How Eating Rat Stew Serves Hobbit Research
Kamelus Nampung, one of the Manggarai people who live on the Indonesian island of Flores, cooks a giant rat. Paige Madison “Don’t forget to save every last bone!”…
Tag: food
Nourishment dilemmas: the complex science of caring for children with CZVS by Flávia Lima
For English, click here. Dilemas alimentares: a complexa ciência de cuidar de crianças com a Síndrome Congênita do Vírus Zika Lila tem pouco mais de 20 anos, é…
The Bitter Side of Cocoa Production
Chocolate comes from processing the seeds found in the fruit, or “pods” (shown here), of the cacao tree. USAID/Flickr A fine piece of chocolate tickles your tongue with…
Sending surplus food to charity is not the way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
While giving food that would otherwise go to landfill to hungry people may be a convenient part of a solution to reduce greenhouse gases, it will do little…
Why Did Chinese Farmers Switch to Wheat?
Wheat is now a favored crop in many parts of China. Jie Zhao/Getty Images Today China is the world’s biggest consumer of wheat, which the country uses to…
Case Closed: You Can’t Make a Knife Out of Frozen Poop
Researchers tested the cutting potential of knife-shaped frozen human feces. Michelle R. Bebber In what might constitute the year’s strangest salvo against the scourge of “fake news,” ant…
What Students Deserve in a Textbook
With the recent release of Through the Lens of Cultural Anthropology, we asked author Laura Tubelle de González to talk about her new textbook, and her hopes for…
Power Chronography of Food-Delivery Work
*A note from Co-PI Noopur Raval: The arrival and rise of gig-work globally has ushered in a new wave of conversations around the casualization of labor and the…
The Neanderthal Diet—From Teeth to Guts
One of the more tenacious misconceptions about Neanderthals is that they were exclusively meat eaters. Sure, in some of the colder regions of Europe plant food would have…
Eating Insects and the Yuck Factor
[no-caption] Marcel Hirshegger/SAPIENS How come some people think eating insects is disgusting? Join SAPIENS hosts Jen Shannon and Chip Colwell as they dine on many-legged delicacies and …
Eating Iran: From the delicious to the inedible
I was having second thoughts, but pressed on safe in the knowledge that I was performing an act that would raise my esteem in the eyes of those…
Fat, Not Meat, May Have Led to Bigger Hominin Brains
[no-caption] sodapix/Getty Images Northern Ethiopia was once home to a vast, ancient lake. Saber-toothed cats prowled around it, giant crocodiles swam within. The streams and rivers that …
CFP: AAA/CASCA 2019 in Vancouver, BC
ATTN SAFN MEMBERS: Start planning your sessions for AAA/CASCA 2019 in Vancouver, BC! The time has come to start planning sessions for the annual AAA meeting – this…
CFP: Mediations of Food: Identity, Power, and Contemporary Global Imaginaries
Call for Papers 2019: Volume 11, Issue 1 Mediations of Food: Identity, Power, and Contemporary Global Imaginaries The Global Media Journal — Canadian Edition Guest Editor: Dr. Tina…
Who Decided It Was Bad to Be Fat?
In 2009, supermodel Kate Moss caused a stir when she categorically stated that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” As jaw-dropping as the sentiment might have seemed…
Fat Gets No Respect (But That Should Change)
Every human has it. But nearly every human society sees it differently. Fat. What purpose does it serve? In this video, a collaboration between SAPIENS and Aeon, anthropological…
What’s the Cost of Quinoa?
SAPIENS host Jen Shannon goes on a mission to find out how quinoa travels from farmers’ fields in Huanoquite, Peru, to markets in Lima and the U.S. She…
Why Don’t More Humans Eat Bugs?
Ten years ago, toiling in scorching heat on the parched Fongoli savanna in southeast Senegal, anthropologist Julie Lesnik faced an unpalatable task. She had to taste a termite.…
Mukbang is Changing Digital Communications
How a global internet phenomenon is foreshadowing the effects of virtual reality and changing the way strangers connect online. Sitting in a home office filled with stuffed…
Thick Data in Product Development: The Go-Gurt Case
Thick Data refers to all those data obtained in an immersive/ethnographic way aiming at revealing the cultural, social and emotional contexts of one or several study groups. Thick…
Thesis Review and Interview: Deorukhe Women’s Agency in the Making of Bodies, Cuisine, and Culture in Maharashtra, India
Photograph: Gauri A. Pitale – Waterlogged rice fields of rural Konkan, Maharashtra Please note: As Associate Editor, I am soliciting reviews of recent dissertations in the Anthropology of Food….
Why Can’t Most Humans Drink Milk?
[no-caption] Axel Schmidt/Getty Images This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. A solid white mass found in a broken jar …
Why Don’t Westerners Eat Off One Plate?
The Hadzabe share food and daily tasks. Ryan Jarvis “Why don’t your students love each other?” asked Kaunda, a Hadza hunter, as we sat around the campfire overlooking…
Bracing for the Vanilla Boom
Vanilla beans are dried in the sun as part of the curing process. George Zhu As the vanilla market opens in northeastern Madagascar this season, some local farmers…