2

EATING INDUSTRIAL Professor Helen Veit (hveit@msu.edu) Office Hours: Monday, 9:30-11:30 a.m., and by appointment, 329 Old Hort

Goals: 1) Learn a lot 2) Have a blast 3) Get passionate about food 4) Leave this class excited to eat better for the planet, eat better for your bodies, and

eat more deliciously

After taking this class, students will… * …understand in their bones that most ideas about food are cultural. * …know all about the Nacirema tribe. * …be critical of diets based on industrial food. *… be critical of solutions that reject industrial food altogether. * …think about the dark sides of “McDonalidization.” * …be able to talk knowledgably about the American Food Revolution. * …know what it means to eat for a small planet. * …be wary of any additive declared “Generally Recognized as Safe.” * …learn what ethnography is and how to apply its methods to our own food culture. * …know a lot about the history of food science and modern food processing. * …have experience writing for a public audience. * …think critically about what “homemade” food means. * …know about “foodies” and some good and bad things about that identity. * …think in sophisticated and critical ways about the “local” food ideal. * …think about eating in relation to climate change and global population growth. * …care about all of the above.

About

This is a class about modern food. The title, Eating Industrial, describes our starting point: the industrialization of agriculture and food processing is hugely important. But it’s really only the beginning of what we’ll be talking about. We’ll be talking about food’s globalization; its relationship to climate change; food and social class and race; nutrition and health; obesity; poverty and hunger and waste; the local/sustainable/organic food movements; and all sorts of ethical questions around food – especially the ethics of meat eating. One of the biggest lessons of the class is that the reality of modern food systems and food culture is hugely complex. And the future of food is even more so.

3

This class is going to be fun and interesting. It will also be demanding. You can expect roughly 100 pages of thought-provoking, conversation-sparking reading a week, in addition to projects, field trips, field work, regular writing, and a final website that will tie it all together. This class will make you a more interesting person who will go on to lead a richer life. But you have to be willing to do the work.

Books

* Melanie Warner, Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Foods Took Over the American Meal (2013) * Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals (2009) * Course pack of class readings

Special Policies

* This is a screen-free class. No laptops, phones, tablets, etc. Please note that if a student consistently violates this policy, they will be counted as absent for that day (see Attendance, below). Occasional exceptions will be noted on the syllabus. * Bring hard copies of all assigned readings and any other relevant materials to every class. * Unless otherwise noted, all projects should be posted to individual blogs before class and/or are due in hard copy at the beginning of class; the smaller assignments and the “News in Food” are due via your website only.

Grades

Grade Percentage 4-point scale Grade Percentage 4-point scale

A+

98-100% 4.0 C

73-76% 2.0

A 93-97% 4.0 C-/D+

67-72% 1.5

A-/B+ 87-92% 3.5 D

63-66% 1.0

B

83-86% 3.0 D-

60-63% 0.5

B-/C+ 77-82% 2.5 F Below 63% 0

4

Class Component Percentage of grade Participation and Attendance 20% Small Assignments 15% The News in Food 12% Quizzes 5% Food Autobiography 5% Pandora’s Lunchbox Email 5% Topic Explorer Paper 8% Grocery Ethnography 5% Final Website (including updated autobiography) 10% Group Project and Presentation 15%

Projects & Assignments

Your biggest assignments for this class will be a series of projects. The projects are designed to be fun and provocative and to get you talking, thinking, arguing, and out of your seats. First, you’ll turn in papers and create a preliminary blog page for each project. After you get comments on your papers, you’ll rewrite them to act as polished site content for your final blogs (see below). Small assignments are due through your class blog, not in hard copy. (As an exception, you’ll need to turn in the debate points for the meat debate in hard copy.) All assignments are due by the start of class unless otherwise stated. Every project and assignment must make reference to at least two class readings. Projects Small Assignments Food Autobiography Class Blog Outline Pandora’s Lunchbox Email Industrial Food Diary Topic Explorer Refrigerator Photography Grocery Ethnography McDonaldization Exercise Group Project and Related Assignments Debate Points and Class Debate

Throughout the semester there will also be additional tasks and mini-writing assignments, such as reading abstracts, in-class exercises, and group activities, all of which we’ll talk about in class. All additional assignments will be considered as part of your Participation grade.

