Farrer

FOOD AND POWER
A Seat at the Table: The Western Dining Table as a Symbol of Power | Mackensie Griffin

“The Child Needs Milk and Milk Needs a Market”: The Politics of Nutrition in the Interwar Yishuv | Efrat Gilad

Ketchup as a Vegetable: Condiments and the Politics of School Lunch in Reagan’s America | Amy Bentley

CARE, WORK, AND MEMORY
Paqueteros and Paqueteras: Humanizing a Dehumanized Food System | Alyshia Gálvez

“If you haven’t shaoguo‘ed, you haven’t eaten”: Sensorial Landscapes of Belonging in the Kitchens of Rural China | Erin Thomason

Ruby’s Oyster Dressing, or Edible Nostalgia | Matthew Meduri

INTERROGATING THE CHEF
MasterChef: A Master Class in Fight, Flight, or Flambé? | Andrea Oskis

Around the World in 50 Restaurants: The Curious Irony of Hyperlocal Food | John Broadway

Spilling Ink and Cleaning Oil: The Intersection of Disaster and Design at La Marine | Rasmus R. Simonsen

COVID-19 DISPATCHES
Rumor, Chinese Diets, and COVID-19: Questions and Answers about Chinese Food and Eating Habits | Edited by Michelle T. King, Jia-Chen Fu, Miranda Brown, and Donny Santacaterina

Food Rescue Networks and the Food System | Leda Cooks

Feeding the City, Pandemic and Beyond: A Research Brief | Bryan Dale and Jayeeta Sharma

Lunch Interrupted! COVID-19 and Japan’s School Meals | Alexis Agliano Sanborn

“Muita Galinha, Pouco Ovo”: Food, COVID-19, and the Screen That Separates Us | Yara Ferreira Clüver

Bean Soup | Sayzie Koldys

Succulent | Alison Pearlman

Drinking to the Wolf in a Time of Pandemic (or War or Peace) | Gregory Emilio

REVIEWS
El Susto, a film by Karen Akins
Reviewed by Melissa Fuster

Just the Tonic: A Natural History of Tonic Water by Kim Walker and Mark Nesbitt
Reviewed by David Gentilcore

Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance and Food Access in Washington, D.C. by Ashanté M. Reese
Reviewed by Chhaya Kolavalli

De los plátanos de Oller a los Food Trucks: Comida, alimentación y cocina puertorriqueña en ensayos y recetas (From Oller’s Plantains to Food Trucks: Food, Eating, and Puerto Rican Cuisine in Essays and Recipes)
by Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra, Reviewed by Mónica B. Ocasio Vega

When Banana Ruled, a film by Mathilde Damoisel
Reviewed by Alyssa Paredes

Stirrings: How Activist New Yorkers Ignited a Movement for Food Justice by Lana Dee Povitz
Reviewed by Chris Staysniak

The Chile Pepper in China: A Cultural Biography
by Brian R. Dott, Reviewed by Mark Swislocki

Podcast Dispatches from Issue 21.1: Amy Bentley

Gastronomica

For our fourth series of podcasts produced in collaboration with Meant to Be Eaten on Heritage Radio Network, we sit down (virtually) with authors who have contributed to our upcoming first issue of 2021, which continues to feature COVID-19 Dispatches, but also original research articles around the themes of the relationship between food, power and politics, cultivating relationships, and sustaining memories.

For this last episode of our current season, historian Amy Bentley returns to the show to discuss the politics of food and nutrition with Editorial Collective member Melissa Fuster. She traces how the Reagan administration 40 years ago shifted (deliberately or inadvertently) the classification of ketchup from a condiment to a vegetable in an effort to overhaul national school lunch programs and cut government costs, a move that disproportionately affected the health of lower-income children.

Podcast Dispatches from Issue 21.1: Alexis Agliano Sanborn

Gastronomica

For our fourth series of podcasts produced in collaboration with Meant to Be Eaten on Heritage Radio Network, we sit down (virtually) with authors who have contributed to our upcoming first issue of 2021, which continues to feature COVID-19 Dispatches, but also original research articles around the themes of the relationship between food, power and politics, cultivating relationships, and sustaining memories.

Join Editorial Collective member (and our extremely valued Managing Editor) Jessica Carbone in conversation with Alexis Agliano Sanborn about her upcoming article on how Japan’s school lunch programs connected people and supported communities in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Highlighting civil-society initiatives, Sanborn discusses how school lunch programs were – and continue to be – a source of resiliency in local food supply and distribution networks.

Podcast Dispatches from Issue 21.1: Michelle T. King and Wendy Jia-Chen Fu

Gastronomica

For our fourth series of podcasts produced in collaboration with Meant to Be Eaten on Heritage Radio Network, we sit down (virtually) with authors who have contributed to our upcoming first issue of 2021, which continues to feature COVID-19 Dispatches, but also original research articles around the themes of the relationship between food, power and politics, cultivating relationships, and sustaining memories.

This episode features historians Michelle T. King and Wendy Jia-Chen Fu in discussion with Editorial Collective member Krishnendu Ray about their upcoming article on the stigmatization of Chinese food and eating habits in Anglophone media coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. They weigh in on common questions surrounding wet markets and the wildlife trade in Chinese food systems, dispel misinformation, and share ways to both combat negative stereotypes about Chinese food and support Chinese American communities in the United States.

Michelle King
Jia-Chen Fu

Podcast Dispatches from Issue 21.1: Alyshia Gálvez

Gastronomica

For our fourth series of podcasts produced in collaboration with Meant to Be Eaten on Heritage Radio Network, we sit down (virtually) with authors who have contributed to our upcoming first issue of 2021, which continues to feature COVID-19 Dispatches, but also original research articles around the themes of the relationship between food, power and politics, cultivating relationships, and sustaining memories.

For this episode, Editorial Collective member Jaclyn Rohel is joined by Alyshia Gálvez, who explores the work of transnational food couriers known as paqueteros and paqueteras in her forthcoming article, “Paqueteros and Paqueteras: Humanizing a Dehumanized Food System.” These informal grassroots entrepreneurs connect people and places across international borders through the delivery of goods, care packages, and specialty and traditional foods. Drawing on ethnographic research of micro-local foodways in Mexico (Puebla) and the United States (New York) and the connections between them, Gálvez discusses how informal food couriers humanize an increasingly industrialized food system in the post-NAFTA landscape.

*Please note that around the 10-min mark, Professor Gálvez mentions having been asked by federal attorneys to serve as an expert witness, while she meant to say that she had been approached by public defenders in that capacity.