Spirit, Monster, Table and Tongue
By Caroline Merrifield (Yale) My friend Zhang is one of the head chefs at the fine-dining farm-to-table restaurant in Hangzhou, China, where I did most of my dissertation…
Tag: food
Food Is About Far More Than Bodily Sustenance
In many societies around the world, food is a deeply meaningful part of social and cultural life. Shari Lewis/Associated Press Fatima,* a refugee from Somalia who is a…
Can Medical Anthropology Solve the Diabetes Dilemma?
Social factors contribute to a person’s risk for developing diabetes and shape choices surrounding the management of the disease. Nivaldo Júnior/ALES/Flickr Mary (a pseudonym) was 18 year…
Cooking Up an International Market for Quinoa
The bright-red cuchi wila quinoa has a bitter-tasting outer coating, called saponin, that protects the plant from predators and houses a black seed. This heritage variety of quinoa…
Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up?
Most animals would never need braces even if they could get them. Monica y Garza/Flickr This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative…
Uncovering Ancient Clues to Humanity’s First Fires
Although researchers don’t agree on when humans first gained control over the use of fire, they do not dispute the fact that fire played an important role in…
Powerful supermarkets push the cost of food waste onto suppliers, charities
Our research into the issue of corporate social responsibility and wastage of fresh fruit and vegetables has identified a number of tensions and contradictions, despite leading Australian supermarkets…
Ebola Prevention Caught in the Bushmeat Trap
Questions about the safety of eating “bushmeat” were front and center during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. SarahTz/Flickr In 2015, as an Ebola epidemic raged in…
The Gig Economy Strikes Back: Deliveroo in Brighton
by Rebecca Prentice May 1, 2017: On a rainy evening in Brighton, more than two hundred people took to the streets to protest economic precariousness. The ‘Precarious May…
Culinary Catalysts and Scientific Shifts: Peruvian Quinoa in the Age of Genetics and Gastronomy
Chef Maguiña with Adam Gamwell. Property of Adam Gamwell. This episode of This Anthropological Life presents a little differently from our normal episodes. The Society for Applied Anthropology…
Culinary Catalysts and Scientific Shifts: Peruvian Quinoa in the Age of Genetics and Gastronomy
Chef Maguiña with Adam Gamwell. Property of Adam Gamwell. This episode of This Anthropological Life presents a little differently from our normal episodes. The Society for Applied Anthropology…
Black Women’s Food Work is from the Future
Ashanté M. Reese, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Spelman College When I think about being a Black girl from the future, my mind goes to the contradiction that…
Reclaiming Native Ground
Theresa Dardar stands for a portrait on her dock in Louisiana’s Pointe-au-Chien Indian community in January 2017. Edmund D. Fountain This article was originally published at FERN and has…
Lessons From a Forgotten Amazonian Slaughter
For decades, conservationists have viewed subsistence hunting by Indigenous peoples in the Amazon as a contributing factor to “empty forests”—forests where trees remain but wildlife is all but…
Nellie’s green lipped mussels #MeadCompetition
One Wednesday afternoon, about four years following my family’s migration from Israel to New Zealand, I was gripped by a sudden urge to bake “challah” (The Friday night…
What’s Your Beef
How eating brisket shapes the future in the present. A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his…
Rice Reveals African Slaves’ Agricultural Heritage
Clues about the history—and survival—of African slaves in the Americas can be found in certain plants, such as rice. David Williams When Tinde van Andel purchased a small…
Conference Report: 6th annual Asian Food Study Conference, Kusatsu, Japan
While there are many conferences of potential interest to food anthropologists, last weekend (December 3-4, 2016), I attended a conference that I found particularly useful and inspiring: the…
Of Quinoa, Agricultural Science, and Social Change – New Essay from Adam Gamwell on the Savage Minds Anthropologies Projects
Photo: Colin Stone Peacock TAL’s Adam Gamwell has a new essay about his research on quinoa biodiversity in Peru out on Savage Minds blog! Excerpt: Specters of the…
Of Quinoa, Agricultural Science, and Social Change
This entry is part 10 of 10 in the Anthropologies #22 series. Adam Gamwell rounds out the anthropologies #22 issue on food. Gamwell is a public anthropologist and…
Ayahuasca Visions in the Peruvian Amazon
As a psychological anthropologist interested in alternative healing options, I recently traveled to Peru to experience ayahuasca with a shaman I had been corresponding with for some time.…
#LondonVegans: Deliberating, sensing and practicing vegans in a non-vegan city
Zachary Hecht, UCL Digital Anthropology Msc Student Why would somebody forgo juicy steaks, delicate smoked salmon, velvety goat cheese, and the many seemingly delicious foods people eat? Why…
Veganism, conversion, and adequation: How to make a strange diet seem familiar
This entry is part 9 of 9 in the Anthropologies #22 series. Continuing with the Anthropology #22 Food issue, this next essay is from Aimee J. Hosemann, who…
South Sudanese Refugees and the Taste of Displacement
Katarin Ladu is tall and thin, with short, curled hair and a face wrinkled by sunshine, age, and worry. She wears a beaded necklace, a mismatched pair of…