Word Length Due Date Class Blog Outline Sep. 9 (11:59 PM) Food Autobiography (*) 750-1250 Sep. 12 Industrial Food Diary 250-500 Sep. 19

5

Pandora’s Lunchbox Email (*) 750-1000 Sep. 24 Refrigerator Photography 250-500 Oct. 3 Topic Explorer Paper (*) 1000-1500 Oct. 15 Group Pitch Oct. 17 Grocery Ethnography (*) 750-1000 Oct. 22 McDonaldization Exercise 500 Oct. 29 Debate Points and Class Debate (*) Nov. 14 Rewritten Food Autobiography 1000-1750 Nov. 28

Group Presentation and Website 1000-1250 Dec. 3 or 5 Final Individual Websites Dec. 9 (11:59 PM) (*) = Assignments marked with a star must be submitted in hard copy at the start of class. Other assignments must be posted to blogs before the start of class, unless otherwise noted.

The News in Food

One of your semester-long assignments is to stay abreast of news related to our class. On the following dates, you’ll post a recent news article on your blog before class, along with a meaty paragraph on how the news relates to all class readings assigned for that day. We’ll also be talking about the news in class. News related to… Due Date Industrial food Sep. 17 Migrant farming Sep. 26 Poverty and food insecurity Oct. 8 McDonaldization Oct. 24 Food & climate change Oct. 31 Nutrition Advice Nov. 26

Student Blogs

Each student will create an individual blog through Weebly (a free service), which will be linked to our class website: eatingindustrial.weebly.com. You’ll send me a link to the basic outline of your blog by 11:59 PM on Sunday, Sep. 9. At that early stage, it will need to have just four basic elements: 1) a “Home” page with a title and image; 2) a “News in Food” page; 3) an “Assignments” page; and 4) a “Projects” page. All pages can be empty at that time.

6

As you complete work over the semester, you’ll upload it to your blog, and we’ll work together during class on any questions that arise in creating and designing the blogs. For example, each time you find a news story, you’ll upload it to your “News in Food” page along with a paragraph tying it into the readings and one image, so your final blog will have links to five illustrated news stories with an explanatory paragraph for each. When you complete an assignment like the Refrigerator Photograph, you’ll upload that under the Assignments page, along with an image. And each time you complete a project, you’ll create a new page under the Projects tab along with an image, so that at the end you’ll have a Food Autobiography page, a Pandora’s Lunchbox page, a Topic Explorer page, a Grocery Ethnography page, and a Group Project page, all of them illustrated with images. Finishing the blog will involve four tasks: 1) Polishing the writing of all sections, reflecting comments you’ve gotten from me on your papers along with any other improvements you’d like to make; 2) Rewriting and expanding your Food Autobiography, considering information and ideas you’ve learned from the class and how the class has changed how you see your own life in relationship to food; 3) Creating a page linking your personal blog to your final group website (see below); 4) Perfecting the design. Design is a significant component of your blog: at a minimum, it should look neat and professional, and ideally it will be beautiful and interesting, with design elements that deepen and enhance the story you’re telling. Every assignment, project, and News in Food entry should be accompanied by at least one high-resolution image or graphic. You should not use a table of contents with any of your categories.

Final Group Project

For the final project, students will divide into groups of 3, and each group will select a topic related to modern food that is currently a point of urgency or debate. Groups will then explain how perspectives from a variety of different Social Science disciplines can deepen our understanding of the topic, using primary and secondary sources to back up their points. The project will culminate in a separate, polished website and a 20-minute group presentation to the class during the last week of the semester, aimed at conveying information in a creative way and getting classmates and – through the website – the wider world to think and care about the topic. What makes a good topic? Students should choose one that is interesting to them and to others. It should be an important topic with potential policy implications, although it need not necessarily be one that is already widely known. Students might decide to focus on an aspect of race and food; climate change and agriculture; social class and diet; migrant farmworkers or laws about farm labor; irrigation and drought; food advertisements to children; consolidation in the food or agricultural industries; U.S. food aid abroad or domestically; declines in bee populations; obesity; the ethics of eating meat; hunger and food insecurity; labor conditions of food workers; food waste; food miles and local food; institutional food (such as school food or prison food); governmental food labeling; the relationship between diet and early puberty; or another topic of their choice, to be approved in advance. Students will pitch the proposal for their group topic early in the class and then spend the rest of the semester working on their project.

