Food & Culture
Exploring America’s
Untapped Melting Pot

Sarah Dwyer
Oldways, Program Manager
www.oldwayspt.org


Our Melting Pot’s Food Culture Today
A. Dang it!

B. We are the bomb.com!

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• Facebook Sharing
• Foodie Movement (Southie)
• Farm To Table and Activist
Chefs
• 2% spent on fruit, veg,
grain, and bean ads!
• Documentarians (A+)
• Community Gardens
• Culinary Tourism
• Vegans, Raw Foodists,
Paleolithians,
Breathatarians

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Standard American Diet = F
Greasier and Faster
“Don’t even tell me!”
90% of Saturday morning
TV ad time goes to foods
high in fat & sugar and low
in essential nutrients
Spending Billions on
Nutrition Education
Cooking = spectator sport
We’re addicted
But … we work out!

How do we keep raising B. in our American food culture?
One way: Through Cultural Roots


“Food has no ethnicity …
… only geography.”
-- Musa Dagdeviren, Owner Ciya Sofrasi

New York Times Review
For those who don't have a Turkish grandfather to cook traditional dishes, there's Musa
Dagdeviren, the Turkish-Kurdish proprietor of this restaurant. A culinary Indiana

Jones, he gathers gustatory secrets from remote provinces and serves a menu that may
include ezo gelin (lentil soup with oregano and red pepper), diyarbakir guvec (a savory
stew of lamb, tomatoes and soft eggplants) and kuru sebze domalsi (eggplant stuffed
with rice and lamb). He is also a Midas of fruits, transforming them into golden juices
(tamarind, anyone?) and desserts like candied pumpkin slices. The menu is in Turkish,
so take a Turkish friend or make one at the restaurant.


Food Shapes Us
A Brief Geography Lesson
North
Foods: root vegetables, crisp apples, Swedish
meatballs
People: grounded, sharp folks driving more
Volvos per capita
South
Foods: tropical fruits, yerba mate, superfoods
and spices
People: sunny, energetic types who like to
salsa


Geography  Natural Resources  Culture  Individual
Eating patters = Individual + Collective Food Choices

Early on: Food = Survival
No matter what the ancient food economy was, individuals found it
hard to live without a group – sharing ingredients, cooking pots, and
fires, and simply hoping to receive enough from the pot to survive


Tribes & Clans
• Localized identity rooted in
immediately available
resources
• Connection & association
based on language, region,
resources, kinship and food

Nations & Ethnicity
• The birth of movements
for independence and
nationlism
• “Ethnic Cuisine”


Foodstuffs Movin’ and Shakin’ :
The Dawn of Food Universality

Crops

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Livestock

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Spices

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People

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Cuisine


Cuisine
The Rules of …
– Cooking: what ingredients, how they should
be combined, what processes to apply
– Eating: who should eat what, when, and with
whom
– Rules of food service (how dishes should be
served and in what order)
– “Cuisine” deemed different from everyday
cooking, in a hierarchical sense


Cuisine & Culture
Early Foundations
Class Structures: What does Affluence Taste Like?
– From Survival to Decadence
– Landowners vs. Working Class
The Banquet Years: A Gorge-ous time!
– Access to Exotic foods
– Foods in Excess: Animal Fats, Breads, Sweets, Wine

“Bourgeois meals reached such proportions that an
intermission had to be introduced in the form of a sherbet

course between the two fowl dishes.”
•Affluent Health?
•Gout, Diabetes, Obesity


Modern American Food Culture
Colonization and Food-Marriages in America
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England, Netherlands, France and Spain
Spanish: Florida, New Mexico, California, Texas
French: Louisiana, Illinois country
Dutch in New York
British in New England
Quakers of Pennsylvania

What does food mean socially to these groups? What will be the lineage?
A couple of outcomes:
Decadence
Jackson Heart Study - Fried animal fats, soda, white bread, high sodium foods
Coca-cola: The Simple Things
A symbol of All-American, love for the good life, but economical, a result of a
hardworking democracy that knows that they want, but doesn’t want too much



Why Pseudo Foods?
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Industrial Evolutions
Acculturation – back to survival
Pop Culture and Gov. Subsidies
Women to the workforce
Nuclear families grow to adopt separate
activities that keep lives busy & eating solo
• Modern Conveniences: remote controls,
elevators, car washes, leaf blowers
• Loss of cooking promotion & passing-downs in
families


America’s Techno-Food Movement

Chemicalized, Genetically Modified, Homogenized, Subsidized, Tranquilized


A Man & His Curiosity: Is There A Better Way?
Gardening & Nutrition
+ Fishing
+ Capitol Hill
+ Julia Child
+ Earth Day

+ A little bit of travel
expedition
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Recipe for K. Dun Gifford’s
Oldways Vision
What kind of food culture do we intend to leave
our children?
How can a population that may double by the
middle of this century be fed in sustainable ways?
K. Dun Gifford, Oldways Founder

How can consumers who want healthier food and
a cleaner environment get the chance to vote with
their forks?