7

In the last two class periods, each group will give a creative, engaging, multi-media presentation of 16 to 20 minutes. Let me emphasize that it is a major requirement of the project that the group presentation be creative, engaging, and multi-media. If the presentation is uninspired, predictable, or boring, the grade will reflect that. For example, if group members spend all of their time giving a power point presentation and reading from slides, they would not get a good grade, even if the content of the slides was otherwise solid. Groups must actively work to think about novel, interesting, and memorable ways to teach the content of what they’re relating to everyone else in the class. The ultimate goal of the project and presentation is to convey information in a memorable way, and to get other people to think and, potentially, act differently as a result. Groups have a lot of leeway in deciding the best ways to do this, but they must adhere to the following basic structure. Presentations will have two components: 1) An in-person, participatory component (12 to 15 minutes), and 2) A presentation of their finished group website (4 to 5 minutes).

• The in-person, interactive component (12-15 minutes). This could take almost any form: students could design this part of their presentation as a game, a talk show, a cooking demonstration, a skit, a speed-dating event, an improv show, an art activity, or almost anything else. You can and perhaps should do more than one thing during this section. Just remember that the creativity is a means to an end: the goal is to teach your classmates real information about your topic and to get them to think about it, care about it, and ultimately remember it after the class is over.

• The group website (presented in 4 to 5 minutes). The group website must have a minimum of a home page, plus three additional pages that each contain a minimum of 400 words of well-written text as well as graphics or other illustrations. The text should be accessibly written, but the content and sources will have to withstand the same scrutiny as an academic paper. Students should provide citations for all the information on their website at the bottom of each page (and each page should have a minimum of two sources). Please note that the 4-page criterion is a minimum: students are welcome to add additional pages or materials as they see fit, although quantity should not come at the expense of quality. Additional media is also encouraged. Students might create short video or audio segments, for example, and they can link to other sources. The same high requirements for good design that apply to students’ individual blogs also apply to their group websites.

Throughout the group project process, we will evaluate the contributions of each team member and together come up with ways to create strong esprits de corps where team members work well together and accomplish more as a group than they could have as individuals. In most cases, team members will all receive the same grades on their final projects, but in exceptional cases, I reserve the right to award different grades to individual group members if someone does conspicuously more or less than their share. If any group chooses a final topic that involves “inclusion, diversity, and marginalized populations,” I strongly encourage group members to apply for a Martin Luther King, Jr.

8

Advancing Inclusion through Research Award. Students in the Honors College, James Madison College, Lyman Briggs College, and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities are eligible to apply. Applications are due in mid-December and winners are announced in January. First Prize: $600; Second Prize: $500; Third Prize: $300. More information: https://honorscollege.msu.edu/programs/mlk-research-award.html

Recipe Extra Credit

You have two chances to add a point of extra credit on your final average by contributing to our class recipe blog. You can do each form of extra credit one time, for a potential total of two extra points on your average. The first way to get extra credit is to find your own recipe, make it, and send the link to me to post. The recipe must fulfill three criteria: it must be relatively simple to make; it must be relatively healthful; and it must not use highly processed ingredients. To share a recipe and get extra credit for it, you need to send me four things: 1) a link to the recipe (or, if it's not online, a photograph of the recipe or the typed recipe pasted into the text of an email); 2) a relevant high-quality image (such as a picture of sweet potatoes if the recipe is for baked sweet potatoes); 3) a picture of you making the recipe with a copy of one of our assigned books or course pack in the picture. (I won't post this second online unless you specifically ask me to. This is just the way of showing me you made the recipe this semester); 4) a short paragraph about your experience making the recipe (was it easy? hard?), what you thought about the food itself, and at least one thought about how it relates to something we discussed or read about in class. The second form of extra credit is to make a recipe somebody else contributed to our class blog. If you do that you need to send me two things: 1) a picture of you making the recipe, with a copy of one of our assigned books or course pack in the picture; 2) a short paragraph about your experience making the recipe (was it easy? hard?), what you thought about the food itself, and at least one thought about how it relates to something we discussed or read about in class.