New Values, Perspectives & Dolce Vita
Qufu, China 1987

A Tour of Italy



Geographic Patterns of Disease
And Traditional Diets
• Rockefeller Study in Crete, Greece post WWII
• Ansel Keys, Seven Countries Study
• T. Colin Campbell and The Cornell-ChinaOxford Project, which would become known as
The China Study
• Denis Burkitt, of Burkitt’s Lymphoma and

Dietary Fiber in Africa
• Harvard School of Public Health


Global Engergy Consumption, WHO, 2008

Global Meat Consumption, 2008

Prevalence of Obesity, WHO, 2008


As Red Meat Intake Rises in Japan, So Does
Colon Cancer Incidence
As Asian populations have changed from traditional to
Westernizes diets, their consumption of red meat has
increased. While this meat consumption is still considered
moderate compared to Western standards, the Japanese
are still experiencing the negative effects associated with
red meat consumption; particularly colon or rectal cancer.
A 2011 Japanese study administered a food frequency
questionare to 80,658 men and women aged 45 to 74 years
during 1995-1998. Higher consumption of red meat was
significantly associated with a higher risk of colon cancer
among men and women. In terms of site, these significant
associations were found to be proximal colon cancer in
women and distal colon cancer in men.
National Cancer Center, Tokyo Japan

Obesity in Nigeria: Current Trends and
Management

Nigeria is facing an increasing prevalence of obesity, with a
particularly strong occurrence in populations with
hypertension and diabetes. A Nigerian study of these
increases says that the rise of obesity rates can easily be
attributed to rapid unplanned urbanization, change from
local dietary pattern to western style diet which is driven by
the proliferation of fast food outlets in major cities across
the country. This study makes that connection.
Nigerian Medical Practitioner Vol. 54 No 1, 2008 (11-5).
Akpa et al.

Nutrition-Shifts


Oldways’ Five Traditional Pyramids


Oldways
1. Whole Grains Council and Stamp Program (2003)
2. Latino Nutrition Collection (2005)
3. Mediterranean Food Alliance (2006)
4. CME Conferences for Physicians and Healthcare
Professionals
5. Oldways Nutrition Exchange for Supermarket Dietitians
6. Culinary Travel


“I have yet to hear of a traditional diet — from
any culture, anywhere in the world — that is
not substantially healthier than the ‘standard

American diet.’ The more we honor cultural
differences in eating, the healthier we will
be.”
Michael Pollan
The New York Times Magazine
Sunday, October 2, 2011


Regional Health & Longevity
Places Where 90 Is The New 30

• Okinawa, Japan
• Sardinia, Italy
• Nicoya Peninsula,
Costa Rica
• Seventh Day Adventists
(Vegetarian) in Loma Linda, California
*4 Out of 5 of Oldways Pyramids: Asia,
Mediterranean, Latin America, and
Vegetarian


Food Reflections: New Priorities
Standard American Diet
• Value on speed, no fuss,
MRE’s (Made Ready To
Eat)
• Chemicalized, Genetically
Modified, De-Naturized,
Food Products

• Meat at the center of the
plate
• Factory-farm dependent
• Billions Spent on Nutrition
Education

Traditional + Cultural Eating
• Reclaim cooking as an
intricate part of life and
society
• Real food and drinks
• Plant-based, traditional
diets of healthy populations
• “Meet” your food at a
garden or farm
• Play with spices and flavors
from around the world
• More enjoyment & paying
attention


New Perspectives
Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.
-- Galway Kinnel

Passive Eaters
• Eating as “Consumers”
• Buying what we want – or
what we have been
persuaded to want

• Pay, mostly without
protest, what we are
charged

Active Eaters
• Eating as Co-Creators
• Eating as an agricultural
act
– We are actively involved in
the drama of food
economy, from planting
seeds to fork piercing
– No longer just consumers


The ideal of a single civilization for
everyone, implicit in the cult of progress
and technique, impoverishes and
mutilates us. Every view of the world that
becomes extinct, every culture that
disappears, diminishes a possibility of
life.
-- Octavio Paz


Crocuses To Help Us Focus … es