Attendance Policy (+ more Extra Credit]

Attendance is required in every class this semester. That’s because in a seminar like this, it’s not only you who misses out when you’re not there: the class itself changes. The experience of everyone is richest when everyone is present, everyone is prepared, and everyone participates. If you attend every class, you’ll get Perfect Attendance Extra Credit, with two points added to your final average. However, for every class you miss after the first two, two points will be subtracted from your final average. Please note that sleeping, consistent tardiness, or consistent violation of the screen-free class policy will be counted as an absence.

9

Quizzes [+ more Extra Credit]

Over the semester I will give six reading quizzes. You cannot make up a quiz, but at the end of the semester I will drop your lowest grade. If you get 100 on all six of the quizzes, then you will get an extra point on your final average.

Academic Honesty

Academic honesty is a big deal, and I treat it as such. You’ll be doing a lot of writing in this class, because I want you to think deeply about what we’re covering in class, and writing is one of the best and most intense ways to make yourself think something through. Thus, stealing someone else’s words without giving them credit is obnoxious to their real writer and obnoxious to me, your professor. But plagiarism truly hurts the plagiarizer more than anyone else – whether they’re “caught” or not. I expect that you will use all of your own words or ideas in your work for our class, except in those instances when you’re directly quoting someone else or building on another writer’s ideas while giving them credit. In general, err on the side of caution. One of the best ways to avoid plagiarism is not to use the internet at all when it’s not part of the assignment – and it usually isn’t in this class. I will always be happy to talk with you if you have questions about the boundaries of academic honesty or acceptable paraphrasing before turning in an assignment. However, if you turn in work that contains plagiarism, it is too late for questions. If I find that a student has cheated on any assignment or has knowingly represented the ideas or writing of anyone else as their own, that student will fail the assignment, with the option to fail the course. I also reserve the right to subtract additional points from the student’s final average, as I judge appropriate. As required by MSU policy, I will file a report about the incident to be placed in the student’s permanent file. If a student has two instances of academic dishonesty in this class, they will fail it, and I will file a second report with the student’s dean who will then consider whether to expel the student.

A word about email

Email calls for a different writing style than text messages, especially when you’re writing to a professor or professional contact. Here are a few general guidelines: You should start by addressing the person you’re writing by name. Use a greeting, just like you would in real life: “Hello Prof. Veit,” “Hi Dr. Veit,” “Dear Professor Veit” – anything in that ballpark is great. When you’re signing off (and this is even more important), you must say who you are. Your name is all it takes, and if you sign off with “Thank you,” or “Sincerely,” or something like that, even better. If you’re asking a question (and especially if you’re asking a favor), please remember to use a question mark. Use words like “please” and “thank you” when appropriate. In general,

10

remember your manners on email just as you would in person. Finally, please use your MSU email address for all class emails.

Introduction (Wed, Aug. 29)

Introductions. Syllabus. Activity: Spit on a spoon Watch: Food, Inc. (excerpt)

* Read in class: Horace Miner, “Body Ritual among the Nacirema,” American Anthropologist (Jun., 1956), p. 503-507

Taste and Disgust: Nature or Nurture? (Wed, Sep. 5)

Prepare: Upcoming Food Autobiography Project and starting your class blog Activity: How Disgustable Are You? Questionnaire Watch: Food, Inc. (excerpt) * Rachel Herz, p. 1-27, That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion (2012) * Gabriella M. Petrick (2010) “Larding the Larder: Designing Taste for the Modern Age,” The Senses and Society, 5:3, 382-387

“”””Illustrate how the ‘processing’ of margarine helps to make it a more natural product. All the impurities found in nature are extracted by modern method to make it a cleaner and fresher product when it reaches the consumer.” – Advice on a new ad campaign from a marketing firm to a margarine manufacturer, 1968

Getting Industrial Food into the Kitchen (Mon, Sep. 10)

Discuss: Class blog progress; Food Autobiography progress Prepare: Upcoming Pandora’s Lunch Email project Activity: Selections from Hungry Planet; Selections from “What Children Around the World Eat for Breakfast”

11

DUE: Outline of class blog, with link emailed to me by Sun., Sep. 9 at 11:59 PM * Michael Moss, “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food,” 20 February 2013, The New York Times * Laura Shapiro, “Something from the Oven,” p. 43-68, Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America (2004)

Pandora’s Lunchbox (Wed, Sep. 12)

Discuss: How did the Food Autobiography go? Prepare: The News in Food, and how it works Prepare: Upcoming Industrial Food Diary Project Activity: “Is Sushi Healthy? What About Granola?”

DUE: Food Autobiography * Melanie Warner, Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took over the American Meal, p. xi-73

Pandora’s Lunchbox (Mon, Sep. 17)

Discuss: The News in Food Prepare: Recipe Extra Credit Update: Pandora’s Lunchbox Email project; Industrial Food Diary

DUE: One recent news article related to industrial food and a paragraph about its relevance to our readings (posted to individual blogs before class) * Pandora’s Lunchbox, p. 74-144 * Chelsea Fagan, “How to Be Your Own Italian Grandmother,” The Financial Diet (2018)

“Feed yourself like you were a welcome guest in your own home, not an ex you were trying to get rid of.” – Chelsea Fagan

Pandora’s Lunchbox (Wed, Sep. 19)

Discuss: Completed industrial food diaries; update on student blogs Prepare: Upcoming Refrigerator Photograph assignment Update: Pandora’s Lunchbox Email project

12

DUE: Industrial Food Diary (posted to individual blogs before class) * Pandora’s Lunchbox, p. 145-222

Fieldtrip: MSU Organic Farm (Mon, Sep. 24)

Class will meet at the MSU Student Organic Farm, 3291 College Road in Holt, MI, at 2:55 PM. Discuss: How the Email project went; what we saw on the farm

DUE: Pandora’s Lunchbox Email project I

Migrant Farming (Wed, Sep. 26)

Discuss: The News in Food Update: Refrigerator Photographs Watch: The Harvest/ La Cosecha (start)

DUE: One recent news article related to migrant farming and a paragraph about its relevance to our readings (posted to individual blogs before class) * Tracie McMillan, p. 1-55, The American Way of Eating

Pesticides, Packaging, Problems (Mon, Oct. 1)

Watch: The Harvest/ La Cosecha (finish) Update: Refrigerator photographs Prepare: Upcoming Topic Explorer project Workshop: Group Assignments for Final Projects. Group meetings, where students read and sign description of final group project on syllabus; come up with group expectations; brainstorm about possible topics; and make plans to start work on Topic Explorer project.

* Susan Freinkel, “Warning Signs: How Pesticides Harm the Young Brain,” 11 March 2014, The Nation * Dave Hall, “Throwaway Culture Has Spread Packaging Waste Worldwide,” March 13, 2017, The Guardian (UK)

Waste and Hunger (Wed, Oct. 3)

13

Watch: Tristram Stuart, “The Global Food Waste Scandal,” TED Talk (14 minutes) Activity: Group Analysis of Refrigerator Photographs Discuss: Using the law to curb food waste (the example of France and Italy)

DUE: Refrigerator Photograph assignment (posted to individual blogs before class) * Wei-ting Chen, “From ‘Junk Food’ to ‘Treats’: How Poverty Shapes Family Food Choices," Food, Culture & Society (2016) 19:1, 151-170

Social Class & Food (Mon, Oct. 8)

Discuss: The News in Food Discuss: Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? Update: Topic Explorer project Prepare: Divide into pairs for the Jigsaw activity in the next class Watch: A Place at the Table [start]

DUE: One recent news article related to poverty and food and a paragraph about its relevance to our readings (posted to individual blogs before class) * Tracie McMillan, “Do Poor People Eat Badly Because of Food Deserts or Personal Preference?” 27 June 2012, slate.com * Jane Black, “Revenge of the Lunch Lady,” The Huffington Post, February 9, 2017 * “In America, You Are What You Eat: Education and Income Matter More than Party Affiliation,” July 20, 2017, The Economist

The Food Stamp Debates (Wed, Oct. 10)

Discuss: U.S. Food Spending & Wealth Distribution over Time Update: Topic Explorer project progress Prepare: Upcoming Grocery Ethnography Watch: A Place at the Table [finish]

Jigsaw Reading Assignment

Everyone reads: * Malia Wollan, “The Faces of Food Stamps,” 2 August 2012, Food & Environment Reporting Network, Read and look at photos online: thefern.org/2012/08/the-faces-of-food-stamps/ Partner A reads: * Maria Goody, “How Might Trump's Food Box Plan Affect Health? Native Americans Know All Too Well,” February 25, 2018, NPR

14

* Tom Philpott, “It’s Time to Stop Shaming Poor People for What They Buy with Food Stamps,” Jan. 18, 2017, Mother Jones Partner B reads: * Anahad O’Connor, “In the Shopping Cart of a Food Stamp Household: Lots of Soda,” Jan. 13, 2017, The New York Times * “Forbidding Use of Food Stamps for Sweetened Drinks Could Reduce Obesity, Diabetes,” Stanford Medicine News Center, June 2, 2014

Workshop: Choosing a Final Topic (Mon, Oct. 15)

Update: Grocery Ethnography progress Discuss: Final Group Project Prepare: The Group Pitch Workshop: In-class workshop on Finalizing the Group Topic and Designing the Pitch

DUE: Topic Explorer project Listen: Marion Nestle: “Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning),” Oct. 2015, Diane Rehm Show (49 minutes). Go here: https://dianerehm.org/shows/2015-10-08/marion-nestle-soda-politics-taking-on-big-soda-and-winning, or just Google it.

GMOS and Subsidies (Wed, Oct. 17)

Watch: Food Evolution [excerpt] Discuss: Should the government subsidize vegetables? Update: Grocery Ethnography progress Present: Students will pitch their group’s idea for the final project

DUE: The Group Pitch, presented to the class * Paul Greenberg, “How to Get America on the Mediterranean Diet,” July 19, 2018, The New York Times * Amy Harmon, “How Square Watermelons Get Their Shape, and Other G.M.O. Misconceptions,” 2 August 2016. Read and look at photos online: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/12/science/gmo-misconceptions.html

Fat Culture (Mon, Oct. 22)

Discuss: How did Grocery Ethnographies go? Watch: Fed Up [excerpt]

15

DUE: Grocery Ethnography * Listen: “Tell Me I’m Fat,” This American Life podcast, June 2016 (1 hour 7 minutes). Go here: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/589/tell-me-im-fat, or just Google it. * Jane E. Brody, “More Fitness, Less Fatness” Feb. 26, 2018, The New York Times * Andrew Jacobs, “In Sweeping War on Obesity, Chile Slays Tony the Tiger,” Feb. 7, 2018, The New York Times

“The way that we are taught to think about fatness is that fat is not a permanent state. You're just a thin person who's failing consistently for your whole life. So to actually say, OK, I am fat...so I don't know why I live in this imaginary future where someday I'm going to be thin.” – Lindy West

McDonaldization (Wed, Oct. 24)

Discuss: The News in Food Prepare: Upcoming McDonaldization Exercise Listen: “Little Boxes,” Pete Seeger Watch: Jia Jang, “What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection,” TED Talk (15 minutes)

DUE: One recent news article discussing McDonaldization (but not about McDonalds, the company) and its relevance to our readings (posted to individual blogs before class) * George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society, p. 1-27 * Tim Wu, “The Tyranny of Convenience,” Feb. 16, 2018, The New York Times

“”If there is one thing I would really like, it would be to go to Anchorage, Alaska, and find a hamburger place that doesn’t look like the one in Warren, Michigan.” – A Michigan teenager in 1973

Race & Food (Mon, Oct. 29)

Discuss: How did the McDonaldization exercise go? Update: How is group work going? Progress Report in one week Watch: Alice Waters segment on 60 Minutes

16

DUE: McDonaldization Exercise (posted to individual blogs before class) * Bonnie Tsui, et al, “Why We Can’t Talk About Race in Food,” June 27, 2017, Civil Eats * Lauren Michele Jackson “The White Lies of Craft Culture,” Aug 17, 2017, Eater

“I was astounded by the level of rage that boiled up. It seemed that many people felt my questioning of the nomenclature was equivalent to a direct attack on America… The message this dismissive trolling sends: We’re not allowed to talk.” – Bonnie Tsui

Food & Climate Change (Wed, Oct. 31)

Discuss: The News in Food Watch: Alice Bows-Larkin, “Climate Change is Happening. Here’s How We Adapt,” TED talk, (14 minutes) Prepare: Upcoming group progress report and evaluation. Make sure you come to next class with group project material to work on for in-class workshop.

DUE: One recent news article discussing food and climate change and a paragraph about its relevance to our readings (posted to individual blogs before class) * Annick de Witt, “People Still Don't Get the Link between Meat Consumption and Climate Change,” Scientific American * “The Limits of Locavorism,” The Week, Dec. 14, 2013 * Richard Waite and Brian Lipinski, “Two Rules of Thumb to Slash the Environmental Impact of Your Diet,” October 16, 2017, World Resources Institute * “Protein Score Card” from the World Resources Institute. Read through our class website: The Protein Score Card is available on the Assignments page.

Workshop: Group Work (Mon, Nov. 5)

Watch: “Leather and Meat without Killing Animals,” TED Talk (9 minutes) Activity: Collaborative Design of Final Project Rubric Workshop: In-class workshop for groups. Laptops allowed in class today, if needed.

DUE: Group Project Progress Report and Evaluation * Be prepared for the group workshop and have material ready to work on in class. * Be reading Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals (2009), to be discussed in next class

17

Eating Animals (Wed, Nov. 7)

Update: Group Projects Watch: Graham Hill, “Why I'm a Weekday Vegetarian,” TED talk (4 minutes)

* Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals, p. 3-148 * Be working on group projects and final websites

”Tell me something: why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses?... how would you judge an artist who mutilated animals in a gallery because it was visually arresting? How riveting would the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly?” – Jonathan Safran Foer

Eating Animals (Mon, Nov. 12)

Activity: Divide into debate groups and strategize Update: Group projects

* Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals, p. 149-268 * Be working on group projects and final websites

Meat Debate (Wed, Nov. 14)

Update: Group projects Activity: Debate in class: Meat Eating vs. Vegetarianism Watch: Forks over Knives (excerpt)

DUE: Debate points, for and against meat eating (hard copy) * Be working on group projects and presentations.

Workshop: Group Projects (Mon, Nov. 19)

Watch: Forks over Knives (excerpt)

18

Workshop: Group projects and websites. Laptops allowed in class today, if needed.

* Be working on group projects and final websites. Coordinate with team members before class and come to class with all materials needed. All team members should be working in advance so they are prepared to make the best possible use of the time.

The Future of Food (Wed, Nov. 21)

Discuss: Food technology as a force for good Prepare: Upcoming rewritten food autobiography Watch: Dan Barber, “How I Fell in Love with a Fish,” TED talk (19 minutes) Activity: Menus for 2050

* Tammy La Gorce, “How Does This Garden Grow? To the Ceiling,” 22 July 2016, The New York Times * Sasha Swerdloff, “Composting 101,” January 30, 2018, Tending the Table * Moises Velasquez-Manoff, “Can Dirt Save the Earth?” April 2018, The New York Times Magazine * Be working on group projects and presentations.

Nutritionism & Dietary Guidelines (Mon, Nov. 26)

Discuss: The News in Food Prepare: Expanded Food Autobiography Watch: Charlotte Biltekoff, “Things We Like: Culture’s Impact on Preference,” Re:co

Symposium (20 minutes) Activity: Making Our Own Dietary Guidelines in Groups

DUE: One recent news article related to nutrition advice and a paragraph about its relevance to our readings (posted to individual blogs before class) * Emily Contois, “A History of Food Guides Told Through Photos.” Read and look at photos online: https://emilycontois.com/2015/01/01/a-history-of-food-guides-told-through-photos-and-butter/ * Susanne Freidberg, “Wicked Nutrition: The Controversial Greening of Official Dietary Guidance,” Gastronomica (Summer 2016): pp. 69-77 * Be working on group projects and presentations.

Autobiographies Redux and Workshop (Wed, Nov. 28)

Activity: Individual Presentations on Food Autobiographies

19

Workshop: Group Work on Final Projects. Laptops allowed in class today, if needed.

DUE: Rewritten and Expanded Food Autobiography Be working on group projects and final websites. Coordinate with team members before class and come to class with all materials needed. All team members should be working in advance so they are prepared to make the best possible use of the time in class.

Group Presentations & Websites (Mon, Dec. 3)

Group Presentations.

DUE: Final Group Website

Group Presentations & Websites (Wed, Dec. 5)

Group Presentations.

DUE: Final Group Website

Polished Final Individual Websites Due: Sunday, December 9th at 11:59 PM.

Then, happy vacation!